That’s way there is 4 tutorial missions) To show gradually and explain everything as well.
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Welcome to the shortest devlog so far)
I have finished new build for two events which are coming this july, so it was mostly polishing and bug fixing. I will take part in WHITE NIGHTS SUMMER 2020 and in GTP Indie Cup. So i will probably release new trailer next week, as i will create it anyway for these events.
And a lot of changes coming to the core gameplay and UI\UX. Lengthy play session revealed several flaws which must be addressed to create more interesting and fun game. So stay tuned)
Also this week i tried @Denis_Makhortov system to check if we clicked on transparent part of sprite. But i have to rewrite some parts, because i need it for continent selection in Sandbox menu, which built with gui sprites and not with game objects with sprites. Anyway it worked, but i’m not still pleased with the results and probably will use more simplified image for generation.
That’s all for today. See you next week 
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Could you write in more detail? Not perfect accuracy? If so, then I think you need to set the compression to 1
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Sorry, I probably didn’t put more context) It worked too well, I used compression 1. Problem is in images themself. North America for example, has very complex shape with small island and parts. And when i hover over it, it often jumps form selected and not selected. So i wasn’t pleased mostly in this)
The algorithm itself is very nice, thanks.
How it’s look.
I will probably fix it, by using different images for generation, like this
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Welcome to even shorter devlog)
Today i have for you a gameplay trailer, which is based on latest stable version. Work is still in progress)
And that is pretty much it) Things that i am working on right now is still in early stages, so i will talk about them in next devlogs. See you there.
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It’s friday and time for another update 
Some changes were made to Campaign menu. On one hand i had troubles animating reveal of missions nodes. Mainly on idea stage, like from which direction and how that reveal fits in other menus and animations. On the other hand Briefing menu, which shows after you started mission was a little bit misleading and almost duplicated Tasks menu. And after last playtest i came to a decision to remove briefing screen and move everything from it to Campaign menu.
This is how it looks before:
Briefing and Tasks menus:
And this is new Campaign menu. I dunno why i created briefing menu in a first place, cause its really strange idea to show mission details after you have already started mission 
I’m not entirely happy with the end result, so i’m sure that i will change it again in a future.
Meanwhile i have been testing some integration and doing non-development staff 
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hi @russelkgd I would love me to have some more comments of ideas at my dev diary but is ok that I see people of community put likes and visit my thread. As for your last idea. In my opinion you can leave the campaign like you done now. And briefing to be in a menu inside the game for example as tasks left to be accomplice and let know the player what you ask him to do for complete the level. I do not know if you have such menu inside, in your demo I do not remember right now but if you have then keep it. Also in campaign could mention under in details for example under the letters of mission. " more … " where player can press and see details just of a small briefing in text not so big briefing as before. thanks I hope that maybe take account some things for your game.
Also even if your game has as currency the animal, you could add as second currency the money for expenses of the zoo example food or payment of salary or income of tickets . So to make player to do more things.
Thanks a lot also for your help about newsline right now I didnt manage exactly to implement yet because I do events
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also does this is from your page in steam? what is the process to publish a game ? thanks
I’m speaking more from design perspective that i will change campaign menu again in the future. Thanks for your ideas) Player can see all tasks in Tasks menu, i just removed “duplicate” for campaign missions.
I have already second currency to increase zoo capacity and “cure” ill animals. Later it will be used more, like to do expedition and maybe for some research.
As for steam, yes it’s steam page for Zoo Economy, but it’s not published\verified by Valve yet. Regarding publishing process, you have to create developer account. It involves filling a lot of information, but mainly you have to pay 100$ to complete transformation of your regular account into developer one. This 100$ fee is paid for each game you want to publish in steam. So basically when you register as a developer you are paying these fee for your first game. On good side, you will get this 100$ back when you game sells for more than 1000$ (if i am not mistaking). Also you will fill tax form to determine your tax policy, because all money are coming from USA and if you or your company are not from USA or registered in USA you may receive double taxation: from USA and your country. To pay only one tax, you will need to fill that form.
So it’s better to do it when your game are more or less ready or you 100% sure you will finish and release the game.
After successful creation of your developer account you can prepare build and page for your game, there are checklists to complete, so its’ pretty straightforward. 30 days from your payment you can submit game to Valve, they will check everything and after that you can publish game page and everyone will see it in store. Then when ready you can publish game itself to people to buy.
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thanks @russelkgd for this info as I didnt know the process as I never publish anything and is good to know such details for future. Something more in expedition you can find an animal for cure or to raise and protect for example if an event is that illegal hunters killed the mother of baby elephant but you manage to rescue the baby.
Also you can put an event of letting free an animal to jungle and this make the zoo more known to media. or give an effect to zoo to can trade one month will lower prices with others.
thanks and keep up the good work
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Thanks again for your suggestions!
Expedition will be just to find unique animals in the wild. As for the rescue, illegal hunters and etc they all be as separated events.
Also one of the missions in campaign will just about releasing animals to the wild. It is current breeding program in New Zealand, where they raise qiwi and then release them to the wild to increase qiwi wild animals population. But i will consider this as another gameplay mechanic.
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It’s friday and another devlog 
Music Controller
This week i was upgrading my small music controller, as new original music finally starts coming 
. Mostly i needed fade in and fade out and random shuffle feauture. Fade in and fade out was already implemented in first version on my music controller, so i created random shuffle and rewrite some parts of code. Firstly i searched in audio native extensions, but could not find any suitable solution for my case. As an inspiration for controller structure i used Debeat.
So right now i can just pass song name to the controller and it will play it. If some track is already playing controller will fade out first track and then fade in new one. I can also pass folder to the controller and it will randomly shuffle tracks and play them one by one. When all tracks are played, it will shuffle them and play again 
Save system
I previously mentioned that save\load system is in work and it almost ready. I have to figure out some small staff which is not working after loading, but i hope to finish it this week. Ofcourse i use DefSave for that purpose and initial idea of storing save data was discarded, when i notice 512kb limit on files.
Initially i wanted to have one save file with all data. First tests with just save\load menus and their logic were fine. But when i started storing real game data it quickly got out of control. More zoos -> more animals -> more data to store. And each “save” can range from 9kb to 200kb (it will be more in the future). In second idea i have one control save file, which stores information about real save files, like savename, game mode etc. When player select file to load, it will load correspondent real save file from disk. But this approach have on disadvantage (except increased complexity) - i could not find way to delete real file from the computer. That why i just delete all data from it and save it on disk, almost empty. Will be glad to hear some ways of deleting . It’s not gamebreaking, but better to delete it than leave it there. And it is possible to rewrite save files. Probably will include option to name and rename save files, but right now it is not essential.
And some screenshots)
And that’s all. Stay safe. Come back next friday for more.
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If it is a normal file on disk os.remove() should work.
As for size of save files couldn’t you have your save data in JSON format and use https://defold.com/ref/stable/zlib/#zlib.deflate:buf and then save using normal io.* functions?
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can i ask sth why you want to delete real file? if do the save in same will not rewrite? or you mean difference to start new game or start a load file because i had an issue with this but i think you can have for new file a default saved files with values. I think defsave.default_data does this check inside lua of defsave is written. If i am wrong maybe @Pkeod that wrote it can tell us a solution. Thanks
Because player can delete save file) I mean if for whatever reason he wants to do it, he can. And after deletion the file is empty but left on the player’s computer like garbage.
I will try solutions from @britzl and report what worked. And default_data is for initialization of empty loaded file (like not existing in a first place), but i want to delete file)
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ah so you want complete deletion when the player give such order through game. 
you are advanced me still do the save and load at news sim to work, you even thought deletion by player. Ok keep up the good work I liked this you mention for music too. Thanks
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Rebecca Black - Friday playing in the distance
Hello guys and welcome to yet another devpost.
Save system
Back to the last blogpost’ topic. Thanks to @britzl advice i managed to delete deleted save files from players computer) Also i finally completed the system, at least in version 1.0. Spend several days trying to load everything properly and it was a nightmare at some points 
But not it works fine)
Geography
One of the topics which was brought on that big play session: players mostly do not know geography and for them it’s very hard to find countries on maps and corresponding zoos. On the other hand i don’t any have problems with it and it looks like a survival bias error. Cause i don’t even thought about it.
So i will probably include another option to show some help labels on the map. One of the easiest will be zoo labels. It is easy to add label to zoo .go object, but when map is zoomed out and zoos are close together, all labels can turn into mess. I will probably turn off labels in that case or make them transparent, but it still an issue.
Also i can label countries, but there is even bigger problem: some countries are very small and it will be misleading to have the same font size for labels on all countries - some will just overlap. And the same problem on zoomed out case.
What do you guys think about it? Maybe there are some other ways to approach this problem. At any case that’s all for today. I have some great news, but i can’t talk about them right now . Till next week.
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Kalispera @russelkgd I think that you should put labels on when the map is zoom out . So player see where is and go there where wants and zoom in. Thanks
Friday, again! Today i have for you some development progress and big announcement.
Geography
I made first attempt to create zoo names on map. When zoo is isolated it works fine: it nicely fade in and out. But when other zoos are near, they all are mixed together and i do not know how to approach this. I can see only one solution - to show zoo names if player hover mouse on zoo icon.
Here is in action:
Look at this mess 
For now i will probably leave it as is and return to it with fresh ideas or maybe completely remove this option.
Check click
@Denis_Makhortov wrote to me with proposed optimization options for his Check_click extension. I have tested them and can say that they really worked). Load time was decreased almost by 50% with some space optimization as well. You can check it here ImageTransparencyCalculator - Check sprite on click
Announcement time
First of all Zoo Economy Steam page is finally available. You can already add game to your wishlist and i encourage you to do that 
. Even if you do not like the game it can help me to get more coverage in the store.
Also i would like to announce that Zoo Economy is coming to Early Access this fall. Specific date, roadmap and other details will come shortly, so stay tuned. A lot of things left to do and even more after entering Early Access.
That’s all for today. See you next week maybe with even bigger news.
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Wow, awesome progress! Congrats on launching your Steam page.
I think that not showing the zoo names until they are hovered over (or even clicked on) wouldn’t be an issue at all. If you want to show some names, maybe you could just show the names of a few ‘big zoos’ worldwide and leave the rest as just icons. This is what sites like Google Maps do for search results – a few popular results might show their names, but most will just be ‘result’ place markers.
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