Hey everyone! ːsteamhappyː

After a round of patches, I’ve finally jumped into the last remaining system we hadn’t reworked yet over the last week: the Townsfolk system. It feels great to finally be at this point. Aside from the tutorial, polish, and ongoing fixes, this was the final big piece left. Since Echoes of the Community was all about revisiting and rebuilding older systems and adding community most-wanted mechanics, it only made sense to include Townsfolk in that too. I mean, why not make this update wait even longer and rework every single thing while Steam kind of shouts at me “upload this thing to the main branch already!” 

But seriously, this rework was long overdue. With the new systems where Townsfolk are now needed to get city licenses and expand transport capacity, they’ve become more important than ever. So fixing quest issues, adding new mechanics, and improving the UI felt like the right final step.

Also packed into this update are a bunch of improvements to employee breaks, utilities, audio mixing, and more. I was originally planning to push a couple more patches just for fixes before starting Townsfolk, but I ended up using that time to go all in, so everything’s bundled into this one.

So here are the highlights and the changelog:

Townsfolk Backstories & Character

Each Townsfolk character now has a new little backstory, and I’ve tried to make quest texts reflect their personalities instead of being cold and robotic like “Place X items” only text. These little touches should make them feel more like actual residents of your city, not just quest givers. They also now have unique mumble voice lines, like our beloved casino guy.

We're planning to share a Google Form soon if you'd like to help write backstories for them! These little lore-like details will tie into future updates like Rivalries and Celebrities & Press.

Townsfolk Corruption & Gifts

Besides the tasks they give (which you can now request manually as well), there was a system where you could give gifts or ask for money to affect your relationship. Now, each Townsfolk character has a corruption value, which can sometimes change through sending persuasive documents and with some events.. If a Townsfolk is highly corrupt, gifts are more likely to work. If not, trying to bribe them might result in a lawsuit or a hit to your rating. You can now also manually request tasks from them, which helps reduce randomness and gives you a bit more control over what you’re working toward.

Employee Breaks

While working on bugs related to staff break room selection and time issues, I also found myself working on the “couldn’t find break room item” animation. That was supposed to be part of the polish pass next week, but I couldn’t help myself after seeing the protest boards Nil drew.  Now employees go on little strikes if they can’t get the items they want. Also removed the possibility for armchairs, sofas, and dining tables to be favorite employee items (since they’re common helper items that every employee prefers to use if available, and were causing issues) and added items like yoga mats, gaming PCs, and exercise balls instead. New candidates are now also much more likely to want items you’ve already researched.

Utility Async

Ive also made the electricity system async, and also added little animations to lamps when power comes or goes. This all started while fixing the crash ⁠related to a utility line calculations. While working on it, I figured it was a good chance to make the system more flexible, now we can also support stuff like circuit breakers or delays before power shuts off for future updates. On top of that, I removed the production prestige bonus from utility rooms, as it was causing a loop where a power shortage would lower prestige, which would then lower production, leading to even more shortages. The info text is still outdated for now, but I’ll be revisiting room prestige in general later this week, so that’ll be updated with the new buffs and tooltips.

Delivery and Waste Collection Hours

There were also fixes related to delivery and waste collection. Previously, delivery personnel wouldn’t leave if they couldn’t keep up with demand, and waste collectors would sometimes collect all dumpster trash in one go. Now, delivery and collection workers have proper hours. Deliveries happen between 7–10 and 19–22, while waste collection runs between 4–6 and 16–18. When their shift ends, they leave. This should help make it more obvious when you need to contract more workers for those specific times, rather than assuming it’s a bug or a stuck worker.

Audio Mixing and Balancing

The audio system has finally started receiving some attention too. While working on Townsfolk voice lines, I ended up doing a first pass on audio mixing. The old crowd ambiance was creating a weird “video-like” constant background noise, so I blended that out and bumped up the casino audio effects. More importantly, I started tuning the spatial blend, distance, and doppler values of audio sources so that sounds better reflect your camera position. Ambience should now fade out more cleanly, and the overall soundscape should feel more alive and dynamic. There’s still more work to do in this area, but this was a necessary first step. As of this week, I’ll also be starting on the full balancing pass for document production/usage, and the pricing and cost systems, now that Townsfolk is finally off the task list.

I already feel like the game is starting to sound and feel more alive, and that will only get better from here.

Lastly, I’m planning to write a Community Gazette this week to go over the current release stage and the updated roadmap. I’ll share more details there on what’s coming next and how we’re planning to approach it.

I'm now officially down to mostly polish-level fixes according to the bug pipeline, which feels like a big milestone after all the major reworks.

But there's still that one infamous issue left, the hour start freeze bug. It happens rarely, but when it does, it's frustrating. I've tried a lot of profiling and different approaches, but couldn't pin it down in time for this update.

The good news is, I finally have a save file where it shows up more consistently, about once every 15 to 20 loads, so I'm hoping that helps me finally track it down and fix it with this week's patches.

If you're encountering it more frequently, please feel free to send over a save file, it could really help narrow it down faster.

Fixes:

• Issue of some agents in the pool having 10/11 skills.

• Problem of delivery persons and builders getting stuck if their pathfinding can't find the path to their truck on load.

• Changed the stats bar document order to match the info bar.

• Problem of mechanic agents’ skill info showing -0% maintenance time on the agent hiring window.

• Issue of building part information not showing on the tooltip bar.

• Problem of elevator entrance price not decreasing by CEO background and finance manager attention.

• Problem of employee elevator entrance getting recorded as elevator entrance in the financial data recordings.

• Issue of articulated bus not registering the correct passengers information.

• Problem of housekeepers not emptying already cleaned washing machines if there are no available detergents.

• Issue of hotel booking stay getting cleaned by an employee who already left the resort.

• Problem of housekeepers leaving their current task after a save load.

• Problem of deluxe hotel rooms not getting booked by customers.

• Issue of delivery persons getting stuck in delivery mode.

• Problem of waste collector collecting all of the garbage without throwing the ones they collected to the garbage truck or out of map.

• Issue of electric utility line not calculating the surplus correctly of the room when a switchboard is first placed.

• Problem of customers consuming all menu items in the inventory when they use minibar in a hotel room.

• Animation glitch when customers want to use dart board in a bar.

• Problem of waste collectors sometimes not arriving to collect trash at the morning collection time.

• Issue of CEO leaving for a break on evening schedule 1 when assigned to evening schedule 2 or 3.

• Problem of waste collectors sometimes coming again after removing the trash once per collection time.

• Problem of employees using vending machines in the CEO office.

• Issue of police officers getting stuck for some time after a save load during an arrest.

• Problem of hotel room beds becoming clean after a save load if saved in state of "getting cleaned."

• Fixed the collider issue with some paintings.

• Issue of sewage and water systems turned off because of electricity shortage not turning back on correctly after restoring electricity.

• Buses displaying taxi icon on their view details bar.

• Issue of people getting no shower gym moodlet in yoga salon.

• Problem of customers getting wrong prices when using sport betting kiosk for a second time.

• Problem of passengers getting respawned to casino hotel instead of being despawned after transportation is complete.

• Issue of garage vehicle coming hours not resetting if going into maintenance, causing them to not come in some hours.

• Problem of customers waiting for casino game seats that are occupied while there are open seats.

• Car transportations not getting cleared properly if the customer has path error while going to their car to leave.

• Fixed an issue of master volume increasing instead of muting on pause.

• Issue of some employees staying on the border of the map saying they are at home.

• Issue of utility system causing crashes in some cases if you delete an internet/sewage/water connector before deleting an electric cable.

• Problem of vehicle menu showing car is getting towed while it’s not after first opening the menu during towing.

• Problem of builders sometimes getting stuck while going to the builder truck when leaving.

• Problem of all morning employees coming and leaving after loading the game at night, causing a big parade.

• Text type overflowing on garage vehicles in the vehicle sale menu.

• Problem of worker trucks shown as towable.

• Issue of trucks not rendering correct driver and leaving without rendering the driver.

• Problem of employees on night break 2 and 3 going to break as soon as they arrive at the resort.

• Issue of some employees going to break on the very first break time after changing their break schedule.

• Problem of locker not unlocking with employee locker room research.

• Issue of texting box having sync issue when the last employee that talked with is fired.

Changes:

• Added time period starting time randomness to animations so they don’t start synchronized, especially on load (no more dancing effect).

• Added a cursor type for loading and saving states.

• Employee candidates now don’t select seating items (dining table, sofa, armchair) as their favorite break room item.

• Added exercise ball, gaming PC, and yoga mat to the favorite employee break room item selection pool.

• New candidates are now 300% more likely to have break room items you have researched or unlocked as favorites.

• Employee information window assignment buttons now greyed out if fired.

• Removed the error time bar pop-ups since the time schedule indicator boxes were introduced.

• The Chicken and Rice menu recipe now correctly requires rice as an ingredient, as it should.

• Added schedule indicators such as transportation hours and break time schedules to the time information bar.

• Customers with poor wealth type now also book deluxe hotel rooms.

• Removed the production prestige boost from utility rooms since it was causing a loop of prestige going down and production going down during electricity shortage.

• Added a movement delay to the tooltip box. More tooltip window settings will be added to the settings menu during QOL and UI polishing this week.

• Removed and blended the crowd ambiance audio that was causing a video-like sound effect.

• Customers no longer leave because of waiting too long for an item; they just leave that "want" as not completed and move to the next one.

• Customers now play more variety of main game types when playing casino games.

• Decreased the taxi garage vehicle price.

• Customers will only add rooms to their “things to do” list that are available in the resort but also add their favorite room service to the list if it’s researched or unlocked.

Warnings!

• Audio settings will be reset again due to the audio mixing changes

• Current employees with a favorite seating item will now choose randomly from the new pool.

• If your electricity setup relied on utility room prestige, you may start with a power shortage.

• Utility room info text still mentions a prestige based production boost, but it’s no longer functional (this will be fixed during the upcoming polish pass)

Another round of patches focused on polish, balance and fixes is on the way, but this might actually be the final update before we push to the main branch. Wow!

See you in the next one, and as always, thank you so much for all your help and support! ːsteamhappyː