Mar 18, 2023

Atmocity - Dispersing Minds

0.86 -> 0.861

Additions
- Two new rounded block types added.
- First density of 3x3 commercial buildings added.

General adjustments
- Adjusted industry input and output values. Overall they now produce more goods. Labour needs are scaled a bit more appropriately.
- Adjusted hotel input and output values. Also raised tax revenue from hotels, because the input requirements are now higher.
- Raised residential tax income slightly.
- Adjusted lighting bias to decrease flickery shadows from small objects.
- Hotels are now boosted by convention centers, stadiums and museums.
- Industry now boosted by goods ports.
- Commercial buildings now properly boosted by nearby convention centers.
- Commercial building service output changed.
- Commercial zones now placed using zone planner, same as residences and industry.
- Culture output increased from sanctuaries.
- Parks now output a small amount of culture to help cover the needs by residences. Hotels require more culture, so they will require larger output (from convention centers, stadiums and ideological buildings for example).
- VAT policy now calculated from population + tourists + services produced.

Difficulty refinements (easy to hard)
- Increased tax income on easy mode.
- Made conglomerates less cranky (except on difficult mode). They will also anger less when demolishing their buildings.

Bugfixes
- Fixed rounded blocks not lighting up when bulldozing.
- Fixed bug where special blocks could be demolished despite building being placed on them.
- Sanctuaries were missing from culture display.

Other
- Decoration code cleaned up.
- Destruct code cleaned up.
- Made additions to stop threads earlier in large cities to improve shut down speeds.
- Further improvement to connection issue in large cities.
- Added zone count display when placing zones (based on the size selected).

Mar 18, 2023

Welcome to Magic Research! - FAQ & Release Date

Magic Research - Maticolotto

Welcome to Magic Research!

In Magic Research, you are the headmaster of a newly-created magical institution with one goal: to win the prestigious Tournament of Magic. What challenges, mysteries and adventures await you?

Magic Research is releasing on Steam on March 23rd, 2023, at 1:00 AM UTC (GMT)! Get ready for the full game by playing the free demo available now on Steam. Your progress in the demo will be transferred to the full game!

FAQ

What is Magic Research?

Magic Research is an incremental, text-based game about magic with a concrete ending, a light story, over a hundred spells, more than seven dozen side Storylines with permanent bonuses, strategic depth, and tons of secrets and features to discover - and of course, no ads or microtransactions! If this sounds like something that may be interesting to you, the free demo is a great place to start! By the end of the demo you should have a clear idea if the game is something you might like or not, and since the progress is transferred to the full game, you can continue right where you left off if you decide to purchase.

What are Magic Research's design principles?

I started building Magic Research after having experienced several incremental / idle games and getting a burst of inspiration: I wanted to play an incremental game based upon the idea of casting spells, where the main progression revolved around unlocking more and more spells with powerful and creative effects. As I continued working on Magic Research, I tried to take some of the elements of those games that I enjoyed the most, while at the same time attempting to avoid their pitfalls. As a result, I tried my best to design the game around these concepts:

A constant sense of progression, where new content and unlocks happen periodically - there should never be a lapse of time too long where there isn't something new going on.
Do not build a game that requires idling in order to make any meaningful progress. Base it around active play, and instead reward idling in a limited manner.
Capture the joy of discovery - keep the player wanting to continue playing in order to discover new spells, things, features. At the same time, make those new discoveries have a clear, decisive, strong impact on how the game plays.
Have a sense of ultimate goal and an ending. Unlike many idle and incremental games, I wanted to have a game with a concrete ending, and this ending should be achievable without extreme, months- or years-long playtimes.
Create the possibility of synergies to be able to quickly or effectively make progress through the game. But do not make the game so difficult that they are required.
Focus on making a good and enjoyable game and do not build in freemium or ads into the game.

Magic Research is more of an active game than many other games in the genre. While it does play itself and you can make some idle progress, expect to make progression primarily by engaging with the game.

How much more content is there in the full game as compared to the free demo?

The free demo contains content up to about school level 13~15, which is about 4 to 6 hours of content, and about 18 Storylines. The full game contains 92 Storylines as of the time of writing, content up to about school level 50, and around 40 hours or more of active gameplay, including multiple features and twists not present in the demo.

What is the difference between the Steam and the mobile versions?

In terms of content, there is no difference at all. The Steam version has a few UI features that the phone version does not, such as: taking better advantage of screen space to display most menus at once, or having keyboard hotkeys for doing certain specific actions.

What is the difference between the Steam and the web version?

The web version is only a free demo and contains the same content as the free demo you can find on Steam. The UI is also essentially the same between the Steam and web versions.

Can I transfer my progress from the mobile or web version to the Steam version, and back?

You can use the functionality in all versions of the game to export and import saves to manually transfer your progress. There is no shared cloud storage between platforms as of right now, so you will need to do this every time you switch devices if you'd like to play the same saved data across multiple devices. If you started the game on mobile but would rather continue on Steam only, though, you would only need to transfer the data once, from mobile -> PC, which should be supported and reasonably easy.

Is there support for Mac and Linux on Steam?

As of the writing of this post, there is no support. It is planned and something I'd like to set up, and something that seems like it should be possible, but I don't yet have a working proof of concept, so it might take a little while.

Will there be additional content coming out in the future?

Magic Research is a complete game. The main story progression is done, and there are no plans to expand upon it as of this date, except by a very small amount of post-game content. That said, I believe it is a meaningful, complete package with over 40 hours of active gameplay. Most people who have completed the game have done so in somewhere between 10 days and 1 month.

Where else can I discuss the game?

There is an official Discord community with moderate activity, the Steam community hub for the game which is just getting started, as well as other unofficial subreddits with discussion on the game.

Is there support for the blind and visually impaired?

As of the time of writing, there is some support, but the game is not fully optimized for this purpose yet. If you use a screen reader, my suggestion is that you play through the entire free demo first before purchasing the game. The full game will have the same UI experience as the free demo, and if you manage to complete the demo you might be able to play the full game. I am slowly adding and improving support for screen readers, so if you find things are not working, I'd love to get your feedback - either in Discord, in the Steam Community Hub, or by email to http://mailto:magic.research.game@gmail.com.