doihaveto

Hi everybody, I just wanted to follow up and mention that we released this game on Steam! (http://store.steampowered.com/app/423580/) It was officially launched in September, and we've been working on adding and expanding on it based on community feedback. Thank you all for your kind words about the game and your support! Very happy that it's out now and people can enjoy it. And now just to end with our official teaser trailer video. Enjoy!

Thank you!

Thank you! Those old sim games were definitely amazing, especially considering how little compute power they had to work with!

Arise, thread! Sorry for the delay in updates, we've been busy working on things like UI, which are necessary but not exactly exciting But no worries, here are a few more recent screenshots. First off, we've been working on public art: can I get a hand for this awesome fountain? And here's what we've got in store for our tenants - some retail stores! Hah! They'll never expect that. With apologies for the atrocious puns, I promise more next time around

We're sufficiently far along that now we can show off some of the HUD UI and some city backdrop OK, first off here's a zoomed-out version showing off a campus of three buildings under construction: Now let's zoom in on some individual tenants: Finally, our tribute to Caillebotte: a small office building; rainy day

And now an updated screenshot from our alpha build - featuring a bunch of different offices, restaurants, utilities, and other things you build. (Oh, and we haven't messed with NPC shadow contrast... yet... )

Hmm, maybe we need to reduce shadow contrast a bit...

@Mister Giggles: completely agree! With 2D there are so many more interesting options for visual style - anything from hand-drawn illustration style, to very precise vector graphics, to something more abstract and impressionist, the list goes on. Much easier to do stylized visuals in 2D than 3D!

Hi everybody, I wanted to share a side project: www.hypersimulated.com and its twitter account @hypersimulated It's a place where I post twice a week about new and interesting simulation/strategy games. Especially indie sim games, which can be hard to find. But I've also posted about games like Skylines, because how could I not? It's a great game. So if you'd like to get twice-weekly updates, please feel free to follow on either Twitter or Tumblr I'd love to hear your feedback on this kind of a project, whether this sounds like something interesting! Also, any good games you know of that I should check out? Cheers!

Here's a newer screenshot with a bunch of recent additions: - Weather - it's a dreary, rainy workday afternoon - New tenant types: - Diner restaurant and a salad bar (for workers to grab lunch or dinner) - Convenience store (for both workers and residents) - Several office types - Decorations and plaza sculpture that will keep people happy and contribute to the building's "buzz" (Click through for full size) We've also been working on a lot of gameplay systems, like prestige, media buzz, and political favors, but those are all programmer art at the moment and don't look very good...

Hi, thanks for the feedback! Yes, the game is definitely going to stay flat 2D, for a couple of reasons. One because it's easier to manage things when the player can see everything at a glance (eg. I remember floor switching in the Sims, and how much of a pain that was when trying to figure out what everybody is doing... now multiply that times hundreds of NPCs ). Two, because there's only a few of us on the project and we don't have the manpower to generate all those 3d assets! So we're sticking with 2d cutaway, which I think looks pretty good, especially with the current art style... For utilities, we talked about putting them between floors, but decided it looks a little too distracting when there's a wide gap between one floor and the next. There's something very visually pleasing about having a simple grid of tenants like this below, and we want to keep this feel: (That screenie also shows off our new food courts we just added ) So I think we're sticking with mode switching. Here's how it looks like right now, but a word of warning, the conduit mode is programmer art and we're going to revisit it in a few weeks: Play mode: http://www.somasim.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/building1.png Conduit mode: http://www.somasim.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/building2.png And by the way... I love the idea of taking the tower through the decades, and seeing the different visual styles take over... That would make a great post-launch content pack... Now I'm imagining how the nice slick modernist highrise would look once it moves into the 80s and 90s, and the offices start looking all like this... But I also realize how much new art work that would be! (PS. Also, thanks for the heads up about the forum not working! I'll investigate what's up with it. We've been having a lot of problems with spam etc - maybe it's time to find new forum software...)

@OcramSeattle: Thanks for the kind words! The space between floors idea is interesting. Right now utilities go "behind" the occupied offices, and you have to switch visual modes to see them (like in SimCity when you switch to underground view, or in Cities Skylines when you switch to laying out power or water). But putting them between floors might be interesting and it's worth for us to think about that. That's exactly the kind of feedback we were hoping for, thank you! By the way, I checked out OcramTower, it's a pretty impressive project, and made me nostalgic for the classic SimTower... Any chance you'll be developing it into a full game?

@MisterGiggles: Yes, SimTower is an old favorite game of mine, and it was definitely a product of its time... I had a chance to replay it a few years ago, and there are some things that just don't hold up anymore - the economic simulation is way too simple (it's so easy to get a huge surplus of money), the people simulation is frustrating, and the whole game becomes all about elevator micromanagement once the building reaches a certain size. That said, that's just me coming back to an old game and seeing it through contemporary eyes. But back when it originally came out, I loved it and sank many days into just messing with my tower and its inhabitants. Even in spite of its flaws it's still one of my best gaming memories. But for the new game - while SimTower is definitely a memorable influence, we're designing the mechanics afresh from the ground up (if you'll pardon the pun). We want to focus on the economic simulation, and get the player to strategically plan their moves and think about how they're going to evolve their building - and not have to worry about micromanagement of individual occupants. I like to compare it more to SimCity, where the player's control is one step removed from the individual occupants, so that they can concentrate on growing a large system. It's definitely a fine like to walk, though, so that it doesn't become a game that "plays itself" as you said (as SimCity sometimes does). As for cats - that would be really cool! We haven't planned for any pets, but that does sound fun... Hmmm...

We finally have a screenshot that we can share with the world! (One that includes actual art, not my questionable programmer art ) Here's a cut-away of a little office building: A bunch of game systems came together to make this possible: employment (so that we have offices where people work), economics (so that offices lease space and give you money to keep building), utilities (because everybody needs the lights on and phones working), and a few others. And there are more in development... Hoping to have more screenshots showing off other stuff - restaurants, apartments, retail stores - sometime soon!

Hey, thanks for the kind words! In terms of art style, we're definitely going for a high modern look. There's something very appealing about both architecture and appliance design from that era. I don't know what it is about it, but it seems to match our contemporary internet age very well - eg. even Apple's designs are very clearly inspired by Braun product designs from the 60s... Now the main trick will be making it look good in a 2D cut-away viewpoint style! In terms of gameplay, it's definitely going to be more complicated than either our previous game, or than other tower games I've seen out there. We're going less in the direction of micro-managing individual people, and more in the direction of managing residential, commercial, and other businesses in the building. You can say we're heavily inspired by SimCity, only vertical. Promise to post more details as they become available!