Hi friends,

It has been a good 2 weeks with a lot of interesting things happening. A lot of my work isn’t visible, as I’ve been busy connecting UI and preparing the alpha 2 release. I’m now in the very last phase, so hopefully testers can start playing alpha 2 in next week 😲

“MyEmployees” app in the making 👨‍💼

Robin is now working of the UI of yet another app: MyEmployees. The app gives you easy access to all of your employees. This is the place you go to move employees to other businesses, educate, negotiate salaries or fire them.

Improved dialogs 💬

Dialogs are a vital part of the game. Whether you’re interviewing citizens, negotiating with your bank or doing other sorts of business, you’ll be using the dialog system. We’re now switching to a more immersive version where speech bubbles is shown in “world space”, instead of regular UI overlays.

Male characters are done 🧍

After weeks of hard work, we can now present the full set of body types for the male version.

Depending on how you play the game, your character will warp into one of the following body shapes, with the following properties:

• Thin/slim: Reduced max energy.
• Fit: Increased max energy. Increased health.
• Overweight: Decreased max energy. Decreased health.
• Muscular: Increased max energy. Health bonus based on workout style.

Fake building interiors ⚙️

Almost every 3D game has to consider what to do with windows at some point. Most games decide to black out the windows or make them super reflective.

We wanted to take another direction. In Big Ambitions you’ll be able to look through the windows of all buildings. As you can see in the before/after video below, it really improves the look and feel of the game. The team has been working hard making it possible using a “custom shader”, which basically shows “fake interior” in a 3D like way. This is great, because that means you’ll experience minimal performance impact.

I’m really proud that we’re going to make this happen, especially considering that Hovgaard Games is nothing more than a small indie studio.

More improved buildings 🏛️

As mentioned in previous devlogs, the team continues to put work into the final city map. The buildings are looking better and better for every day. Right now I can only show you small bites, but we’re not too far away from being able to show you some real in-game footage. I promise it will look absolutely stunning and be worth the wait.

Job (board) revised 👔

Initially getting a job meant you had to find and click a specific “employee station” (serving table, cash register). It wasn’t very intuitive, so instead, you now have to look for “job boards” around the city. Clicking the board gives you information about the job and the chance to accept it.

Sleep, working and study shared UI 🖱️

I’ve also gotten around optimizing the UI for both sleeping, working and studying. All three scenarios now share the same UI and behavior. While it’s still not perfect, it does feel much more natural to the game.

Oh, one more thing! I’m considering doing small video updates on YouTube. 2-3 minutes to quickly sum up the devlogs. Is this something you would be interested in, or do prefer the devlogs in text form only? Please let me know in the comments below or whatever platform you prefer 😊

That’s all for now. See you in 2 weeks!

Thank you for reading! 👍

All the best,
Jonas