Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Hmmm. Maybe not workshop support then…

Posted on October 23, 2013

Dang. I ad hoped to get steam workshop support in to Democracy 3. however, today is the first time I’ve really looked into it in any depth, and unfortunately it doesn’t seem ideal for the kind of modding Democracy 3 is based around. It is ideally suited for games with a built-in editor, with a publish button that then publishes games to steams cloud save, and which can then be grabbed back from cloud save too.

This is problematic. Mostly because D3 is edited primarily in Excel or other spreadsheet / csv editors. And it involves making new graphics using graphics programs, and generally it involves putting together a collection of 20 or 30 files for a new country, and uploading them as a group, not a single file. To add to the woes, Steam workshop obviously would be separate to my existing efforts to support modding, and is obviously only for steam users.
Democracy 3 is also on sale direct, and through GoG and the MacGameStore. If anyone at apple can be bothered to reply to my emails, I might put this top-selling strategy game on sale through their app store… but that’s another story…

Anyway… as a result of my investigations I’m tempted to put the time I had mentally set aside for workshop integration into just far far better mod-browsing and support within the game itself. It wouldn’t be too difficult to list the current ‘official’ mods in a database and have the game show a list of those, and their installed/available status. Theoretically I could unzip all of the mod files on my server and have the game manage the downloading of those files itself automatically, negating any need for installers, or the possibility of people screwing up installation…

Sometimes thoughts like this lead to a spiral of 18 hour work days and depression, sometimes they lead to 3 hours work, and a great feeling of achievement. You never know till you try it.

Meanwhile Democracy 3 sells like hot cakes. I don’t want to become one of ‘those people’ who keeps going on about sales figures, but it’s doing very nicely and I’m very happy about that :D

Democracy 3 patched to 1.08 (on windows)

Posted on October 21, 2013

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Linux & mac updates are in progress, but for now…

Version 1.08
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Bug Fixes-
Fixed broken interest rate code that allowed negative interest rates.
Fixed bug where the political compass only recorded the first 50 entries instead of the last.
Balance:
Increased the top cost of national service from 80 to 1000.
Fixed issue where consumer rights affected self employed group twice.
Effect of GDP on environment increased and made non linear.
Effect of science funding on technology made slower.
Effect of technology colleges and grants on technology made slower.
Carbon tax hurts GDP more and the effect is now non linear.
Global Economy now affects oil demand.
Immigration now affects state housing cost.
Effects of state health service,schools,pensions and housing on socialist membership all reduced.
Effect of foreign aid and legal aid on socialist happiness reduced.
Disability Benefit now upsets capitalists less and reduces inequality less.
UK now starts later in the global economic cycle.
Removed some redundant effects that boosted technological advantage too much.
Effect of recycling on environmentalists reduced.
Effect of pollution controls on environmentalists reduced.
Productivity can now raise or lower unemployment.
New Content:
Support for new system of player-overrides that take effect globally.
Support for mods to have global overrides.
Added new simulation value of Currency Strength.
Minister loyalties now get a slight boost after each re-election.
New option to have randomised mission start values in the options screen.

Enjoy!

Democracy 3: balancing the difficulty

Posted on October 17, 2013

I have a lot of feedback that the game is too easy. I suspect some of this is because of the following factors:

1) People start with the UK< a fairly easy country

2) People are playing ‘to win’ not to actually mold the country as they wish to

3) People do not spot the difficulty slider :D

However, the simulation DOES need some difficulty tweaking, as it does seem to get into virtuous circles (or the reverse). From, a game POV, these are disasters, but the trouble is, they seem emergent from a dispassionate attempt to build an accurate simulation. Do they exist in the real world? I suspect so.

For example: I read a lot about how entrepreneurs are fleeing Italy and France. This is due to high taxes and corruption and incompetent government / bureaucracy. The net result will be more unemployment, and a brain-drain that guts French and Italian economies, leaving them with the less successful employees and businesses, thus reducing government income, meaning taxes need to go up…making the whole situation worse in a spiral.

On the other hand countries that are doing well, seem to get richer and richer.

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What I am thus on the lookout for are ‘automatic stabilisers’. Not in the traditional government finance sense, but in an economic model sense. For example…

Pollution is a good one. if you have no industry, you have no pollution, but a booming industry (China!) leads to more pollution, which then affects health and eventually lowers productivity, thus reducing industry back down from it’s peak.

on the opposite side, look at wages. The economy collapses, so unemployment shoots up and wages drop to rock bottom, meaning business competitiveness shoots upwards allowing for an export boom and the economy bouncing back.

Yes. it’s MUCH more complex than that. Nevertheless, these sort of things are already in the game, but I suspect their effects are too weak. I shall experiment, in-between talking to reviewers, dealing with advertising, handling the vats rush of online discussions about the game, fixing bugs…and I’ll sleep at some point. BUSY BUSY BUSY.

Feel free to suggest stabilisers I have not thought of…

Democracy 3 released. TELL THE WORLD

Posted on October 14, 2013

Do not worry America. Your politicians may be unable to govern, but I am here to help, by telling you that Democracy is here once more!

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Yup, It’s RELEASE DAY for Democracy 3, which means you now have no good excuses whatsoever to avoid going and grabbing a copy right now. Of course, you can grab it from my lovely website, which gets you a DRM-free link to windows, linux and mac versions, plus a steam key, or if you prefer to buy through steam you can do that right now here. And if you only buy games through GoG, be patient as the game will show up there in the next few days.

If you already bought the game and have been playing the beta, you may suddenly notice that the last patch (version 1.06) stopped saying ‘beta’. Yup, thats the release version you have, RIGHT THERE. Obviously not the final version, I’m already working on extra bits…

So what are you waiting for people? Get governing! And feedback on the game is vastly appreciated especially at the official forums here. And don’#t forget to use the power of twitter, facebook and even face to face ‘talking’ to tell people that there is this lovely new game out there…