Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic

[Asid]

Report for the community #58
Sun, 4 September 2022




Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic.

We are aware that we failed to deliver the update before this report, and we feel the disappointment of many.
Our plan was to release the Metro update for public testing before the end of August if nothing unexpected happens. Unfortunately, we encountered several issues with metro infrastructure and then a critical issue just before previous weekend with extreme fuel consumption for buses which were working on lines. The hotfix for the bug was released on Tuesday because there was a national Holiday in Slovakia and last weekend before the start of Schoolyear, which meant we were not able to get back to the office.
This hotfix required few more days to test if it works and besides that there are few more reports of CTD which we want to fix before we release the update. If we will be lucky to find the reasons and fix them, the update may be released next week but there is still a chance it may be delayed a week longer.
If we would release the update with these issues the disappointment would be worse and we would have to face lot of unnecessary support requests and pressure, so bear with us in this.



More from the report find on our website:
https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-58

[Asid]

Report for the community #59
Sun, 18 September 2022



Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic.

Autumn is knocking on our doors and the harvest is in full swing in our in-game Republics as much as in real world in attempt to gather as much crops as possible to feed all the people and animals.

Last week we released the Metro update for public testing, and we know we need to work hard because we received a bunch of reports about critical bugs which were hidden during internal testing. We were not able to deal with all the issues yet, but we successfully fixed some already and we may use this report to give you some insight into the development process and challenges we face. But first let us show you some new stuff.


More from the report find on our website:
https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-59

[Asid]

Report for the community #60
Sun, 2 October 2022



Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic.

Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic. Another two weeks have passed since last report and lot of water did flow through Slovakia in Danube River. Maybe it is not that much as other years used to be, but it is lot, nevertheless. Today we have somewhat fewer exciting subjects to write about, but it is still another report, and we have something special for those who enjoy not only playing the game but also making content and especially maps.


More from the report find on our website:
https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-60

[Asid]

Report for the community #61
Sun, 23 October 2022



Greetings dear Comrades of the Soviet Republic!

Day by day our days are getting colder and even the world is approaching a difficult winter with raising heating costs, in our Republics there is no such a problem because we allow ourselves to use fossil fuels as key resources for heating until there is no other reliable option.

Last week we delayed the report because there was not enough material to write about, but today we have sizeable portion of latest information for you, and we hope you will enjoy this report.




More from the report find on our website:

https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-61

[Asid]

Report for the community #62
Sun, 13 November 2022



Greetings dear Comrades.

We are aware that expectations are high while the public release of the metro update to all players was delayed again. Things did not go as we planned timewise, and new bugs were found, so we needed to release a hotfix, but it is really about last touches which are needed for the release.

And as this was delayed mainly by critical bugs found, we were already focusing more on the waste management update which will come after this, and we can give you more insight into what you may expect.



More from the report find on our website:
https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-62

[Asid]

Report for the community #63
Sun, 27 November 2022

Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic.

Another two weeks passed away and the metro update is not out yet. We are sorry for that, but obstacles that prevent the release are not related to coding itself and we may give you some insight into the development process which is not only about adding new features and fixing the game code itself.

While in releasing the game for close and open testing is quite straight forward, we need to do more when we want to release the official update and even we may have the code ready and tested with all the graphic art related to release, there are other PR related things that have to be done and we have a delay in some stuff there. So, we are delayed again, and it can be released any day if the last things are done properly.



More from the report find on our website:
https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-63

[Asid]

Report for the community #64
Mon, 12 December 2022




Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic.

While the World is putting its foot on the gas in preparation for the upcoming Christmas season and the weather is getting colder, we are bringing you some fresh information about the next Update for the game, and we would like to release the update in first quarter next year.

In the past we hoped we can release the game fully at that time but the features we want to add require much more time and attention, and thus it takes longer to get them into the game. Despite all that you can enjoy the game as it is in early access stage and recently the Metro update was finally released for all players.



Read on: https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-64

[Asid]

Report for the community #65
Fri, 6 January 2023

Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic.

We want to wish you lot of happiness, fun and success in New Year in the beginning of this report which will be a bit shorter but still we can show you something new with great potential even though it will not change the gameplay that much. As we are closer and closer to full release, we are making some preparations for additional content in form of DLCs for those who love the game.



Read on: https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-65

[Asid]

Report for the community #66
Sun, 22 January 2023

Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic.

Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic. After couple of weeks we have another report for you and the goal of these is show you something we are working on and give you insight into the development process. Sometimes we are working on things under the hood and it may be very difficult to show in pictures what was done, and also the description in words may be very complicated. Because of that it may look like we do not focus on things we were mentioning in previous reports despite having our focus still set on them. So do not worry if this report will not be about waste management because it does not mean we do not work on that.



Read on: https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-66

[Asid]

New version 0.8.8.18
Thu, January 26, 2023


Small changes and fixes now pushed out of beta branch!


0.8.8.16
•   Added fuel for railway end station
•   Fixed problem with water switches, there was way how to connect them so badly that game freeze would appear
•   Metro trainsets are not flipped when collided
•   Attempt to fix problem causing crash when saving game due to parking lots
•   Fixed problem about collision notification when train is purchased in realistic mode and at custom house the track is engaged
•   Fixed problem when copy tool do not clone the pipe connections
•   Corrected some texts in tutorials
•   Ukrainian and Russian localization update
•   Removed memory leaks, increased time of loading in case returning to menu
•   Materials delivered on the construction are used instead of funding when later funding is enabled
•   Fixed pick tool crash when used over fields
•   Fixed rendering of resources when carrying on the flatbed trucks
•   Fixed issues in the tutorials
•   Fixed Dunay class ship fences
•   Fixed using rotate/zoom during pause or double speed when mapped to keyboard
•   Fixed traffic flow for flipped sewage filling station
•   Fixed warning messages about stopped production missing for factories
•   Fixed warning message about can't store resources for factories


0.8.8.17
•   Fixed problem that more trains from railway CO are sometime assigned to same construction
•   Fixed building editor launch problem
•   S1202 police and ambulance family token correction
•   Changed bit mechanics for chain signals for track builders
•   Optimized auto search for helicopter CO
•   Fixed crash related to snow plows and end of the winter
•   Fixed crash related to water pump
•   Fixed problem when crash building when build with grid snap
•   Fixed crash related to ship waypoints


0.8.8.18
•   Attempt to fix AMD Radeon 6000 and 7000 crash/freeze
•   Fixed random crash when building railways
•   Fixed problem of citizens with personal cars, sometime they go with car even is not needed or just not going anywhere only to parking lot

[Asid]

Report for the community #67
Sun, 5 February 2023



Greetings dear comrades of the Soviet Republic.

First month of the year which should be the coldest in Europe has passed away which means that people can ease on their energetic concerns which are caused by raised consumption of energy for heating purposes.
But why do we mention this here? It is because we want to introduce something that many of you wanted, and we have dedicated significant amount of time to deal with the problem and provide a solution. We have something special for you and this will greatly improve your power distribution, making wind and solar energy more viable, and you will also be able to manage priorities for power distribution after it will be released.



Read on: https://www.sovietrepublic.net/post/report-for-the-community-67

[Asid]

Special Report for the Community!
Thu, 9 February 2023



Hello Dear Comrades!

Peter Adamcik, the general secretary of the People’s party 3DIVISION here. Recently we got the first enemy of our Soviet Republic. This enemy is making our life harder and significantly slowing down the development process. He is, ehm, he WAS once a respected member of our community and one of the best party members, but he decided to betray our Republic, our Party and our ideals.

It all began when we started work on realistic mode. He thinks he invented it or made it possible. Well, if he had kindly asked, we would have added him into the game's credits, we would probably do it (together with other guys who made various guides/challenges or contributors), but first we need to finish the game, then we can update the game’s credits! But he decided to contact us as a lawyer, and started to abuse the YouTube report system issuing copyright strikes to one of our most helpful influencers bbaljo, prior to getting our opinion on this issue. As he chose to use extortion and abuse, we became angry about this, and decided to never mention the name of the challenge he allegedly “invented” again, and ignore him.

But this guy reported our website, and the website was taken down. He also reported our video about the last content update where realistic mode wass introduced, and the video was taken down. He was successful because those reports are handled by BOTs, not humans. We will issue our reactions, and hopefully we will get answers soon from human employees of YouTube and Wix, who can evaluate his actual claims and agree that this is nonsense.

We are already in touch with Valve, because for sure he will try to take down the whole game from the Steam store.

The reason for this statement is also, because someone who doesn’t know our game, like some lawyer or legal copyright expert, could doubt whether we did infringe his copyright or not. Well, let’s try to figure out!

Here is the link to his original guide:



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1995764447


The Step-by-Step manual!

What he claims in takedown notices:

"A published step-by-step manual to modify and play video games in an ultra-hard manner for a challenging and realistic game experience"


First, our game was always challenging and provided a realistic experience.

Second, he did not publish any manual to make the realistic mode possible. Thoughts on realistic mode were in my mind very early when I started to work on the game. However, it was just too complicated, and it was not selected as a critical feature, something that Early Access game needs to have at day one. Also, I was skeptical about the game just being too hard, and I did not know how many players would play it in this the hardcore manner. As I say in every interview, I was just surprised how many people used the manual constructions in the game. I was not expecting this.

But let us check on Storpappa’s step by step manual if it contains any game design we could stole!

Header:




Literally nothing!

Who is that woman on the cover?

Again nothing


0.8.1.9 Update and direct border purchases


Yes, in order for realistic mode to be possible it was necessary to use the custom houses for purchasing resources. This idea came up in the minds of almost everyone who plays the game and wanted to save money by not paying for transportation fees ☺


What is cosmonaut mode?



Just describes the problem that the resources are not going to appear by magic, yes but we need a way how to resolve it in the game, to prevent this, sure I know it’s not realistic, but what other solution is there?


After the patch - SETTING UP THE IMPORTS AREA



So, in his manual is something mentioned about a starter city, well in our Realistic mode, no starter city is needed, it is possible without one, but again one would expect a solution we could implement into the game for this but not...

We implemented free temporary buildings in order to proceed without any starter city


After the patch - resupplying IMPORTS


I do not know, but this section does not even contain any rules...


Startup screen options


Our realistic mode doesn’t restrict to any specific difficulty setting, it is only an extra difficulty setting that can be turned on or off with any other settings. So you can play in realistic mode even with fires, fuel consumption or seasons off.

How do I get resources in the game?


This just describes features of the game. Yes, manufacturing your own resources and being self-sufficient is mentioned even in the original trailer.

But I cannot find any solution about asphalt and concrete?

Oh boy! We needed to implement foreign workers. Moreover, we implemented that it is possible to set the customs house as source for materials for the Construction Offices, to resolve this problem.


How do I build structures and roads?



He is just saying how to use existing feature.

How do I build railroad tracks?


He is just saying how to use existing feature again.

BTW To implement our realistic mode we needed to implement disassembled track builders and allow you to transport them to the Rail Construction Office.


My republic failed, what next?


Just guidance and advice.

Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov

Literary work there.

Isn't this too difficult?


No game design there.

What about Loans?


Something about Loans, Realistic mode in our game does not rely on loans to be disabled or not.

Updates and thanks


Here it is interesting that he is giving a thank you to all people who helped him or inspired him to write this guide. So, is it your work or not? ☺



Conclusion

As you can see there is nothing in his work in terms of game design that would relate directly to game’s code, and he does not offer any technical solutions for the development team to use. He literally just created a guide with some possible way to play the game and called it Cosmonaut mode, but it is not helping the development process. Only one thing he was helpful in, is that the popularity of his guide showed us how much people wanted to play the game in a realistic and more challenging way.

So, let us conclude what we needed to develop, in order to create realistic mode with some unbreakable rules and that it would be possible to play for you:

•  Purchases in the custom house
•  Set custom houses as source for Construction Offices
•  Implementation of foreign workers
•  Implemented it to be possible to purchase brand new vehicles in the custom houses (just as for cableway)
•  Implementation of disassembled rail track builders
•  Implementation of checking if road depot and rail depo is connected to custom house and mechanics that this vehicle will come to depo automatically.
•  Two icons in the right bottom part of the window which opens beyond the border customs.
•  I am sure, I forgot something ☺


For the implementation of realistic mode, I want to thank the whole community, and then to Martin and Michal (the two coders in our Team) and the second Michal who came to visit us and I literally spent like 2 days with him thinking how this mode would be possible. Then to all community managers and moderators who help us, and all the players who help us catch bugs while playing our game. Thank you, you are all awesome!

[Asid]

Report for the Community #68
Sun, February 19



Greetings dear Comrades of the Soviet Republic. Even we are going through tough times while developing the game, we decided that we can bring you some news about the work we have done recently in the game. Currently we do not have any news about takedown issue. We will keep you informed. As you can see in previous special report, the game has been taken down from Steam Store due to DMCA takedown notice in relation to recent realistic mode we added into the game. We filled a counter-notice and now we need to wait.



And as we are waiting on legal issues to be resolved, we can continue working on new features and other game related stuff. Lot of graphics in the game is outdated and needs an update. Most urgent ones in our opinion are small grocery shop, small store, pub and brick buildings. We decided to replace them by making proper details and level of detail meshes for them to save performance while they are being used.





If you are already using these buildings, they will be just replaced after the update, and you will see them in their new form.



Another reason for this step is that we are working on researches for the upcoming update and residential buildings from prefab panels will be locked behind research. That means you will probably have to use brick residential buildings when you start a new republic. But we want to remind you, that you can turn ON or OFF any difficulty level in our game. So, if you do not like to play with research you can just turn the feature off.





Then we have some useful information for you that somehow went under the radar about already existing mechanics. As not every player has a longer term republic developed many of them did not even notice why electronics became a major complication for your economy over time. When we did an update to make electronics production more challenging, we made couple of changes and one of them you may know. That is that the consumption of electronics is growing gradually until year 2000. It is simply 30% higher after year 2000 than it was in year 1960.

But we added another change which we forgot the introduce. There is a mechanic which is making the production of electronics and electronic components more expensive over time and consists of two parts. First is the production decrease over time. In 1960 you have basic production and it goes slowly down until year 2037 when the vanilla electronics assembly line and electronics components factory will produce only 30% of resource compared to year 1960. The other is the factory’s consumption increase when the factory is consuming more resources for production over time. For electronics assembly hall it goes up to 200% in 2060 and for electronics components factory it goes up to 170% in year 2030, compared to year 1960. But these values apply to vanilla buildings because modders can define these values in their factory’s .ini file.

What does that mean? If the electronics assembly hall is producing 4,5 t of electronics in year 1960 it will produce only 1,35 t of electronics in year 2037 per workday at maximal utilization. On the other hand, if it needs 1,5 t of electronic components (or other resources) to produce that in year 1960 then it will require 3,0 t of electronic components in year 2060. And this makes electronics more valuable and difficult to produce somewhat simulating the technological advance. Another thing is that this is the main reason why the price of electronics goes up so much over decades and you may consider to invest lot more into production of this valuable resource especially, if you are planning your republic to continue over in-game centuries and you may also consider using electronics as low volume and high value reserve resource (it is not succeptible to inflation as money) for rainy days, because the game can surprise you whenever you keep expanding and that is the beauty of it as we are making it more complex and challenging to play.

And that is all for this report. Even if we are facing attacks, we still have enough resources to continue the development of the game even if the game would be banned for months or years. But the truth always wins. We will keep you updated about the game development process or any publicly suitable information that may affect it. So enjoy life, have fun and stay tuned for the next report.

Thank You for Your Support
3Division Team.

[Asid]

Special Report for the Community #2
Sat, 4 March 2023




Dear Community and Players,

We are pleased to announce that our game is now back in the store!

We thank you for your patience, support and understanding as we navigated this tricky situation.

We want to apologize to those who were looking to purchase the game and were unable to. We realize that we underestimated the situation, and it quickly escalated to a point that posed a threat to our game. We greatly wish that this had not been the case.

But we are now back on track and you can fully enjoy the game! We are excited to get back fully to the development and put this matter behind us.

3DIVISION
Dev Team

[Asid]

Report for the Community #69
Sun, 5 March 2023




Greetings dear Comrades of the Soviet Republic. March is here and our glorious sowing machines have left their farms to do their job as it is each year. You do not need to be afraid of snow for at least half a year despite it is not the same in real life. But as it is in the game, even in real life things may happen according to schedule, and if certain period passes, then you can expect things to be done even without any special intervention despite ongoing efforts to resolve issues. Because of this we have calendars and we are so aware of the dates in them and often we are happy that certain period of time is over.

So as the time is going, our efforts are focused mainly on Waste management update, but we are working on other things beside them which will bring you extraordinary challenges and change the way how you play, especially when you will have to rely on your construction, technical and distribution offices to do their jobs. From recent things we were working on we have to mention, that we still needed to add couple of things to waste management. One of them was the visualization or animation of waste loading/unloading.





But we were also working on GUI to allow you to see how the Container stands are filling up. You can also for some container stands, after research programs, select container types for separation.





And be aware that container stands can be overfilled and then you will have waste lying everywhere. This situation causing a pollution in the area. You can see on the images a visualization of the default container, which every building have. You don't need to build container stands as every building have own container, but in most cases is useful to sacrifice some space and use container stands.





Another thing we were focusing was the visualization of differences in waste composition. The waste can have up to 10 different components, so we want to show the player roughly what the main components of the waste may be to allow them to differentiate in between different compositions and help them decide what they want to do with that type of waste.



On this screen for example you can see graphics representation of different ratio of mixed waste containing plastic waste and metal scrap.



Also, we made some changes for graphics of road with sidewalk (now more realistic asphalt sidewalk) and we removed the white outlines for asphalted areas under buildings. White line was replaced by curb. We also planning to add asphalt panel footpaths.





That is some of the things we are working on, and we can also mention couple of things we are developing about which we will inform you about in upcoming reports. You may get much more in the next big update than you expected because we are working on couple of interesting features from which we want to mention: maintenance, building demolition, mods incorporation , research programs for universities and fertilizing for the fields.

We hope you are interested in these game features we are working on. They may become a major complication for some of you as they can bring you additional challenges and limitations. More about that in future. Until then enjoy life, have fun, stay tuned for the next report.

Thank You for Your Support
3Divison Team