Click here to play the new demo.
Software Inc. has been featured in three articles this last month, you can read them here:
Indieroundup.com (Playthrough)
Nordicgamebits.com (Interview)
P911-magazine.com
(The last one is in French)
For this update, Software Inc. has had a base mechanic completely replaced.
Instead of the old Innovation/Stability/Usability sliders when designing software, a feature system has been added. Features control development time, Innovation, stability, usability, how many artists are needed and they can depend on features in various ways. 3D rendering can supersede 2D rendering, music can depend on whether the selected audio tool has a music editor and 8-bit audio can depend on whether ALL operating systems selected support it. All of these features and their dependencies are of course moddable in the full version, using simple XML files.
I hope this addition makes the design process feel more intuitive.
To make all this work I had to make a simple editor for it (Shown below). It is windows only, but I might release it when Software Inc. releases. In the end, I hope to enable editing mods directly in-game.
I also fixed up the building system, by having the furniture you’re currently building actually show while your placing it. And you can no longer build rooms in the middle of nowhere without support.
I updated the name generators with some new words, the results are great, with names such as:
- Foot Simulator of Death
- Spacewars in Space
- Baby Rebirth at night
- Horse Tycoon in Space
- Fish Manager Ultra
- Horse Killer At Night
The name generators are completely moddable and can be edited with plain text files.
You can see an always up-to-date list of all changes here: Changelog
Why isn’t Software Inc. out yet? My plan was to release the game at pretty much the same time as the Greenlight went live a month ago, but I’ve been let down by a third party. Basically, someone messed up two months ago and I’ve been paying for it. Hopefully, it will soon work out. I’m doing what I can, but I have limited time available to go around and fix stupid bureaucratic mistakes.
Finally, remember to vote for Software Inc. on Greenlight! You can open the Greenlight page in your browser by clicking here, or directly in steam by clicking here. Software Inc. is currently 48% of the way to the top 100.
Hello, how expansive are you planning for the mod tools to be? I have no experience in writing code or coding in general, but watching this game progress has given me countless ideas. From the devblogs your engine seems to be perfect for the sort of game I want to make.
The modding system is text based. The game loads some XML files, which you can add in packages or edit. So modding is limited to be within the boundaries of the game, i.e. Operating Systems and Antivirus applications cannot be disabled because the core gameplay depends on them. I have plans to enable changing how income and reputation is calculated, which will be the closest you can get to modding the core gameplay. But so far, you can add software categories, employee personalities, scenarios and scripted/AI companies to the game. I also have plans to enable saving a playthrough, so you can compete against yourself or put it in a mod and share it.