tomiga

Designing experience and Movie Business

About three years ago I mentioned you about, that on the portal PolakPotrafi I supported the crowfounding of book about game design by Jacek Wesołowski and the team Wonderland Engineering (Inżynieria Wszechświetności) titled Game Engineering. Level Design for Beginners. As part of the awards, apart from the e-book, I chose an analysis of the Movie Business. From that moment there were several versions of the game, in which I included some remarks and proposals contained in the document prepared by Jacek.

Why such a rush of nostalgia? Well, more than a dozen days ago started a new project of the same team. It is again the book about game design, this time, however, more extensive and more comprehensive. Its titled Design experience. Mechanisms, emotions, narration.

Read moreDesigning experience and Movie Business

Update 1 to edition 2018 ready for download

As announced in announcement the first update for edition 2018 is now ready for download.

The most important news and changes:

  • Analysis of films
  • The proposal to finance the film director
  • Filter by age of creators in the window of production
  • New events on the set
  • Improvement of casting algorithms in cult films
  • Optimizations of loading cult movies
  • Optimization algorithms for festivals
  • Corrected translation of the English version of the review
  • as well as other fixes and improvements

For a complete list of changes see version history. The game you obtain it, as usual, with the subpage Download MB2.

Of course, as always, I look forward to your feedback, ideas, reactions and of course information about problems or errors.

If you have not heard about the Movie Business and you are here for the first time, you can also refer to the section Director's Cut and Help page, where you can find a lot of information, that can help you in the early stages of learning about, This already quite extensive, of the game.

If the game you like I remind you of the possibility of Donations 🙂

I wish you to enjoy the game!

What brings the update 1 to edition 2018

The first update to edition 2018 the game should appear in the next few days. Although the main aim of update is to improve detected errors, improve the stability of the application and optimization of its activities there will be also a few new features. I encourage you to read this short summary of the changes and innovations in the next version of the game.

 

Read moreWhat brings the update 1 to edition 2018

In the next version. Analysis of films

Movie Business is contrary to it's appearances is rather complicated game having lots of flavors and nuances, that is difficult to explain in a few sentences, making, that especially novice players can have problems understanding the dependence leading to appropriate results.

Thus, in the new version there will be an option to analyze films produced by you ... why such idea will appear and how this analysis will look like in practice, you will learn from the following entry.

Read moreIn the next version. Analysis of films

Reviews of Edition 2018

Minął już tydzień od premiery Edition 2018 so it's time to get to know your opinion on the latest version of the game. I have got a few kind words from people who suggesting, that you like it but I'd learned a bit more detailes about the game experience.

Especially, that soon should appear the first update. Although it looks like, that first of edition 2018 is quite stable (at least I have not received the signals to something totally crashed) To kilka błędów logicznych udało się już wykryć. Nie są one krytyczne ale dobrze by było je naprawić zanim zaczniecie je wykorzystywać 🙂

Read moreReviews of Edition 2018

Director’s cut: Summary of what's new in edition 2018

This is the last lap to finish work on the new edition of the Movies Business. Until the release of edition 2018 left little time (although there are still elements, that require some polishing). To while you waiting, in accordance with tradition, on my personal blog there is extensive text summarizing what you could read during last weeks on this page. Of course, this information is extended with a lot of interesting trivias and with images from the game (as well as a few things have changed in relation to the initial assumptions).

Link to this entry, of course, has been added to the Director’s cut and now I invite you to read a long text about What's new in edition 2018 Movie Business.

In the next version… Gossips

To increase involvement in the game at the instigation of one of the players (greetings to Kacper) I decided to enter the item, which may not have much practical significance but it makes, that game seems to “life of its own live”. This element is gossips.

Gossips will get a separate panel on the home page where the game will display different messages about the world of film.

Read moreIn the next version… Gossips

In the next version… Improved artificial intelligence (AI)

In the last few versions, despite the emergence of new mechanic, the computer players driven by artificial intelligence does not use their. It was high time slightly expand the game in this aspect. Fortunately, I was able to set aside some time to expand logic, which will be used by the computer players. So here is a brief overview of the changes in this aspect of the game, which significantly affected the entire game.

Read moreIn the next version… Improved artificial intelligence (AI)

In the next version… Universes

When in the Movie Business have emerged sequels some of the players were a little disappointed, that there was no place for the universes there and the ability to make crossover. I did not put them as types of sequels because I think this is a slightly different case. An additional problem was logic, which would hide behind them, as how the universe would affect the profits of movies? The problem was distribution of accents, when in the production we mix e.g.. characters from 4 a completely different series, of varying popularity, the fans base etc. The assumption, that would have automatically increased the fan base is too simple, because each player would do movies in the universe, regardless of whether it would make sense or not…

Read moreIn the next version… Universes

In the next version… Tutorials

Movie Business every moment gaining new options and is becoming more complicated. One of the users of Reddit (where sometimes I publish information about new versions of the game) drew attention to the fact, the game does not have any tutorial. I admit, that from my point of view this is the element with the lowest priority, because personally I prefer to spend my limited time to develop the game, and not documentation. Unfortunately the reality is, that tutorials cannot fully be omitted. Today, there is a whole bunch of the games for pennies or completely free and on various platforms, once someone has discovered a niche game, creator has only just a few minutes to interest new player with his game. In addition, when the game is so graphically not inspired as Movie Business it is far more difficult to require the players that they spent enough time to know the nuances of it or read the documentation (that after all the help for game exists and contains quite a lot of interesting details).

Hence, I made decisions, that a substitute of tutorial would be an useful in the game.

Read moreIn the next version… Tutorials

In the next version… Events during production and producer decisions

Another, at first glance, a small modification, which will appear in the new version of the game is to change the approach to the assessment of the creators in the film. So far all the calculations associated with the determination of how well individual artists performed their tasks (calculation of performance) were made at the time of release. Now the most important element of assessment of the performance artists will be made at the very start of production. This small change has a huge consequence and creates new possibilities. This is probably the biggest revolution since the introduction of the game save option.

Read moreIn the next version… Events during production and producer decisions

In the next version. Licenses or rights to the movie

In today's world an important role plays licenses for specific artifacts (pop)culture. They allow you to create movies based on the specific idea. The concept of license (in the sense of rights to movies) will appear in the next version of the game.

Read moreIn the next version. Licenses or rights to the movie

More than 3000 creators Set update 48

This is the last set update in this year. Jednak bardzo istotna. Thanks to your commitment and activity it makes, że oficjalny zestaw twórców przekroczył barierę 3000 creators available in the database of the game (dokładnie 3092). I wanted to thank warmly to all, którzy przyczynili się do pokonania tej bariery.

Today's set update brings 239 creators and 483 photos .

The largest contributors to this update are:

  • Balša Milijaš
  • andrew89
  • Arek
  • Bohusz

The update will occur when you start a new game with the default set of creators (details can be found here).

A przy okazji życzę Wam Wesołych Świąt!

P.S. New Year wishes not submit yet, bo w tym roku planuję jeszcze jeden wpis 🙂

In the next version… Contracts

Possibility of signing contracts was proposed by some playes long time age, however, there was no justification for the introduction of such feature from the game mechanic point of view (It was hard to put them together with some other elements from the world of games). With the appearance of sequels some began to grieve, on the fact, that not always all creators are available, when they wanted to make the sequel of its hit. At this point, this option began to make sense, but I had to find a reasonable way of incorporation into the mechanics of the game.

And here I probably did. With the next version there will be a new option to sign a contract with choosen creator. Contracts will be subject to the following rules.

Read moreIn the next version… Contracts

About numbering the next version

Autumn and winter season has already started so it's time for information about the next version. Yes, officially I can confirm, that the work on it is already in progress… Once this formality is already behind us time to go into the details. Today, a few words about the changes in the numbering version of the game ahead of us.

Read moreAbout numbering the next version

Creators set update 47

Today another creators update. You will find there 134 creators and 371 photos .

The largest contributors to this update are:

  • Balša Milijaš
  • Tomas Av
  • robbert
  • andrew89

The update will occur when you start a new game with the default set of creators (details can be found here).

After this update, the official set will contain 2935 creators .

 

P.S. There will be soon new interesting information about next version of the game..

Creators set update 46

Today another update in which you will find 128 creators and 366 photos. This time you will find a lot of Spanish speaking creators (mostly from Mexico and Spain)

The largest contributors to this update are:

  • Balša Milijaš

In total, the default set of games already has 2915 creators .

There is still a lot of creators which did and are waiting for verification for a couple of weeks so expect the next update.

Creators set update 45

As promised today another creators set update. You will find there 132 creators and 278 photos .

The largest contributors to this update are:

  • Balša Milijaš
  • Tomas Av
  • andrew89 

The update will occur when you start a new game with the default set of creators (details can be found here).

In total, the default set of games already has 2798 creators .

Because still some of you very actively adding the creators probably soon you can expect another update.. Oby tak dalej 🙂

Creators set update 44 with a surprise for contributors

Another creators set update was just released. It contains 86 and 508 photos (including more than 200 cult creators). The largest contributors to this update are:

  • Balša Milijaš
  • Tomas Av
  • andrew89 

Plenty of cult characters as usual was added by Łukasz Oleksiak.

As lately you flood me with proposals of creators, which I have not had time to review and verify you can expect the next update quite soon.

Today's update had another goal, test the new functionality in the MovieStats, that is, that at release of new set update of creators, all contributors for given version will receive an email with the information about creator from their proposals which was included in the update. It is a kind of little thing but I hope, that remind you of, that your work associated with proposal of creator has tangible results.

Here one more note If you receive an email, and lately you didn't add any new creators, this means, one of the added in the past by you, was updated (it may be affected its data, parameters or added photos or cult characters played by that person).

The update will occur when you start a new game with the default set of creators (details can be found here).

In total, the default set of games already has 2567 creators .

Version 0.9.5 with cheat codes

Today, premiere of the next version of the game marked as 0.9.5. This time, there are not too many completely new features but rather fine grinding and extension of what already exists in the game. The changes concern in most details, but it details make the difference. I invite you to look at the introduced changes and modifications , where a brief description you can find in rest of the post.

Read moreVersion 0.9.5 with cheat codes

In the next version: Search engine

Movie Business (Biznes Filmowy) 2 has already so much content, that I found to be usefull to have internal search engine. Thanks to it you will be able to:

  • search for information about the movies and artists
  • you will receive additional special features not available from the normal interface
  • additional statistics about the set
  • use cheat codes

Below you will find a bit more information about each of the above options.

Read moreIn the next version: Search engine