Yesbox Studios

Terrain manipulation is now in game! 🗻

Rendering 100K units requires a lot of CPU cycles, so the second half of the video shows the setup running at (a bit unstable) > 60 FPS!

So I spent a few days tinkering with the containers the indoor pathing code relied on and boosted the numbers to 400-600 per frame (normal case: 2K to 3K), then distributed the load throughout multiple frames if needed.

Typically 2%-6% of the population (when awake) will change their activity per in game minute. Thus every ~2,000 population ate up a frame. In a real city, this number is probably closer to ~10,000 (i.e. 500 processed units per frame).

For this building (which is quite large), it came out to ~75 units per frame (@ 60FPS). <"worst case">

This became an issue when I began batch-processing units to update their activity each in game minute. Hard to say the max number of units it could handle since it depends on building size and the units schedule (e.g. at work they move around less)

Stress testing: Rendering (max) 100K units and simulating all of them.

There was a bottleneck with the A* setup I was using for indoor pathing that limited the number of units processed without causing FPS stuttering. 🧵

Hey everyone, launching is on the horizon. No official date yet.

I've updated the road map reflect what Metropolis 1998 will offer for early access: yesboxstudios.com/roadmap/

I've been working through a backlog of assets. Happy to see the pond ones in the game now!

I waited too long to add pillars. They look great!

Added emergency vehicles and vehicle lights (at night) :)

More overlay/UI work. Some common issues are now covered:
- Not enough workers
- Not enough customers
- Too many customers
(hope this video doesnt get compressed to sand!)

Real time supply road painting :)
Soon, I'll be making this work as a function of distance and proximity demand.

Starting on UI Overlay work.
Coloring roads to show specific businesses' customer reach (compressed distance to show color range).
Probably should not use strict color palette for this feature 🤔🥉

There’s a guideline: 1% of purchase price per year for maintenance. Just realized that number is affected by inflation too 👀

Howdy everyone, I've setup a mailing list if you want major updates sent to your inbox 💌
dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/153652...

Hey everyone, I just pushed out a big QOL update to the Steam demo (itch io soon). Includes 25x bigger map size and lots more!

Full list: store.steampowered.com/news/app/228...

I improved the building construction animation (sped up)!

Medium density zoning will be available in the next update (Soon)

I like all the feedback! Bluesky compresses all the pixels out of videos so it probably wasn't clear, but the default option is randomized widths. I assume you meant width where you said depth, since the depth is based on the selection box. (And the game will slightly randomize those too)

You'll be able to customize zone widths for more control over how your city feels and looks. 🔲

More customizations are planned for the future!

🔊Adding more sounds to Metropolis 1998.

I've been attempting to implement CTRL-Z, but not sure if this will happen before EA.

I also resolved the GPU bottleneck and improved the FPS by 20x-30x.

Major update to the demo now live on Steam and Itch!

Major leap forward in unit simulation.

All updates here: store.steampowered.com/news/app/228...

Simulation is starting to come together! Workers and shoppers at the local grocery store.

Get item 🍰. Purchase 💵. Consume 🥵

I've been adding a lot more depth to the unit simulation for the next build :)

Definitely will be an option, I still love the class palette.

Experimenting with the color space. Thoughts???

I recently watched a documentary from the 70s. That inspired me to modify the color palette to reflect the color space of analog film. This isn't the final result, but I find the results interesting. Maybe a second option

Camera can lock on units, and units can now enjoy your city parks :)

Some bugs should just be kept

Making great strides to drastically improve the UI. After (left), before (right). Gonna try adding clickable items to move camera to item clicked

Hey! We've got visitors now 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Non-citizens will travel into town to eat/shop. Once they're done, they'll head home. Ignore the collisions :P

Soon they'll be able to visit friends/family