Entrepreneur Central

[Mogri]

Arson, shoplifting, bribing the health inspector, organizing boycotts, hiring the Mafia to put some "pressure" on Chet.

Give the player tons of options to play dirty, but make Chet escalate. Once you start playing dirty, he always plays one level dirtier than you. There's an alternate "Mutually Assured Destruction" ending if you go too far down that path.

[Pepsi Ranger]

Wow, how do I love that plan. I may not go the arson route--too extreme for this kind of game--but I very much like the idea of playing so dirty that you earn a rating for it at the end of the game.

[Pepsi Ranger]

After four years of battling insanity (adding features and fixing bugs), I now have Entrepreneur: The Beginning Version 1.2 ready for download.

Get it here: http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewgame.php?t=2555

Don't forget to read the updated instructions if you're having trouble. You can also ask questions or comment here. Feedback is appreciated. Oh, and tell me how fast you're able to defeat your rival. I've done it in 20 days on Normal.

So, what's new? Here is a general list of additions, changes, and fixes to the v1.2 release:

-Version 1.2 (released September 4, 2013)-

Additions:

2 New Areas-
-Hybrid West (new shopping and trash-diving hub)
-Pine Alley Drive (new work opportunities)

New Shops-
-Outdoor Chores and Crap
-Novelties Plus
-Sapphire's Consignments
-Health Matters (partially complete; will open in v1.3)
-Tailor Made (placeholder for now; will open in v1.3)
-Pound Cake (placeholder for now; will open in v1.3)

New Features-
-Yard Services
--Mow lawns, clean pools, paint houses, landscape, and rebuild structures for cash
-Equipment Modification
--Turn common yard equipment into more powerful objects
-Consignment
--Sell items you no longer want or need
-Trending
--Buy the city's most popular items at discount prices
-Customer Health
--Affect customer health by using certain ingredients in coffee
-Customer Likes and Dislikes
--Find out which ingredients customers prefer in their coffee, and which ones to avoid for contrasts in popularity
-Tips
--Earn extra money for making outstanding coffee
-Hot/Cold System
--Keep dairy cold in cooler; be mindful of coffee that cools on the counter
-Investments and Hostile Takeovers
--Buy stocks from your rivals as you gradually take them over; earn extra cash off of their success
-Dynamic Shops
--Every shop in Hybrid City lives and breathes economy and inventory as you do
-Perks and Accessibility
--Earn rewards for staying open and delivering quality coffee on a consistent basis
-Taxes
--You can't die in Entrepreneur, but you better believe you'll have to pay taxes
-Difficulty Selection
--Change starting values and goals through Easy, Normal, Hard, and Random difficulty selections
-Tutorial
--Learn how to play from the master himself

Improved Gameplay-
-Shop Windows
--See how much your shopping total will cost before you spend it
-Coffee Display
--Check the quantity of your coffeepots and the quality of your cup in hand on the fly
-Hotkeys
--Access coffee in hand display, "Clock," "Bounce," and "Move Along" at the press of a button (z, c, x, and v respectively)
-Open Sign (new object)
--Open pavilion later than 12pm; close early
-Account Log (new object)
--Record statistics each day of summer
--Display statistics through bar graphs
-Announcer Radio (new object)
--Hear the names of customers approaching the line
-Rose-colored Glasses (new object)
--Identify troublesome customers before wasting coffee on them
-Holdover Tray
--Set coffee on counter instead of serving immediate guest; beware of cooling
-Dead Hour
--Find out when customers no longer plan to visit for the day, or receive a second wave of customers if satisfaction was high previous day
-Whipped Cream as Topping
--Furnish coffee with whipped cream (after stirring and fitting with cup warmer)
-Crowd Control
--Use repaired televisions and radios on shop counter to keep customers in line and coming

New Items-
-"Wheat" Grass (for coffee)
-Salt (for coffee)
-Teddy Bears (for future social element)
-Silly String (for future social element)
-Flowers (for future social element)
-Hypodermic Needles (for future health element)
-Fruit (for future health element; currently locked)
-Syrups (for future health element; currently locked)
-Performance Enhancers (for future health element; currently locked)
-Spoiled Cream, Milk, and Vanilla Cream (for coffee)
-VCR (for repairing)
-Personal Computer (for repairing)
-Videocassette (for future social element)
-Yard Equipment (for Pine Alley Drive)
-Open Sign (for late openings)
-60-Day Account Log (for recordkeeping)
-Announcer Radio and Voice Cartridges (for customer announcements)
-Cheat Cube (for when you're desperate)

Changes:

Shopping-
-"Phantom Shoppers" can buy items, making shop inventories limited
-Shops can go bankrupt from spending more than they make
-Shops close temporarily when bankrupt

Coffee Customers-
-Impatient customers will leave line if not attended or spoken to in a timely manner (setting a television on the counter will stop this)

Rivals-
-Chet Armstrong and Mr. Miyagi now have dynamic lives and can earn money in the same progressive way that Buck earns it

Equipment-
-Bean Grinder and Latte Mixer now allow for quantity selection

Reputation-
-Now affects whether Buck can land certain side jobs

Title Screen-
-Coffee icon now animates

Ending-
-Buck's fate with his former girlfriend is now revealed
-3 different ways to win (with 5 different endings)
-1 new entrepreneurial rank

Fixes:

Shopping-
-Shopkeepers now have "Never Mind" options for conversation selection

Performance-
-Dash Key no longer interferes with interactions

Coffee-
-Customers now move on timers, so their motions rarely slow the game down, and business runs much smoother than before
-Coffee formulas accurate; same combinations form same values each time
-Coffee Critic rates fairly now
-It is now possible to make a 30-point coffee
-Side items work as intended
-Dishwashing works as intended
-Ceramic cups work as intended

Inventory-
-Supplies maintain accurate numbers when changing from cycle to cycle, or buying new quantities

Toolbox-
-Broken items can be fixed without trouble

[Pepsi Ranger]

Well, the fifth-year anniversary of Entrepreneur: The Beginning's first release has just hit this month, and I think it's time to celebrate its development longevity (which is probably frowned upon if we're being honest) with some info on v1.3.

Now, I'm not gonna say that I've been hard at work on this since v1.2 was released last September, since my journal activity will prove otherwise. But I do have a few new things to show off here and some info on upcoming fixes and features that I'll be working on very soon that should pique your interest.

So, get comfortable, for this update is chock-full of information goodness.

Let's start with a feature that Giz requested during the OHR Book Club discussion last December: The Shop Item Information Display.





One complaint I've received about buying shop items (besides the fact that shops in Hybrid City are designed like shops in real life, not like shops in your average RPG) is that you have no way of knowing how many of said items you should buy, if you should even buy them at all. The Shop Item Information Display makes those questions easier to answer.

In the photos above you'll notice that viewing an item will now reveal:

-Shop name
-Item type
-How many servings come in a package
-How much a single purchase will cost
-What bonuses it will give to the customer
-How many units you wish to buy (the purple window / interactive)
-How many packages you already own
-How many units you already own (the most important number)
-How much you have in your wallet
-The current value of your shopping cart

Note: The last two items are also displayed in your standard shop window, which was made available in v1.2.

Hopefully, the inclusion of this item display window will help you make a more informed decision on whether to buy the selected item. It probably seems cluttered now, but I hope to clean it up whenever we get custom fonts and sizes.

(And I know that purple window is off-center. I've been meaning to fix that.)

Moving on...



Next on the list is the opening of the three stores in Hybrid West that were closed in v1.2: Health Matters, Pound Cake (pictured), and Tailor Made.

With the opening of Pound Cake, Buck can now buy and sell baked goods at the coffee pavilion. New goods include cookies, pies, rice squares, and cupcakes. He can also buy boxes of cookies and whole pies to reduce the cost of individual units for the same quantity. In other words, buying a box of 12 cookies at $20 makes more sense than buying individual cookies at $2 each. Pound Cake also sells sandwiches, so Buck doesn't have to wait for his Level 3 gold star and access to Hybrid Wholesale to start buying them. However, Pound Cake sells them for $3 while Hybrid Wholesale sells them for $2, so once that Level 3 gold star is earned, Buck will want to stop buying sandwiches at Pound Cake.

Note: Hybrid Wholesale now offers six-packs of soda for $4, saving Buck $2 that he would normally spend on six individual cans.

So, what does all of this mean?



Yep, coffee pavilion customers can now order more side items and more combinations of side items than they could in previous versions. They can even order any of the four baked goods with a cup of coffee! The coffee pavilion is that much closer to becoming a regular coffee house in version 1.3.

Oh, and remember those flat sodas and half-eaten sandwiches you fished out of the trash in Hybrid West? They are now part of Buck's inventory and can be served to customers in place of regular sodas and sandwiches (with consequence).

This officially completes the coffee pavilion's side item feature. I don't plan to develop it further (though I may organize the menu a little differently in the near future).

Speaking of trash in Hybrid West, those teddy bears and canisters of silly string you found all torn up and abandoned on your trash-diving quest can now be fixed to 100% quality. To do so, you can visit Tailor Made and buy either the sewing kit (for bears) or the party box (for silly string) for your own home repair job, which uses the same skills that repairing electronics through a toolbox uses, or buy the services of the shop's proprietor to fix your toys overnight.

In v1.3, fixing teddy bears and silly string canisters will only benefit resale values for the consignment shop. But later, in v1.5, they will be used to improve your social standing with various people. But that's much later.





And that's just the beginning of what v1.3 will offer.

Hopefully this week I'll begin work on the next major addition to the game: slushies and smoothies. These will affect the in-progress health system that I began in v1.2. Most everything related to this feature can be bought at Health Matters. Smoothies will use dynamic flavor-matching formulas similar to what making coffee uses, so it'll be involved, but interesting to see how it plays out with the customers and shop popularity. Slushies will be more straightforward, like delivering sodas and sandwiches, and use fewer resources to make than smoothies use.

After slushies and smoothies are implemented, I'll build the hospital. This will be important for repairing your good rapport with the customers you accidentally poisoned when giving them spoiled items, mold-covered sandwiches, and items (like peanuts) they may be allergic to, by allowing you to visit them, wish them well, and market your newest products to them.

Once the health feature is complete (or at least when slushies and smoothies are implemented), I'll be working on two hotly requested features: valet shopping and travel menus. Both of these will simplify gameplay in a major way. Once these are in place, I'll more than likely post another forum update outlining the specifics of each, explaining what they are, how they work, and why they're cool. For now, I'll let you speculate on what these are and how they're used.

After that I will either work on custom menus (where you can design your own coffees and smoothies and name them) or the advanced tutorial that satisfies the demand for learning how to make coffee prior to buying ingredients.

Note: Whether I include custom menus now or later will depend on how easy it is to store string names without having to limit them to 16 characters and write them in as heroes, or whatever is necessary to ensure the names are saved for a loaded game. I won't implement it until I know I can save 40-character names (that the player inputs) for future access and display those names in a custom menu.

After that I'll work on the one feature that was supposed to make the v1.1 release five years ago but didn't due to how painful and time-consuming it would be to implement: direct marketing to townies. This, of course, will mean that the streets of Hybrid City will finally be populated with people, and Buck can pass out fliers, handouts, or simply chat with them, helping his word-of-mouth popularity. (In v1.4, he'll be able to use these same people to sabotage Chet's business, but I'll discuss that more at another time.)

And that's it. Once those things are in place, v1.3 should be ready for release.

So, there's your latest update. (And for those of you who are worried about how ugly the graphics are, I do have plans to make v1.3 the last 8-bit version of the game. In v1.4, everything will be a lot better looking.) Stay tuned for additional information in the coming weeks (or months).

[sheamkennedy]

[/URL]

I like how you managed to sneak in a Grateful Dead reference in this photo. Not only that but you created it in pixel art in such a way that I immediately recognized it. I'm impressed.

[Pepsi Ranger]

I like how you managed to sneak in a Grateful Dead reference in this photo. Not only that but you created it in pixel art in such a way that I immediately recognized it. I'm impressed.

Then you'll be even more impressed (or terribly disappointed) to know that I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know anything about the Grateful Dead, other than that Jerry Garcia was a member, that there's an ice cream flavor named after him, and that they are famous for tie-dye colors and hand-shaped plants. I promise you that this reference is dumb luck.

Or is it?

No, it really is. What's the reference, just out of curiosity?

[sheamkennedy]

That's very strange. What I thought was a Grateful Dead reference is the pixelated bear under the "We Fix Bears!" sign. Normally I'd think nothing of a pixel bear, but the way you drew it in such a mangled-like dancing pose makes it look so similar to the Grateful Dead's dancing bears (a famous symbol of the band). Just go on to google images and type in: Grateful Dead Bears... you'll see what I mean probably.

I'm not trying to dig deep for any sort of hidden easter eggs or anything, that bears resemblance is uncanny in my opinion haha.

[Gizmog]

Awesome changes, I'm looking forward to the next release!

[sotrain515]

Note: Whether I include custom menus now or later will depend on how easy it is to store string names without having to limit them to 16 characters and write them in as heroes, or whatever is necessary to ensure the names are saved for a loaded game. I won't implement it until I know I can save 40-character names (that the player inputs) for future access and display those names in a custom menu.

Did you know about these two functions?

string to globals (ID, starting global, length)

globals to string(ID, starting global, length)

As long as you have 40 globals free you should be able to store the name no problemo.

[Pepsi Ranger]

That's very strange. What I thought was a Grateful Dead reference is the pixelated bear under the "We Fix Bears!" sign. Normally I'd think nothing of a pixel bear, but the way you drew it in such a mangled-like dancing pose makes it look so similar to the Grateful Dead's dancing bears (a famous symbol of the band). Just go on to google images and type in: Grateful Dead Bears... you'll see what I mean probably.

Ah, googled it, and now I see what you mean. Yeah, that was just coincidence, but I can see the reference now. Maybe we'll just leave that one up for speculation for anyone else who doesn't know the truth behind my dumb luck. ;)

As long as you have 40 globals free you should be able to store the name no problemo.

Wow, 40 globals per name? That could get expensive fast. I was planning on allowing for 12 custom coffees and 8 custom smoothies. I guess I'll have to see how badly I want this.

[TMC]

I've been meaning to add an option to enable saving of strings in saved games (can't be on by default for back-compatibility). That's really easy.

[Pepsi Ranger]

I've been meaning to add an option to enable saving of strings in saved games (can't be on by default for back-compatibility). That's really easy.

That would make the custom menu feature a heckuva lot easier to implement (and would make it a strong candidate for v1.3). About when would you plan to add that? For Callipygous? When should we start expecting a Callipygous release? (I've been trying to get back into the habit of building on official stable releases for the sake of organizing my files.)

[TMC]

Done, finally. That took me way longer than expected due to a whole bunch of stuff I either wasn't expecting or had completely forgotten would be needed.

(P.S. I docked that against Entrepreneur playtesting time.)

[Pepsi Ranger]

Done, finally. That took me way longer than expected due to a whole bunch of stuff I either wasn't expecting or had completely forgotten would be needed.

(P.S. I docked that against Entrepreneur playtesting time.)

What would you do if Entrepreneur didn't stretch the limitations (or needs) of the engine so gratuitously? Would you even feel challenged? :p

I admit you'd probably have a smaller plate. Sorry about that.

For everyone else:

I may ask this in another thread when the time becomes more relevant for me, but do any of you have preferred fruits you'd like to see incorporated into a smoothie? Supplements?

I've got 14 different fruits all ready to go, but I was looking at this wiki for additional ideas: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fruits . From this list, which 10 do you think would be best used in smoothies (not all at once, just in general)? Why? Do you think it's just a necessary smoothie ingredient? An interesting one? An unusual one?

Bonus: What about supplements? What kinds of things (nonfruit things) do you like in your smoothies?

The best answers may make it into Entrepreneur: The Beginning for smoothie use. Thanks.

[TMC]

Fruit: Orange, pineapple, blue/black/whateverberry, apple, passionfruit, grape, tomato, pear

Other: (Various) icecreams, yogurt, chocolate/cocoa, almonds, (salted) caramel