Quickstart Guide

For Alpha 4.5

So you want to create software do you? Well this page is here to get you started. Information on this page is drawn from observations, forums, and discussions to help YOU attain software superstar status! *This page is very much in progress and will be updated as time goes on*

Your First Day

When you hit "New Game" in the main menu you will be presented with this image:

Don't Freak Out

Its supposed to be a confusing mess. There will be a tutorial window that will helpfully guide you through the process and introduce you to all the different windows. A recommended starting build to get a hang for the game is make your founder's two personality traits "Optimistic" and "Generous". The sliders on the bottom left can be left untouched for now, those will be explained shortly.

Now on the right, you should increase starting money to $20,000 or one notch up if you are playing with a different currency (You may change currency through the options menu). Starting year is fine at 1980, but you should change the difficulty to "Easy" while you learn the game.

Finally, the number of days in a month might seem odd. Simply put, if you leave it at the default 1 day per "Month", every day that goes by will be equivalent to a month on the in-game calendar. You can increase this if you like, most people play with 4 days in a month, but it just affects how quickly time moves and is a matter of preference. Leave it at 1 or 2 for now.

Go ahead and customize your founder and put a cool name for your company like "SpaceTech", "ApetureCakeProduction" or "Potato". I chose to name my company Potato. Your screen should now look something like this:

Playing the Game

So you've started the game and now you are treated to this lovely screen:

Remember to breath, you got this. An important concept for this game is every window is resizable and movable so feel free to drag that tutorial around. Go ahead and read what its got to say and hit continue until there is no more, then hit end to make it go away. For this little guide, we'll be sticking to the tutorial for now, so go ahead and hit that green wrench to enter build mode.

Building a Better Tomorrow

There are 3 Building Modes:

A: Construct (used for building rooms, windows and doors)

B: Furnish (used for placing stuff like tables, chairs, coffee machines...)

C: Roads (used for building roads and parking but you wont need it for now)

Building Rooms:

After you entered build mode you should construct a small room. For this use the Construct Room Tool in the Construction Menu. A good starting size for your first room should be around 5x5 to include room enough for a chair and table for your founder to work at.

Building Stuff inside Rooms:

You'll notice that your new room is very dark! To fix this, in Construct Mode place a window or two as well as a door into the room and you should notice a huge change, but place a lamp if you don't like Windows or Microsoft(HAHAHAHA funny).

Now switch to Furnish Mode and place a table with a computer and chair somewhere inside the main room. SHIFT+LMB if you want to place multiple. Chairs automatically lock to the closest table, but you might have to rotate the computer. To do this, click and hold, then drag in the direction you want the computer to face and release! Your room should look something like this:

Awesome! You now have a room as well as a place for your founder to work! Finish reading the tutorial and then hit Tab to go back to the normal view.

Earning Money: Contract Work

The very first way your company can make money is by accepting and finishing Contracts. Contracts are randomly generated projects that your company can complete, and each comes with its own requirements for completion.

To find contracts, hit the button under Development that looks like a piece of paper (A). You should see the following screen:

You should sort the list by hitting Months (B) until the contracts that take the fewest months are on the top. Generally, contracts that can be completed by 1 or 2 people (C) have a month requirement of 1 or 2 months. They don't pay a lot of money, but when you are just starting out they provide an excellent source of income.

You are also looking for contracts that have a Bad or Horrible (D) required quality because these take much less time to complete, thus more profits!

Search through the list until you find a contract that has a low quality requirement, has a recommended team size of 1, and takes 1 or 2 months to complete, and hit Accept Work

Completing the Contract:

Now that you have accepted some work, you should see a project window on the right side of the screen (A). The tutorial should give you the basic run down of a project's lifespan, but we'll recap here as well. Warning, this section is very wordy!

There are four stages of completing a project. There is the design stage which is the first stage. In this stage, your designer(s) will design the product in question. If you mouse over the project window in this stage you should see one or more green bars (B) being filled as your employees work. The best case scenario is to have these bars all the way filled, but be careful! If you leave the project in the design stage for too long, you'll actually lose progress.

Once those bars are filled, you can hit Develop (C) in the project window to advance to the next stage called Alpha. In this stage, your programmer(s) will create the project that was just designed. Again you'll see green (or red bars which represent art requirements) being filled. Unlike the design stage, you cannot leave this project for too long, as once your programmers and artists are done, they will stop working until you hit Promote to advance to the next stage.

The next stage is called Delay and is just an intermediate stage that will last for a set amount of time depending on the skill level of your employees. More skill = shorter delay stage. This stage will finish automatically soon.

Then, your project enters Beta stage where bugs are squished in preparation for the projects Release. You can release the project prematurely, but be warned! Bugs make people unhappy with the final product and will affect sales/contract payment.

Your First Employee

Very Under Construction (Include section on personalities)

Building Stuff for the Employees:

Another thing that is important when constructing buildings is the fact that those stupid employees want food, toilets, coffee, a quiet room, light, a nice environment, and a comfortable temperature. So go ahead and build another small room and a tiny room for toilets and a 'Chill Out' Area.

Make sure your break room has a fridge and a table with a coffee machine. And finally put a toilet in the toilet room. Now throw a bunch of Windows/Lamps everywhere that people actually can see and but doors in so you can walk into the rooms.

If you want your employees to be happy put plants in the rooms so they look better. And add Radiators and ventilation in the main room so it always has a nice temperature. You might need multiple if you did not follow the instructions and build a gigantic 100x100 room.