RobbyZ's Blog

I’ve just released Beta.1956 as well as v4 of AESU (download it from the download area to get it):

• Installer, website, AESU, and MOI are all localized into seven languages!  English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian and Japanese.  Whew, that’s a lot.  Some caveats:  there’s still some missing Japanese strings and Russian plurals may not be correct.  Also, some strings may not be sized correctly to their buttons yet.  If you speak one of those languages, please report bugs affecting them 🙂
• YouTube & Steam trailers now have Japanese subtitles.  Will have subtitles for the other languages soon also.
• Much improved offline support:
  • AESU can launch the game if user is currently offline but previously updated/installed
  • Game can now skip registration if you start it offline, and will let you sync up and make an account the next time you launch with a connection
  • Game no longer hangs on Save & Quit if you are offline
  • MOI itself doesn’t support proxies, but AESU proxy support has been figured out.
• Steam achievements are implemented (but since I still don’t have any steam keys, no one else can get them)
• Pixel perfect UI disabled – now UI is ever so slightly more blurry, but also much better performance.  (No more drop to 4FPS when scrolling the buy list!)
• Now you can only build in the factory area you have expanded to
• Physics objects won’t leave the factory area (unless you build a conveyor railgun)

With the build out, I’m getting set to hop on a flight in… 12 hours to head to Japan!  I’m very excited to take March of Industry and demonstrate it in the Tokyo Game Show 2015 Indie Area!  So I will be less active online for the next 10 days.

Please stop by if you are in Tokyo!

Over the past two weeks, I’ve brought the game to PAX, SIX, 8Bit History, and Vlogger Fair.  During that time, I’ve had the opportunity to chat with players about their thoughts on the game.  One point that keeps coming up is that they don’t think a free-to-play business model makes a lot of sense for March of Industry.  This has been further reinforced in online conversations.

To that end, I’ve decided to move MOI away from being a free-to-play game with microtransactions.  It is now under a somewhat more traditional business model: a one-time upfront-purchase.  The premium items are now included in the game at no additional cost.  This business model is simpler to manage, and seems like a better fit for this game.

I’ve set the price at $9.99 — you can purchase now and get access to the beta, which also includes a Steam key when the game launches.  If we later make an Android build, it includes access to that APK as well.

Alpha.1836 reflects this, with the premium items now being given out as rewards when you upgrade your factory to the next level.  Premium currency has been completely removed.  If you previously purchased anything in beta, you’ll receive the full game on Steam once the Steam version has launched.  After Steam launch, I’ll be e-mailing the folks who have previously paid more than $9.99 with bonus access tokens to give to their friends.

As always, I’m listening to your comments, suggestions and concerns.  This move may be a bit of a surprise, but I do think it’s the right thing to do for both the gameplay experience and for you as a player.  🙂

Today’s build focuses on two things:

• Preparing for text translation – you’ll note some new flag icons when starting the game.  Clicking them won’t do anything (yet) though.  If you notice any text no longer displaying correctly, please report the bug on the forums with a screenshot.
• New Turbo packs – If you want to get access to Turbo Capitalism before beating the game once, now there’s a way to do that.

• Show the item’s recipe on discovered items list
• Added a hint screen for if players get stuck trying to make the Blunderbuss (new button displays after 3 minutes on that goal)
• Marquee sell no longer summons an elder god to destroy your speakers
• Fixed a bug where selling a resource individually didn’t play a SFX
• Right click drag to pan
• Fixed bug where inventory items were not available after prestige.

• List of discovered resources is now saved between sessions
• Now when you have finished a tech age, the levelup display will notify you
• Different fanfare SFX for level up progression vs age finish progression
• Emoji grenade now makes a boom! in the SFX
• Black hole makes a delightfully terrifying black hole noise
• Turbo SFX are now stopwatches

Manual update required – please read.  A couple updates to the auto-updater today:

1. Fixed an issue where sometimes patch files wouldn’t download correctly and would have to fall back on the full file alternate
2. Fixed an issue where updating the autoupdater doesn’t work at all

Because of issue #2, you’ll need to manually reinstall AESU from the secret beta webpage.  There’s a new installer link (which now has a ‘-3’ suffix).  Future AESU updates should self-install in future.

The new AESU displays ‘Build 3’ in the Help > About screen.

Thanks for all the feedback and bug reports!  Here’s a patch which addresses a bunch of them:

• Box values will always be positive
• Selling should never cause you to lose money
• Boxes will only load as many resources as they can fit value-wise
• Some weapons were not properly categorized as weapons
• Some weapons were not being credited to the right tech level / age for some objectives
• Rebalanced Potato-age weapons to reward more complex creations
• Expand cost should not go negative

March of Industry will be featured in the 8-bit History collection in the OBJECT exhibit space — it opens Friday!