Reworking Menus

I'm starting to loose my fear of ListViews. The last two days I played around with them a bit to see what's possible. That lead to a few changes in the Casting Menu. 

The role overview works more reliable now and you now have the possibility to look at the actor profile of an actor you've already hired again and recast him if you have changed your mind (simple little feature, but wasn't possible before).

I also got around to add awards to the actor profile. I tried a just-text-list first, but that didn't look very pretty. Now I have an icon representing the award the category the award was one for. If your hover your mouse over it a tool tip will give you more information.





I quite like it and I hope you do to.

Happy New Year!

Feature Spotlight: TV Shows - Part 1

Originally I planned to do a feature Spotlight for TV Shows when everything is complete, but I realized that a) I've been working behind closed doors on this for a while and there really isn't a good reason to not share my progress with you b) this is going to be quite complex, so splitting the Spotlight Post up in two parts might be a good idea.
So here we go. Part 1 will focus on developing and planning a show, while Part 2 will be about production, distribution and ratings.

As with movies you can turn Source material you own into a TV Show or you can develop your own idea. The pictures will show the development of an original idea.



In this first step you will lay the groundwork and set the basic parameters for your new show. Most of these things should be familiar or self-explanatory.
One thing we should talk about is the drop-down-menu labeled "Episodes". Here you choose the style of storytelling. You can choose between Episodic, Serialized, Hybrid - More Episodic and Hybrid - More Serialized. Your choice will influence how viewers and viewership rating will behave, but more about this in part 2.

Once your happy with the basics you can either save the idea to your library to revisit it later or you can start developing your first season right away.



You might notice, that this menu looks almost identical to the first one. That's on purpose. I want to give you maximum freedom. If the show in general is set in the present day USA but you decide that Season 3 should take place in 1950s Russia you can totally do it. Critics complained Season 1 had to little Action. Ramp it up for Season 2.You can change pretty much everything form season to season, so if you push it to the limits you can produce an anthology series like Fargo or American Horror Story.



Next step is creating an ensemble of characters for the season. You can remove old characters and add new characters with every seasons, but beware: All TV Show characters have a certain popularity with the viewers, so removing a fan favorite might hurt your ratings.

 

Here you will create the story lines that will play out throughout the season.You have to decide what the story line will be about thematically and what characters will be involved in it. You also have to set parameters for your writing staff. Do you want a funny love story or a complex, intellectual challenging story line? Make sure you find the right balance and have a little bit of each. What the right balance looks like will heavily depend on your genre and your target audience. A Hospital Soap Opera obviously needs a different mix of story lines than a Political Thriller. 



Once you've set up all your story lines, you have to assign them to your episodes. The plots (and the characters featured in those plots) will heavily influence the rating of the episode, so choose carefully. You'll have to choose one main plot and up to 5 subplots.

Once you have everything planned out an set up it's time to start the production process. You can take two routes. 



1. Invest your own money to produce the show. This will give you the option to show you new show on you own streaming platform (Netflix Style). 

2. You offer the show to networks and sell to the highest bidder. You will get a big chunk of money immediately, but you will also give up some control. The Network might ask you to make some changes, push for certain actors or decide to cancel the show all together if early seasons don't perform well. 

More about this in Part 2... that will be it for now. Keep in mind that this feature is still not finished, menu design isn't ideal yet, some things might and probably will change as I continue working on the game.
I hope you like what you see so far. As always feedback, ideas and criticism are welcome. Post in the comments or come over to the forum to talk about the game: 
http://filmstudiotycoon.proboards.com/

Happy Holidays!

And the Oscar goes to...

It's been a couple of days since the last update. After a code-review, a friend of mine taught me a couple of new things about databases, so I spent a lot of time re-working these parts of the game code. It took some time, but I think in the long run it will pay off.

After seeing the latest Development Updates for Showtime!2, I also started thinking about motivation, progression and achievements and how these thing might work in a game like Film Studio Tycoon. I think I will share my thoughts on the forum soon, so you can give me your opinion.

I've been working on the code for awards for a while and today I started on the visuals so I finally have something to show off:











I hope you like the style. For the Alpha Version I want to include the Oscar, the Golden Globe, the Saturn Award and the Emmy Award. 

How should TV Shows work?

I thought I had it all figured out, but during the past few days I became a bit unsure if my concept is really the way to go with TV shows, so I thought I should get your input first before I continue.

If you want you can head over to http://filmstudiotycoon.proboards.com/thread/5/tv-shows-input and tell me what you would like to see.

Film Studio Tycoon Message Board!

As promised I set up a small message board for you guys, so you can reach me more easily with your ideas and feedback and discuss the game.

You can find it here:
http://filmstudiotycoon.proboards.com/

Posting should work without registration. If it doesn't, contact me.

The Hollywood Insider

Another small step forward: The game now has a message system (connected to the event system). Instead of "normal messages" I went for a website style. I hope you like it.









(Just ignore the Button in the bottom right. It won't be part of the game. I just use it for debugging.)

Progress Report

As promised...



The game will now ask you, if you want to recast a role or if you want to hire the actor who played the character the last time. It's a minor, but in my opinion super-useful, feature.

Work on TV Shows continues. On the sidelines I'm working on the event system, because the TV Show stuff is a bit boring from a coding perspective.

I already have added events for "New Couple", "Couple getting married" and "Baby born" (Yes, there is a chance that the baby will later show up as an actor).

  

Progress Report

Last week the project file got corrupted! Luckily I had made a back up the week before, so not too much work was lost. 

Despite the minor setback, things are going well on the TV Show Front.

 

I also worked on a couple of other smaller things. Most noteworthy are probably relationships. The game now has a database for relationships between artists. Possible relationships types are friend, sibling, twin, lover, spouse, parents and enemy (Anything I forgot?).

A new game will start with certain artists already having relationships, but as you play, new relationships will develop via the event system. 

Another minor feature I implemented are Writer-Directors. If you pick a writer for your movie who is also a director, this message will come up:

I want something similar for movie sequels (and TV Show seasons), so you don't have to re-cast every single role, making sure you hire the same actors you had in the first movie.

I'm also thinking about setting up a small forum to make it easier for you guys to leave your feedback, your ideas and your wishlists. I'm getting feedback through several different channels right now, so it might be nice to have a central place to discuss the game.

Don't worry, TV Shows are coming!

Don't worry, if you don't hear from me for a couple of days. I started working on the TV Show mechanic and I want to hold off on updates until I made enough progress for a full Feature Spotlight.

I also have a question: Is it a good idea to limit topics to certain genre, where they "fit in"? The Randomize-Option and the AI are producing a lot of movies with weird combinations. It just feels wrong to have a Drama/Romance movie set in present day Chicago revolving around "Dragons" and "Robots". On the other hand it can be quite fun to imagine a movie that actually combines elements that don't seem to go together. So what do you think? Limit certain Topics to certain Genres or not? 

Quick Update: Box Office Details + Weekly Revenue

Today I have two improvements to report:

Both are shown on this picture:



1. As promised, I added the option to look at the details of the Top 10 movies. Is that enough or do you want more information about the plot etc.?

2. "This Week's Top 10" now actually means this week's top 10. Movies no longer generate all their income at once. Instead the income is now calculated on a weekly basis. 
Most of a movies revenue is made during the opening week, after that the numbers (usually) decline. Once the profit is below a certain number, the movie will no longer be played in cinemas.

What's next? The next three big features I want to work on are relationships between artists, an event system and... TV Shows. It would probably make sense to takle TV Shows now, but I'm still uncertain how exactly they should work.

Quick Update: AI Studios + The Box Office

I've made some good progress on two major features, so it's time for another Update.

First: I improved the Box Office Menu. I removed the simple ListBox I used before and added something a little more fancy:



The Title is a little misleading. I'm still working on the week by week revenue mechanic, so this is actually an all-time-top-10.

Anyway...this picture shows something even more interesting than the box office numbers: All of these movies were released by AI Studios. I finally started working on the AI mechanic! 
So far the Intelligence Part of the Artificial Intelligence is a bit of a stretch, because right now pretty much everything about these AI Studio Movies is completely random. Of course I will work on this for the next couple of weeks, so the "decisions" made by the AI Studios will feel more realistic.
I'm pretty proud of my progress anyway. 
It's especially nice to see the filmographies fill up:





AI Casting is still completely random as well, but I will soon implement a mechanic that will make sure famous actors will get cast more often and in bigger parts.

That's it for now. I hope you like what you see. 

Progress Report

I had a pretty tough work schedule, so I couldn't work on Film Studio Tycoon as much as I would have liked, but I still got a few things done:

- Expanded the database (more actors, more titles, more topics, more source material)
- Included marketing budget and focus into the calculations for a movies success
- Did some minor fixes on the UI 
- Add a pointless but neat looking Movie Premiere Screen
- Started working on the Top 10 Box Office mechanic and menu
- Added the option to generate a random Movie Script in the script menu 

Nothing breathtaking, but still progress, right? 

I have a couple of days off next week so I will probably/hopefully start working on AI Studios, so you have someone to compete against.

Quick Update: Film Ratings

I implemented the rating system!

It's based on the American MPAA film rating system. The game look at the amount of violence and sex and the themes.

Each topic you can pick in the script-writing-menu has a rating attached. For example: Something like "Dogs" has an G Rating, while "Bullying" has PG-13 and "Serial Killer" would be an R.

The highest value of the three is the deciding factor, so even if your movie is about dogs and treasure hunting and has no sex scenes at all, but has "Gore Galore" violence, it will still get an NC-17 Rating.

The Rating will obviously influence who will watch you movie. While you might loose the children or teen viewer group completely, adults will be more drawn to more mature movies with higher ratings.

I also did some work on the Release Menu so you can see the ratings in action:

Quick Update: Filmography

I finally reached a point where I could implement the in-game-filmography for the artists (actors, directors and writers). 

Take a look: 



It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.
This list should probably be sorted the other way around, with the newest films on top, but that shouldn't be too hard to fix (I already solved the problem of list sorting while working on the box office menu).

I hope you like what you see so far.

Progress Report

In the past days I have been working on the database and added more actors and movie titles (Over 1300 right now! All "handmade", no strange "random words smashed together" generator titles).

I also made a few visual changes, mostly on the casting menu and started working on the box office mechanic.

I'm quite happy with the progress so far. 

Making a movie pretty much works from beginning to end, from script writing to release. 
I'm currently trying to figure out the math behind the box office numbers, but that's probably going to be a lengthy process, with a lot of fine tuning involved.

Big updates like Feature Spotlights will be less regular from now on. That's because pretty much all the features I've shown you so far were already finished when I started this blog. If you don't hear from me for a while, don't get frustrated. 
I have not stopped working on the game and I will try to give you at least a short progress report every 7-10 days.

Feature Spotlight: Franchises

A little behind schedule, but as promised, I want to talk some more about franchises. Modern cinema is ruled by franchises, so a lot of work went into this aspect of the game.

Let's start with taking a closer look at the Library Menu.



Single Works - This menu displays all the rights you own to stand-alones single works. You can use these as source material for either a movie or a TV show. Or both. Once you own them, you can use them as often as you like.

Productions - Here you find all the movies and shows you already produced. You have the option to turn a production into a franchise.

 

Franchises - This menu shows you all the franchises you own. This includes franchises your bought (Like Star Wars or Harry Potter), but also franchises you created yourself.
You get an overview of the source material that's included in a franchise and the movies and shows you produced, that belong to this franchise.
There are several options to expand you franchise.

If your franchise includes source material, you can use it a starting point for a new movie or a show. Depending on the type of the source material, you have several options: Adaption, Sequel, Prequel, Spin-Off and Remake.



Adaption - Adaption will attract the biggest amount of fans of the source material, but will limit you script options the most. This option is only available if the source you're using is not a movie.

Sequels and Prequels - Will give you more freedom with the script, but will only attract a certain percentage of the fans of the original work.

Spin-Offs - Spin-Offs give you almost complete freedom with the script (with the exception of some basic parameters like the main genre), but will attract an even smaller percentage of the fan base.



Remakes - This option is only available if the source in question is a movie or TV show. This includes both, movies/shows you bought the rights to and your own productions. Remakes will attract slightly less franchise fans than Spin-Offs (as hardcore fans usually don't like reboots of their beloved original), but will have a mass appeal bonus, giving you the chance to add more fans to the franchise.

And of course you can use any type of movie as a starting point, for example making a Sequel to a Spin-Off.

That's it for now. I hope you like what you see. Criticism? Ideas? Feedback? Use the comments below!

Quick Update on Franchises

I think I finally figured out how franchises, rights, single works and series are going to work. 

As of right now you will be able to turn your own movies and TV shows into a franchise, buy rights to a franchise, turn source material from this franchise into a movie or TV show and add movies or TV shows to the franchise you bought. 

I still need to polish the menus a bit, but you can expect an Spotlight for that feature early next week.

Feature Spotlight: Actors

Today I want to take a closer look at one of the most important factors in the success of a movie: The actors.



Above you can see the Casting Menu in it's current state. Clicking on a role will give you a list of possible actors you can cast. You can set your own search parameters to filter the results by age and race.

Clicking on the actors name will give you access to more detailed information. Name, Age and Race (multiple races are possible) should need no further explanation, but let's take a look at the other values and what they will mean in the game.

Fame - Shows how well known (not necessarily how acclaimed) and actors is. This will determine the salary. Big names can cost millions, but they will draw people to the cinemas. The value is dynamic. Playing a big role in a successful movie will increase the value, but it will deteriorate over the years. If the actor doesn't manage to get cast in big productions on a consistent basis.

Performance - Shows how skilled the actor is. This also includes basics like being reliable or listening to directions. Younger actors usually will have lower values, but the value will increase as they gain work experience (how fast depends both on their talent and the quality of the productions they are involved with).
The actors performance plays a big part in calculating the overall quality of the movie/tv-show.

Depth - There are a lot of competent, well-trained actors, but only a few have the ability to add complexity, a multilayered personality, emotional depth to a role. Depth is also dynamic and will increase with experience, but much slower than performance. It's used to calculate the artistic value of the movie (which is used to calculate the chances for award winning).

Attractiveness - How handsome/beautiful the actor is. A high value will improve the mass appeal of the movie.

Talent - This value is hidden (unless you cast an actor via open audition). The talent value itself is static, but a high value will mean faster improvement and bigger potential for improvement, while an actor with little talent will learn much slower and cap out at a lower skill level.

Experience - Also a hidden value. Determines the salary (although not nearly as much as fame) and is one of the factors used to calculate the quality of the movie. An actor will gather experience by participating in production. How much depends on the size of the production and the importance the actor has in the production (playing a lead character in the newest Star Wars movie will add more experience than playing a minor part in a low-budget Horror flick).



Clicking on the blue icons on the bottom of the actor display will lead your to even more information. The second icon opens the genre display.

The Genre Factor - The Genre Factor is a melting pot of several different things. How well the actor fits into a genre, how much experience he has with that genre, how willing he is to participate in a production of that genre. Some actors have a wide range and will do well in pretty much every kind of movie, others are great within a specific genre but don't really work in others. However, this value is also dynamic. Landing a big hit with a movie of a certain genre will drastically improve the genre factor for this genre.

The third icon will show the actors in-game filmography, the fourth icon shows a list of the awards the actor has won. These two features are not yet implemented, but I will tell you more about them in the future.

The game will come with a database of hundreds of actors and actresses of all ages and races and of course you have the ability to add more via the editor, but if you are still unable to find the right actor for a certain role (or simply want to keep the costs low) you have the option to hold an open audition and cast a newcomer.



You will get a list of actors who made it to the finale round of auditions (how many varies). You can look at their stats and choose one of them for the part. The one you choose will be added to the normal actor pool and will be available for future production for both you and the AI Studios. All the others will get discarded, so choose wisely.

You might have noticed, that the picture displayed for the newcomer is a simple placeholder. If this bothers you, you can easily add a picture by dropping a bitmap image of the right size in the game folder, as long as the file name matches the full name of the actor.

Ok, that's it for now. If you have any questions, feedback or criticism feel free to comment below.

Feature Spotlight: Script Development

In the Feature Spotlight Series I want to take a closer look on certain aspects of the game for questions, feedback, criticism and idea input.

Let's start with the most fundamental feature: Developing ideas (for movies, the TV section is probably going to have slightly different options).

When you decide to create a new movie you have three options:
1. Buy source material. It will cost you some money, but in return comes with an inbuilt fan base, that will improve your movies chances of success. Choosing a source material as a basis for your movie script will give a predefined movie script, but of course you have the option to change it, before you start the actual writing process.
2. Create or expand a franchise. Your will be able to buy the rights to existing franchises like Harry Potter or Star Wars (if you have deep enough pockets), but you can also turn movies you've are already produced into a franchise by adding Sequels, Prequels or Spin-offs.
3. Create an original movie script . This is the option we're going to talk about in this post.

Choosing the "New Idea" Option will lead you right to the Script Development Screen, where you can mix and match different parameter to create the exact movie you have in mind.



Let's take a closer look at the options.

Title - Enter your own title or use the dice button to pick a random title from the database (Yes, of course you are able to add more titles to the database via editor)

Genre and Subgenre - A very important decision, as the Genre/Subgenre will determine your audience (based on gender and age group), but also your chances at the box office and how likely your movie is to win awards (while action or sci fi will do well at the box office, dramas are more likely to win prestigious awards)

Plot Type - Is your movie a classic good vs. evil story? A quest? A underdog story? A Rags to Riches Tale? Choose from a number of "master plots" to determine the basic story structure.

Plot Theme - What is your movies message? Is it about family? Corruption? Love? Prejudice?

Era - Instead of adding a genre for historical movies I decided to add the option to choose your era. You can simply choose present day for a contemporary movie or you can go wild. World War II? Ancient Egypt? The Future? But keep in mind, that these kind of movie need a higher budget for costumes and sets.

Setting - Pretty self-explanatory, right?

Topics - This is one of my favorite features as I haven't see it in any other game of this type. You can choose up to four topics your movie will be about. Different topics appeal to different audience groups. They will also determine the mass appeal (important for the box office) and the artistic value (important for awards). Heavier topics like domestic violence or homosexuality don't led them self to big action blockbusters, but are classic Oscar material, while other topics will draw the masses into the cinemas but will  get you movie snubbed at award ceremonies.

Scope - A cozy mystery or a epic spectacle? Scope determines how big the project is. (This will also influence the production cost and length)
Tone - a depressing drama or a lighthearted adventure?
Cursing - child friendly or outright offensive? Choose carefully, as this will be one of the factors to calculate the age rating for your move.
Violence - Want to make your horror movie an absolute gore fest? You can, but keep the age rating in mind.
Love Scenes - family-friendly hand-holding or Game of Thrones style steamy sex scenes?

Special Effects - A Sci Fi or Fantasy Script will probably come with some need for special effects, but keep in mind that a high value here will require a bigger production budget for both pracitcal- and CGI effects.

Intelligence, Complexity, Dialogue, Pace, Humor, Action, Relationships - Genres have an ideal value for each of these parameters. Dramas require good dialogues but not much humor (unless you are choosing the Dramedy subgenre), Action movies require lots of action (duh!) but shouldn't be to complex. Make sure you find the right mix... and a writer with the right skills!

Roles - Want to go wild and create an epic fantasy with a cast of 50? Go ahead! There are no limitations. You can add as many roles as you want. You decide the name (or choose the random generator), the age and the gender. You also have to choose the importance: Main character, support character, minor character, cameo and voice over (for cgi characters for example). This will determine the actors salary but also how much influence the actor has on your movies quality.

What do you think? Post you feedback, criticism, ideas or any questions you might have in the comments. I'm look forward to hearing from you!

About Film Studio Tycoon

In case you haven't guessed yet: Film Studio Tycoon let's you take control of a Hollywood Film Studio.

Main Features:

• Take control of a Hollywood Film Studio and produce the movies and TV shows of your dreams
• You have control over every aspect of the production. From script development to casting to deciding which features should be on the special collectors DVD version
• Ever wished someone would make a movie or TV show out your favorite book? You can do that in Film Studio Tycoon!
• Fully customizable Database. Your favorite Actor isn't for hire? The Rights to your favorite novel are not up for sale? You want to make a movie about Unicorns, but they don't show up in the topic list? Just add them yourself! The game comes with an extensive editor, that allows you to add anything to your game you find missing.
• It will cost nothing. Game development is my hobby and Film Studio Tycoon is a passion project, so the game is going to be for free.

Take a look yourself but keep in mind that the game is still in an early phase of development.

Welcome!

Who am I?

I'm a 27 year old doctor from Germany with a love for video games. I started learning programming (C#) only a couple of month ago and since then I poured basically every free second (Not that I have a lot of them) into my newfound passion. 

What is Film Studio Tycoon?

Film Studio Tycoon (working title for now) is my first big game project. I have always loved simulation games, the more complex the better, so this genre was a natural starting point. My main inspiration was the fantastic Hollywood Mogul 3 (now goes by the name Hollywood Studio Manager. You can get it here for free) and to a lesser extent the newer Showtime! (which I think was also heavily inspired by Hollywood Mogul). 
While both games where great fun I constantly found myself thinking "I wish Hollywood Mogul would have this feature from Showtime!" or "I wish I could do the thing from Hollywood Mogul in Showtime!". 
When I found out, that both games were developed by one-man-teams, I decided to give it a try myself. I wanted to develop a game that combined all the great features from both games with a whole lot of my own ideas on top of it. That's how Film Studio Tycoon was born.