I took a break from working on the game, doing a lot of other projects instead. Summer was fairly quiet, and it wasn't until the start of October I began work again. This is what I've been up to.

Yes, I've been embracing agentic coding more and more, a lot of the upcoming text is not sincere that "I" made a shader and such :^)

As usual, videos and screenshots are sparse.

 

Sinks, showers, toilets, drinking fountains and washing machines now need a water pipe. Every apartment and business has water inlets in its walls, and you lay copper pipe from them in the interior designer's new Plumbing mode. Pipes run straight along the walls like real plumbing, and you can spray paint them. Copper pipe is sold at the Hardware counter in the Wholesale, and taking a pipe up gives all of it back. If you had any of these appliances before the update, check your mailbox: you've been sent enough pipe to plumb them in.

That's where the washing machine comes in. Clothes get dirty now, slowly from wearing them and faster when something splats on you, and dirty clothes stop you from getting properly clean. A shower rinses them eventually, but a washing machine does it properly. There's a home one, an industrial one and a coin operated one, so you can run a laundrette. One button puts in everything you're wearing, and another puts it back on when it's done.

I wrote a shader for the porthole so you can see your actual clothes tumbling in there, which was way more work than it needed to be. No water pressure, drains or water bills yet. Maybe later. 

 

Businesses now belong to a company. A company has its own accounts and members with roles, and can run several locations, which you can move between your companies.

The business menu was rebuilt around it, from a long row of tabs to a company overview with a card for each location: how it's doing, its rent, and a to-do list of what needs fixing. The new price manager lets you type prices straight into the list, shows your cost and margin, and suggests a price if you're not sure. 

NPC shoppers now head out for something specific, like a meal, groceries, furniture or car parts, with a budget in mind, and pick a store that has it by price and rating. Each need has its own crowd of customers across the whole city that grows with the players online, so stores selling the same thing share them.

This used to be pretty broken: a shopper could buy anything at any price, and every store sold everything. Now a new store starts with a trickle of customers that grows as it does, and you're told why customers went elsewhere, whether it was price or rating. Online customers can also order listed items you're out of. 

 

Every customer now leaves a review, whether they came in or ordered online. How good the food was, how fresh it was and what you charged all count, and leaving without what they came for or finding no free table counts badly.

The new Reputation tab shows your rating for everything you sell, a graph of the last month and every review. Stars show on your store in the phone app, and customers pick better rated stores. 

Good reviews earn review points, and points unlock things the way skills level up. For a location that's more staff, new jobs for them, a store front photo, being Featured on everyone's phone, and staying open while everyone's away. For the company it's more locations and wholesale discounts. Keep a high rating on something for long enough and you become known for it, with a badge and more of its customers.

How fast it all comes is a first guess, and I'll tune it as I see how real stores do. 

 

Hiring is now a choice between a few candidates, each with their own name, look, speed and knack. Staff level up from what they sell and make, and learn a recipe by watching you make it.

Wages are only paid while someone from the location is online. While everyone's away, staff take a cut of what they sell instead. If you can't pay them they don't quit, they go on strike until they get their back pay.

Staff walk around the place now. They go to the station they use, carry things in their hands and squeeze past each other behind the counter. The smelter and rolling mill craft into their own output, so workers can use them too.

Each staff member gets a job: the register, keeping things stocked, making recipes at your stations, serving tables, or packing and posting online orders. In the interior designer's Staff mode, lines show everything their job uses. With enough review points they can even keep the place open while everyone's away, but then it can be raided like any other time.

This is the newest thing in here and hasn't seen much real play, so expect a waiter or two to do something stupid. 

 

Customers who want a proper meal now sit down at your tables, order, wait while it's made and eat. You or your staff take payment at the table, and the odd one tries to run off without paying. Bar counters work too: customers will sit on the stool next to a stranger if that's what's free. The designer shows which chairs face a table properly.

Food can be served on a plate, in a bowl, in a takeaway box or in a glass, and eaten straight off it. Plates and bowls are for eating in, and boxes are for takeaway. Customers can pre-order and come in to pick it up, and so can you, from the shopping app.

Drop a plate off a table and it breaks. 

 

Food now cools down, warms up and goes off on realistic timers, and keeps far longer in a fridge or freezer. Customers can tell fresh food from reheated, cold or stale. Cooking is time at heat, so the oven bakes at what its dial says, meat cooks over a fire, and a fuller pot takes longer to boil. Ingredients break down into soups and stews, and their flavors decide how well a dish turns out.

Food has a quality tier now, from Poor to Exceptional, shown as a colored diamond. It comes from your ingredients, your skill and how you did on the cutting board, which has real steps now: cracking eggs, whisking, tossing pizza dough, folding tacos. Better food sells for more and fills you up more.

The microwave actually works now, with a door you put the food behind, and the crafting bench, mincer, smelter and rolling mill got a proper crafting window. Mixed drinks look the part too, layered in the glass until they're stirred. 

The phone got a full redesign, with a home screen, app groups and a dock. Every business gets its own store app with a front page, shop, cart and orders. Owners write their own front page with a preview next to it, and stores show their stars. You can cancel an order for a refund until it's packed.

November brings the viewmodel-space phone and photo sharing update, which is out of scope for this month.

Things you make, grow, catch, chop or mine now remember who made them, shown in the tooltip. Local goods get their own shop listing and sell for more, some customers only want local produce, a fresh catch or handmade furniture, and dishes cooked from local ingredients review better. 

Skills matter more now. Lockpicking gives XP, fish bite faster the better you are, and woodcutting and mining drop more as you level.

Fish come in sizes and quality tiers, Chinook salmon can be caught, and a whole salmon can be cut into fillets. Potato seeds are sold in packs and drop from potato harvests.

Buyers now pay each seller their own price instead of sharing one pot, and take a lot longer to refill.

Appliances now break before they're destroyed, and a broken one can be fixed. Put it on a service board, unscrew the cover with a screwdriver, find the fault with a multimeter and swap the part. Don't do it while it's plugged in.

It levels the new Electronics skill. Most kitchen and household electronics can break, and broken ones turn up in the trash now and then to practice on.

The board still uses placeholder models, and there's no proper place to sell repaired stuff yet apart from putting it in your business. 

 

Carved pumpkins have real depth now, with the cut walls showing and a flickering glow inside. Press T to orbit the pumpkin, carve with a free cursor, and pick your knife width. The Halloween vendor is back too. 

A bit late now since Halloween is already over, but I'll keep it open for a bit longer.

 

- The free character customizer is gone. Looks are changed by other players now, at a barber or surgery chair

- No welfare or salary while AFK

- Restoring an evicted apartment or business costs rent now

- Door PINs are switched off until they're finished

- Throws are a lot weaker, heavy things don't fly across the map any more

- Cooking no longer makes rotten food fresh, and raw meat goes off faster

- Voting, buying pets, starting quests and police check-in happen in person now

- Link Discord with a one-time code from the menu

- The commercial fryer, commercial griddle, fishing rod, bed and mill are placeholder boxes for now, as their models weren't licensed for commercial use

- NPC police arrest people again. A law that turned them off had been on since June without anyone noticing

- Wholesale sales come regularly again, a bug had them more than a day apart

- New quests for new players, a What's Next window, and daily jobs

- The interior designer has new modes for staff, plumbing and power cables, and R stands a fallen object back up

- A redesigned bank page, and payments only go through once things are delivered

- The real estate agent shows a lot more about each place

- Elections: runoffs, recall votes and a terminal that updates live

- Every car has a proper follow camera

- Shared TV channels, so TVs in a property can play the same video

- Business doors can show OPEN or CLOSED

- Limb hits do less damage, and passive mode can't hurt anyone

- New skins, a messy bun hairstyle, and new models for the cash register, taser, handcuffs and every ore and ingot

- Blood splatters on walls

- Postman pay grows with distance

- A whole restyle of the menus

- A security pass over everything a modified client could send, including some item and money duplication