Build 26367932

School Owner 3.3: New Horizons

You told us your classrooms sometimes "lost" their door, that applications piled up while nobody arrived, and that people walked on the spot. Thank you for every report: those are fixed, and this update takes your school somewhere new.

• Four places to build: Maple Valley, Sunstone Desert, Coral Coast with its beach and sea, and Frostpine Peaks, each with its own ground, trees, weather and rules.
• Seasons and weather: spring flowers, autumn leaves and winter snow follow the calendar; sunny days, rain, snow and heatwaves come and go.
• A school that feels alive: some students come in early and chat outside, a few run late, some walk home or do their homework in the canteen; doors swing open as people walk through; the school bell, birdsong, gulls and butterflies, and thought bubbles that tell you what students and staff need.
• Happiness and fair fees: a school mood that moves your popularity, and families who judge your fees.
• A fresh new look: painterly ground, crisp shadows, golden mornings, moonlit nights where lamps cast real shadows, and trees that sway in the wind.
• Building tells you why: every refusal says what's wrong right next to your mouse, builders can be hired from day one, and doors go into any wall.

Below is everything that changed.

New

• Four places to build your school. New school now asks where to build: Maple Valley (green fields and woods, the classic), Sunstone Desert (cacti and red rocks; solar panels make 50% more power, water tanks hold 30% less, land is cheaper), Coral Coast (palms, a sandy beach and the sea; families love it, land is dear) or Frostpine Peaks (pine woods and snowy mountains; a grant to start with, heating costs in winter). Each place has its own ground, trees and weather. Schools you already have are in Maple Valley.
• Seasons follow the calendar. Spring flowers, summer grass, autumn leaves and winter snow now come and go with the months instead of one season picked at random for good. New schools open on 1 September, at the start of the school year.
• Weather. Sunny days, grey skies, rain, snow and heatwaves, depending on the place and the season. Clouds dim the light, rain and snow fall over your school, you can hear the rain, and the calendar shows today's weather. Sports Day without a gymnasium is rained off to the next day.
• A school that feels alive. A bell rings when lessons start, at lunch and at home time; birds sing on fine mornings, seagulls glide over now and then, and butterflies flutter over the grass on sunny spring and summer days.
• Thought bubbles. Students and staff now say what's on their mind: "Great lesson today!", "I'm starving!", "There's rubbish everywhere", "My parents say the fees are too high"… They come from what's really happening, so they tell you what to fix. Turn them off in Settings if you like.
• Happiness. Your school has a happiness score (the face on your badge): needs met, teaching, cleanliness, fees and the day's weather. A happy school is more popular; an unhappy one loses popularity, and if it gets very unhappy students start to leave. Students → Happiness shows what makes it and what people have been saying.
• Fees that matter. Families now judge your fees: fair or cheap fees bring more applicants, dear ones fewer, and what they call fair rises as your school gets popular. Students → Fees says what families think of each level's fees.
• Search the build menu. Type in the box next to the categories to find anything you can build.

Improved

• A new look. The ground is repainted: rich, natural grass with soft lusher and drier patches and a little relief that catches the low sun, instead of a flat bright green that repeated every couple of metres, with new sand, snow, meadow and autumn ground for every place and season. Shadows are crisp: trees, lamp posts, people and furniture now cast shadows with their real shape instead of soft blobs. Mornings and evenings glow golden instead of murky brown, nights are a moonlit blue with the school's lights glowing warm, and cloudy days are soft rather than dark. Colours are more natural, so floors and grass no longer look neon. The Coral Coast's sea has waves, turquoise shallows, deeper blue water further out and foam along the beach.
• Trees come to life. Leaves sway gently in the wind, crowns look round and soft instead of faceted, no two trees are quite the same shade, and in autumn the leaves turn yellow, orange and russet (pines stay green).
• Nights with real light. Street lamps and room lights now cast shadows: desks, chairs, people and lamp posts throw soft shadows in the lamplight around where you're looking. Street lamps shine from their heads, glossy floors reflect the sky by day and much less at night, and the shading in corners and under furniture is sharper.
• Doors open like real doors. A door swings open as someone walks up to it, away from them, waits while they pass and swings shut behind them with a little bounce, instead of people walking through doorways as if there were no door.
• A school day that feels real. Some students come in early and hang about outside with their friends, most arrive on time and a few run in late. After school some take the bus, older students may walk home instead, and with a canteen some stay a while to do their homework there first. People standing near each other chat, with nods and gestures, and staff on a break stroll outside and stop to talk.
• Building tells you why. When something can't be built, the reason now appears right next to your mouse: too small, overlapping, not your land yet, something in the way, already owned, not for sale, needs research.
• Buying land is safer. A big land purchase now asks first, showing how many tiles, the price and what you'll have left, and a drag over land you can't buy says why.
• Builders from day one. You can hire more builders straight away; Maintenance research now makes them carry twice as much and build faster. All builders also work faster than before, so new rooms go up much sooner.
• Doors and windows are easier to place. They snap to the nearest wall, so the thin side walls of a room take a door as easily as the front ones.
• Room tags say what's next. The tag over an unfinished room now shows the next thing it needs (often "A door people can reach from outside") without opening the list.
• A View button (and the Home key) brings the camera back over your school if you get lost.
• Clearer room names while building: white with a dark outline in the corner of the room, readable on any floor, day or night.
• The badge explains itself. Hover the popularity star to see what makes your popularity and why it changed, the students to see who's arriving on the next bus, and power and water to see what they mean; power and water turn amber when they run low.
• Janitors work smarter. They go for the nearest litter, sweep up everything around it and give up on bags they can't reach, and the game tells you when litter piles up and what to add (bins or a janitor).
• Bulldozing a room's floor or wall now asks to delete the whole room, as the room's panel does.
• Goal rewards are announced in your notifications too, the Build tab no longer looks like it's always on, the mouse wheel scrolls the build menu's cards the right way, and Esc closes windows on the main menu.
• Students → Fees explains each level's price in plain words, the Students header counts students arriving on the next bus, a full class's Accept buttons are greyed out, and the Schedule says what its rows and squares are.
• New schools charge more tuition and a smaller deposit ($500 instead of $1,000, and $50 more tuition a day at every level). A family pays the same for a stay, but more of it comes in every night, so a full classroom now pays its way instead of the badge showing a loss every night. Schools you already have keep their fees.
• The Paint tool has its own paint-roller icon.
• The Marketing screen shows where your popularity comes from, including the place and how happy your school is.

Fixed

• Open the school did nothing when the name box was left empty and you already had a school with the default name. The school now gets the next free name (shown greyed out in the box), a name you already use is pointed out next to the Open the school button, and Random name works the first time you open the window.
• Accepting students works again for schools whose classrooms kept "losing" their door. A room counted as reachable only if people could walk into one of its four corners, so a classroom with furniture in its corners could be marked as having no door, now and then or for good. Its seats then didn't count, applications piled up and no tuition came in. The game now checks the whole floor. Thanks for the report!
• Rooms no longer switch off for a moment right after loading a school or after building.
• When applications pile up, the Students screen now tells you why: every seat is taken (add student chairs or build another classroom), or no classroom of that level is working (click it to see what it needs).
• Students accepted after school hours no longer get an empty bus: they come with the morning bus, and the message says when. A bus now also comes in the morning for new college students.
• A bus or delivery car stuck on the road now moves on after a while instead of holding up every bus behind it, and the spawn point no longer stays blocked for good after a vehicle has passed.
• No more shaky feet. People standing about, teachers in class and builders at work no longer slide and shuffle on the spot when others brush past them: they stand still until they're sent somewhere else, and their feet stay planted.
• Rooms can no longer be built over solar panels, water tanks or other things outside: "Something's in the way".
• Dragging a room or land past the edge of the land you own now works and says what's wrong, instead of stopping at the edge without a word.
• Menu → Save now says the school was saved, and Report a problem says it's opening the forum in your browser.
• The money on the badge no longer lags behind while the game is paused.
• The grade goal ("Honour roll") shows your best grade so far instead of a count, and tooltips are no longer hidden behind messages at the top of the screen.
• Beyond the map there's now countryside instead of a black void, and the land's edge below the road no longer shows a smeared cliff.
• People stop walking when they stop. Students and staff kept their walking animation for a moment after arriving, and students waiting to leave their classroom (and their teachers) walked on the spot. They now slow their steps as they slow down and stand still as soon as they stop; builders who stop with a box hold it still.
• Nobody slides along the floor. A teacher leaving class still in the teaching pose, or anyone sent off while sitting, building or standing about, glided across the floor without moving their legs. They now start walking the moment they move.
• Lessons are no longer interrupted. With two classrooms of the same level, both teachers went to the first one (one walked into the other's lesson) and the second had no teacher; each teacher now has a classroom of their own. Staff on a break no longer stroll into classrooms, and janitors leave a classroom's litter until the lesson is over.
• Furniture can no longer stick out through a room's wall: a desk on a room's last row, or a wide piece outside reaching in, now shows red with "It would go through a wall". Thanks for spotting it!
• Buying land no longer charges you again when you drag over land you already own.
• The school's cleanliness was upside down: a spotless school scored 0 and a school full of litter 100, so people grew unhappy about a clean school. Litter now lowers it, and it recovers as janitors clean up.
• A stray "Placeholder (Aligned on right side)" label no longer shows at the top right of the screen.

Thank you

Thank you for every report and idea since 3.2. If you find a bug or have an idea, tell us in the Steam discussions: we read every thread, and this update shows it.