Hey everyone, sorry for going quiet for so long, let me explain everything from the start!
Some of you know I made this game together with my partner, that's why we were called Minds 2 Bros, we'd been friends for a long time and dreamed of making games together. He handled the coding, and I handled everything else: design, mechanics, textures, materials, 3D models, registering the company, registering on Steam, basically everything except programming, since back then I had zero clue about it. We released the game, put out patches and everything was going fine, we each got 50% of the revenue, exactly as we'd agreed from the start
But at some point he said that I still wouldn't be able to keep the game going without knowing how to code, and demanded we split the profit 70/30, claiming he was doing more work. That put me in a really tough spot, because I knew without him the game was basically done for... though honestly I don't think he spent more time or did more work than me, and on top of that he started using it to pressure me. Maybe I should've just agreed to his terms, who knows
Anyway, we parted ways. He went off to work on his own project, and I was left to deal with the game on my own. I opened up the code and spent several days just trying to figure out what connected to what and how any of it worked, how to change something without breaking the whole thing. That obviously didn't lead anywhere, so I decided to take a few development courses, which took a couple months. After that I started going through and organizing his code, which took another few months, but now I've got full documentation for it and working with it is actually manageable
One more thing: after finishing the courses I went through the whole codebase, and honestly it's a mess, that's what's been causing the freezes, fps drops and other issues. It's not something I can fix quickly, I'll be gradually optimizing it and rebuilding some of the systems from scratch. Sorry that it won't be fast, I have to balance this with my job and personal life too, heh
I'm now fully ready to keep developing the game on my own!
Now for the important part, here's the patch notes:
- Based on a lot of requests and complaints from players, I brought back the old material ordering system: no more running around offices, signing weird contracts or other unnecessary steps, just open the tablet and order materials for your store
- Removed the ability to order materials from the OfficePC
- Optimized the code related to material spawning
- Added working parking: customers now arrive by car, park, go shopping, head back to their car and drive off
- Minor UI improvements
- Did a big pass on texture and 3D model optimization, the game now uses roughly half the VRAM it used to
- Slightly optimized NPC-related code
- Moved the engine from UE5.5 to UE5.7
- And a bunch of other technical stuff that's boring to talk about and you probably won't even notice, heh
To wrap up, expect more patches coming in the near future, I'll keep gradually optimizing and reworking the old code and adding small new mechanics. Thanks to everyone who's supported me, and thanks for playing Grand Mall Simulator
