Hey everyone!
The 0.2.0 demo update is now live, and its the biggest update we've shipped so far. It touches core loop, adds a new district to the industrial area and lays the ground for automation systems that will be coming next.
This is part 1 of the automation update, part 2 coming soon.
You can now sleep in your motel bed to skip the night. If you're playing online or in co-op, everyone in the party must go to sleep for the night to skip.
To balance it, we extended day length to 48 minutes and night hours: they now run from 10 PM to 8 AM.
When sleeping the night, energy is fully restored.
There's a new police station (with interior) in the industrial district. Right now you can't get arrested, but its the first piece of the Civil Crimes System we're working on, which will eventually cover reckless driving (speeding, red lights, hitting pedestrians or street signs) and financial stuff like tax evasion or boss misbehavior.
The map got bigger: we added a new area to the industrial district, which comes with new customers, a new property (more below) and some other interesting buildings that will be functional in the future. More demand, more orders.
The city now feels more "lived in" and immersive. This breaks the grid monotony, has some elevation, curves and feels more organic.
We also improved the intelligence of AI drivers. They can now anticipate collisions with players and other AI vehicles instead of only braking when an obstacle is 2m in front of them. If they see you coming in an intersection for example, they react accordingly. They’re rightfully scared of you. When they get stuck (for example, a player puts his car in the middle of the road) they can do more advanced maneuvers, or reverse if necessary and find the spot to escape. They have different patience levels so some drive more aggresively and honk, others are chill.
New dealership for commercial vehicles, with 3 new vehicles for sale.
The bigger change: you can now buy vehicles for your company instead of just for yourself. Company vehicles are shared, every member of your organization gets access to the same fleet. This was one of the most requested features and it matters a lot for the next point below.
Vehicle changes:
The Cangu got a visual rework.
New entry-level van: the Kabestie. It's cheap, has low storage capacity and is slow, but if you're just starting out, it'll get the job done.
Cangu Deluxe and Secuestrator (not available for buying in the demo)
You can now assign company vehicles to your employees, and they'll go out and fulfill orders way faster than on foot. This is the second automation iteration in the game - if you have the vans, the personnel and the garages, you load up multiple vans and dispatch several orders at once. Works also for port buying, you can buy way more and way faster in one batch if you send your employee with a vehicle.
The van you assign matters: it determines delivery speed and how many bulk orders fit in a single run. So the 3 new dealership vehicles aren't just cosmetic options - they're capacity upgrades for your logistics chain.
Each delivery also consumes fuel and has a risk of employees crashing the vehicle, so those are risk factors you'll have to account. For scale you will need shelves with fuel cans in your facilities.
Each garage has a fixed number of parking spots, and spots = how many vehicles you can run concurrently. The new Cargo Garage is a budget property in the new district designed exactly for this stage: cheap enough to afford early, with enough spots to get a small automated operation going before you can afford Ironyard.
Taxes and employee salaries are now consolidated into a single Bills section on the business website, replacing the old fiscal cycle.
Here you can find typical operational costs for your company:
Employee Salaries
Property Taxes
Vehicle Taxes
Fair warning: if you don't pay on time, the government freezes certain actions (hiring, or expanding fleet/facilities) and starts stacking debt fines. Keep cash on hand!
We removed the "Stats" tab from the main menu. Everything lives on your phone now, split across three new apps:
Tasks: Tracks two separate quest lines: your corporate objectives and a new set of personal story quests. If you just want to grind your empire without story distractions, you can toggle individual goals off, which also hides their map markers and notifications.
ID: Shows your personal attributes, records, and current VISA status. This one is setup for a bigger storyline we're building: a personal quest line about your family and working through the legal system to get Permanent Residency.
Jobs: A live directory of quick jobs around the city, with payouts listed and a one-tap GPS button to navigate to the work site. Useful when a bill is due and the company account is empty.
Storage and inventory panels now have a semi-transparent blurred background.
Vehicle trunks physically open and close when you interact with them. Small thing, but it bothered us that they didn't. Also the items in the trunk are visible, and react to movement.
The minimap got a new look, darker to better highlight icons.
Improved the UI for item price management as the old one wasn't clear.
Below market price you will sell more, but at the expense of less profits. Too high and you risk getting bad reviews. Also added fleet/facilities sections to centralize everything.
That's it. The next update will come sooner. A lot of this one was groundwork that needed to happen first.
Let us know what feels off. Most of what's in 0.2.0 came from your feedback, so keep it coming. See you in the city.
New Police Station: A brand-new Police Station building has been added to the world map.
IronFleet Dealership: Inaugurated a new commercial vehicle dealership, specifically catering to business fleets.
New Vehicles:
Introduced the Kabestie, a new entry-level company van designed for low-cost, early-game businesses.
Visual and performance upgrades applied to the Cangu Deluxe and Helios RS.
New Property: Cargo Garage: A budget-friendly garage option featuring dedicated parking spots. This property allows players to pack and automate deliveries using vehicles and employees, serving as the perfect early-game stepping stone.
New Property Gift: Room 8A at the Nate Motel is now unlocked by default as a registration gift from Bianca.
Fiscal Cycle Overhaul: The old fiscal cycle system has been completely removed.
New "Bills" System: Taxes and employee salaries are now consolidated into a unified billing system.
Bills are accessible directly through the Company Website.
Debt Penalties: Failure to pay bills on time results in accumulated debt and monetary fines. Additionally, the government will restrict certain business operations until your account is fully regularized.
Automated Parking: Properties categorized as Garages now feature dedicated parking spots. Entering a garage will automatically park your vehicle in an available slot.
Seamless Departures: Boarding a vehicle in a garage parking spot and starting the ignition will now instantly drive it out of the facility.
Employee Vehicle Assignment: You can now officially assign company vehicles to specific employees, provided the vehicle is currently parked in a garage slot.
Jobs App: A new phone application listing all available quick jobs alongside player statistics and a GPS localization button.
ID App: Replaces the old main menu "Stats" tab. Displays player attributes, records, and current Pionero Capital VISA status.
Tasks App: A new tracker where players can view all active objectives. Tasks can be toggled on/off to filter notification pop-ups and map markers, allowing you to temporarily hide goals you wish to complete later.
Property App: Streamlined and simplified the Property App user interface.
Industrial District Extension: Expanded the area with a brand-new sub-district featuring fresh streets, unique buildings, a mall (currently non-functional), and new local customers to generate order demand.
Dark-Mode Minimap: Re-designed the minimap with a sleek, detailed dark blue theme.
Greatly increased visible detail for streets, terrain, structures, plazas, and map elements.
Improved blip position precision, speed, and automatic zoom scaling.
Loading Bay Visuals: Added a custom map blip with an image and description for the Loading Bay (the drive-through supply zone at the rear of the Port).
Bank Relocation: The main bank branch has been moved to the newly extended Industrial District.
Foliage Toning: Adjusted palm tree leaf colors to reduce harsh contrast and blend more naturally with the environment.
Immigrant Progression: Replaced the initial tutorial text messages with a dedicated Personal Immigrant Mission, tracking your journey to settle in parallel to your business progression.
Time Skipping & Sleep System: Implemented a new party sleep mechanic. If all active players in a party sleep simultaneously, the night is skipped and player energy is fully restored. Increased day length to 48 minutes.
Extended Night Cycle: To balance the new sleep mechanic, night hours have been significantly extended. This directly impacts customer behavior, as they will sleep earlier and wake up later:
Old Night Hours: 12:00 AM – 6:00 AM
New Night Hours: 10:00 PM – 8:00 AM (+4 in-game hours).
Animated Trunks: Vehicle trunks on several models will now physically open and close when interacting with their storage.
Physical items in trunk: Now when you store items in vehicles they will be physically visible. Also respects stack sizes.
Shelve 3D stack size: All the items in a stack (for example a stack of 6 books) will be visible in shelves and other storage rather than only one.
Furniture Limits: Adjusted and optimized furniture placement limits across all properties.
Employee Management UI: Improved the dialog interface when issuing orders to staff. It will now initially prompt you to choose which vehicle to utilize, displaying its available trunk space and inventory.
Add animations to the UI: Improvements in our UI framework that allows us to better use anims. Mostly noticeable on the phone.
Inventory Blur: Updated storage and inventory interaction panels with a semi-transparent blurred background style. Lets you see the background. Also improved item drag latency, should feel way smoother.
Catalog Account Info: The catalog interface now clearly displays your current available bank account balance.
Phone Control Mapping: Allows to control the mouse without taking your right hand off the mouse: CRTL to open, wheel scrolling to navigate it.
Refined Engine Hints: Clarified the troubleshooting hint triggered when a vehicle engine fails for the first time, explicitly instructing the player to restart the ignition to drive it to the mechanic workshop.
General Polish: Removed redundant tutorial hints, improved main menu/connection screen flows, upgraded floating nameplates/text bubbles, and enhanced various UI audio cues.
Notification Redesign: Redesigned the notification and hint interface with a modern aesthetic that aligns with the rest of the game’s UI style.
Traffic Audio: Improved the audio attenuation of traffic engines for a more realistic and immersive world soundscape. Also different vehicles have different engine sounds.
New UI for price management: Shows a slider with the market price and how much you are drifting for it.
Idle AI Behavior: Employees will now walk and wander realistically within properties when they do not have active tasks assigned.
Audio & Voice: Applied various fixes and enhancements to employee voice lines.
NPC Graphics: Updated profile portraits for several world characters.
Staff Pathfinding Fix: Resolved a bug that caused employees to get stuck or randomly teleport inside properties.
Staff Balancing & Roles: Rebalanced employee operational times. Additionally, certain employees can now handle both port supply pickups and deliveries.
AI Traffic Driving Overhaul: Implemented major adjustments to AI driving behaviors. Vehicles are now more cautious and will brake earlier to prevent collisions. Additionally, the AI will actively seek alternative lanes to bypass obstacles and prevent gridlock traffic jams.
Fullmap Fix: Resolved alignment and scaling issues with the Fullmap across various display resolutions.
Functional License Plates: Vehicle license plates are now fully functional and uniquely generated per vehicle.
Animation Fixes: Improved characters' default idle postures and applied fixes to bed animations. When player has energy will be fully straight
Lighting: Fixed street lighting grids and minor interior illumination bugs.
Localization: Implemented accurate translations for all in-game time units across all supported languages.
Display Settings Fix: Resolved a critical bug where changing the display mode to fullscreen could render the game unusable.
Texture Streaming Fix: Fixed a bug that caused high-resolution textures to degrade or fail to stream in properly. Now the world floor textures (asphalt, grass, concrete) should look crispier.
Customer Review Fix: Fixed a bug where customers would leave unfair negative reviews if an order was delivered right after the night cycle officially began.
Critical Region Fix: Resolved a critical networking bug that unexpectedly changed players' matchmaking/data regions. This was causing players to connect to the wrong servers where their characters didn't exist, leading to confusion.