Alpha 10 Release 01 Mar 2022

Alpha 10 Release

Initially planned for February, we’re slightly late with our alpha 10 release. The new features brought fundamental changes to much of the game logic, introducing countless bugs. Today, we’ve finally reached a level of stability good enough for shipping the version to our gold supporters.

SAVEGAMES

Savegames from alpha 9 are still supported in alpha 10, however they need to be moved manually from the alpha 9 folder to the alpha 10 folder.
Savegames are located here:
Windows: %userprofile%\AppData\LocalLow\Hovgaard Games\Big Ambitions
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Hovgaard Games/Big Ambitions

Take a look at all those new features:

Delivery Contracts 📝

Delivery contracts were first introduced in alpha 9. However, their handling through the contacts app didn’t feel very good.

After a complete rework, you can now find delivery contracts in your shop’s BizMan. Changes are easy and independent of the wholesalers’ business hours.

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Headquarters 🏢

Headquarters can be set up in any office building. Once your company grows, this is the place where all your managers will work to ease your life.

For now, you can only hire logistics managers and purchasing agents (more on this below). HR managers are scheduled for the beta 1 release.

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Warehouses and Logistics Managers 📦

Warehouses are your distribution hub. Imported goods and deliveries from wholesalers will arrive here before being distributed to your shops.

You need to drive transport vehicles into the warehouses. Delivery drivers, a new employee type, can be assigned to one of the vehicles each.

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For each warehouse, you have to hire one logistics manager. They can handle delivery routes to assure none of your businesses will ever run out of goods.

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Harbor Import Businesses and Purchasing Agents 🚢

Instead of buying goods from the wholesalers, you can save some money by importing them. Currently, two import businesses are set up at the harbor warehouses.

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Just sit down at the customer service agent inside these businesses to negotiate import contracts.

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Similarly to logistics managers, you need to staff your headquarters with one purchasing agent for each harbor import business.

Just tell the logistics manager what items you’d like to import and which warehouse should receive them. Be aware that import contracts come with a minimum order amount.

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Trucks and Pallets 🚚

The new logistics features require handling increased amounts of goods. Your friendly truck dealership will be happy to provide you with modern, brand-new trucks.

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Pallet shelves from AJ Pederson & Son’s appliance store will be perfect for your warehouses to store whole pallets instead of single boxes.

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New building entrance system for vehicles 🚘

Feedback from our gold supporters showed us a problem with buildings allowing cars to drive in. This possibility wasn’t obvious, causing many players to park the car and walk into the building instead.

You’ll now see clearly marked green areas. A large blue button for entering the building will show once you drive into those areas. Alternatively, you can press E.

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Logo Customizer 🎨

Previously scheduled for beta 1, we finished the logo customizer ahead of time and included it in alpha 10.

Choose from one of the predefined icons or upload your own (only PNG images supported), then set up your preferred colors and a nice-looking font.

Some buildings support showing the logo beside the large name signboard.

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Billboard Ads 📢

Alpha 9 introduced online marketing for your business at McCain’s marketing agency. We recently received word that City Ads has opened their New York branch, offering billboard ads. Now you can see your own logo on those giant billboards all over the city - isn’t that cool?

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Elevators 🔝

Elevators are just behaving like regular doors, but they look fancy.

Movable Placement Camera 🎥

We got many complaints about item placement in buildings, and we listened! Now you can move the camera for positioning.

Vehicle Improvements 🚙

Vehicles now got rearview. The camera will turn around while holding C. No matter whether you’re just backing out of a traffic accident or enjoy exploring the city in reverse, the camera will help with that.

New in town and low on money? Sleeping in your car might save some money, although every bone will hurt the following morning.

Tree Cutout Shader 🌳

When walking through a park area, a cutout shader will create a hole in the tree leaves to keep the player visible at all times.

Help System ❔

A first version of the help system has been added. Currently only containing a few pieces of information, partly even just dummy texts. All contents will be finished before the final release in August.

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94 fixed issues since alpha 9 🐛

Get access now!

Alpha 10 is available to all our gold supporters. You can get access right now by buying the gold version of Big Ambitions at www.bigambitionsgame.com

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All the best,
Jonas#1 & Daniel#2

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