Steam Deck and Game Controller Support + Gameplay Enhancements
SELF MADE: Investment Life Sim · published · build 24743984
Steam Deck: full controller support
Until now, SELF MADE on Deck was a mouse game with an on-screen keyboard. Version 1.815 makes the whole game playable from the controller:
Left stick moves a cursor (or steps focus item-to-item on menus), A clicks, right stick scrolls, B backs out of screens.
A hint bar shows the controls, in all 7 languages, and disappears the moment you touch the mouse.
The on-screen keyboard now reliably reappears when you re-select a text field.
No more "hold Shift/Ctrl" tooltips on a device with no Shift or Ctrl.
Scrolling with the right stick no longer silently edits sliders it passes over — that one affected about 40 sliders, including budget allocations and bet sizes.
This is Deck-only on purpose. On desktop the game should plays as it always has.
Steam Deck: readable and un-cropped
The Deck now renders the full native 1280×800 canvas at 100% scale. Company creation and investment properties were literally cropped off-screen before; text was below Valve's legibility minimum. Both fixed.
The finances overlay no longer sits on top of buttons. The worst case: the Start Company button was up to 100% covered. Real Estate, the Newspaper, and the computer desktop icons all got the same treatment.
The news ticker's invisible click zone used to eat the bottom 40px of the screen after it faded. Fixed everywhere, desktop included.
Docking and undocking mid-screen now re-lays-out live instead of sticking with the wrong layout.
The game caps at 60 FPS on Deck (the sim doesn't need 90 — your battery does) and the download got smaller for everyone.
Still on the list: a couple of dialogs graze the bottom hint bar at 720p external resolutions. Known, measured, being fixed. Also, some buttons in the apartment (i.e. diploma in the cheapest apartment) have to be repositioned to avoid colliding with the HUD, I'm still outlining a plan to make this look prettier.
Your saves: much harder to lose
The save system got its biggest rework since launch, aimed at every way Steam Cloud could quietly hurt you:
Saves now carry a revision counter, so a clock difference between your PC and Deck can no longer make Steam Cloud "win" with an older copy and roll back your progress.
If two devices genuinely diverge, you get a proper choice — Keep Cloud Save / Keep This Device's Save / Decide Later — and both versions are archived before anything is replaced.
Loading is now transactional: if a save copy is damaged, the game restores itself and tries the backup instead of half-loading garbage.
Art auctions now save mid-sale. Quitting during an auction resumes the same sale, and a purchase can never be double-charged.
Fixes you reported
"I'm making $115/hr and being offered promotions to the same position for $75–85/hr." True, and worse than it looked: the job board could advertise the exact seat you were sitting in, and same-employer "promotions" priced off static base pay, ignoring your raises. The board no longer lists your own job, promotions are floored at your current wage +5%, and below-wage listings are tinted so you can spot them.
University calendar drift (thanks Doomi): enrolling in an intake month never credited that month, a zero-tax year-end created a phantom January, and a busy summer could silently stop your studies entirely — stacking months toward expulsion. All four defects fixed; academic years land on time now.
Blackjack: split hands were settled one card short (a lone ace counted as 11), and pressing ESC mid-hand closed the table with your bet already taken. Both fixed — ESC now waits until the hand is over.
Hedge Fund Beta
The fund beta (branch: hedgefund, code EnableHedgeFund) got its own round of fixes, almost all from your threads:
Your fees are now visible. Management and performance fees were being paid to you all along — but never showed in the income breakdown or Net Cash Flow, so it looked like they weren't. They now book as real, labeled income. (From the "Questions about hedge funds" thread.)
You can now invest in your own fund. "Why can others invest but I can't top it up?" — fair. Contribute Capital is on the Investors panel: your money buys GP units at current NAV, $1M minimum, once per month, through the same high-water-mark ledger your LPs use.
Your advisor no longer overrides the desk's own HOLD/SELL research with a forced long.
Conviction targets now show who set them — you, a rating, or your advisor.
~700 lines of fund UI translated across all 7 languages (thanks to the German thread that called this out), and switching language mid-save no longer leaves old-language text in your reports.
Thank you for the reports, our game has grown so much due to your feedback. We will always be grateful for our players! Keep them coming.
— Billmeade Gaming