Tycoon

[dasherk]

Hello,

I've been quietly following the progress over here! Lots of cool stuff I've enjoyed so far. I'm just wondering though when we'll see the tycoon part? I might've misunderstood when I thought that was coming over the summer. Then the video on future updates subtly suggested they aren't even on the drawing board at the moment now. Just wondering if there's a ball park?

[Pleb]

Well, first off, we are currently balancing the engine designer scenario scoring system based on some new features - Modern OHV and new economy revamp. Then comes some multiplayer score balancing, and implementing some new exciting multiplayer modes which will take a while.

Then we are polishing things up for Steam Early Access, at which point work on the Tycoon will begin (AFAIK).

So still a few months to wait I'm afraid. Just hang in there! Lots of cool things are coming soon.

[Jakgoe]

As for a ballpark estimate, work will begin around Christmastime, give or take a bit.

[dasherk]

Interesting. Is there an official schedule somewhere?

[Pleb]

There's no schedule, purely due to the fact that we can never tell how long something will take to implement and make bug-free. All we know is the order in which we are doing things. There's a YouTube video on the AutomationGame YouTube channel about it called Little Dev Update: Next Subproject Overview. I can't get a link right now but it should be easy to find.

[Daffyflyer]

Interesting. Is there an official schedule somewhere?

Yeah, we long since gave up providing official time estimates of each aspect as we're ALWAYS wrong. I can tell you that after we release on Steam (next update) we'll be starting work on the Tycoon side of things. I have no idea how long it will take, although I'd imagine we'd have a quick and dirty first pass of some of the basics within a month or two of work maybe?

[Killrob]

Yeah, we long since gave up providing official time estimates of each aspect as we're ALWAYS wrong. I can tell you that after we release on Steam (next update) we'll be starting work on the Tycoon side of things. I have no idea how long it will take, although I'd imagine we'd have a quick and dirty first pass of some of the basics within a month or two of work maybe?

The 1-2 months will be "before we can show something off properly", not "release to the players" though but much more information will be available by then!

[taoistlumberjak]

Interesting. Is there an official schedule somewhere?

Yeah, we long since gave up providing official time estimates of each aspect as we're ALWAYS wrong. I can tell you that after we release on Steam (next update) we'll be starting work on the Tycoon side of things. I have no idea how long it will take, although I'd imagine we'd have a quick and dirty first pass of some of the basics within a month or two of work maybe?

It's like me at work; provide an estimate given your current workload and expected completion times, and have that thrown out a series of windows after someone hits the "smite" button with your name on it. Completely understand.

[Daffyflyer]

The 1-2 months will be "before we can show something off properly", not "release to the players" though but much more information will be available by then!

Exactly, a thing that sort of does some of the things that the design says it should do, and is roughly workable as a game, then add a bunch more months to make the basics work nicely and add features