May 2012 Update

May 1, 2012 at 1:05 pm

It's the first so an update is in order. We haven't started work yet but we will within the week. There may be an non-regular update once we know more what 0.5 will hold sometime mid-month.

No More Monthlies Until Synekism 0.5

April 1, 2012 at 2:50 pm

Well, we had a good run. Unfortunately, we need to retreat for a bit and regroup. There will be no monthly release this month. This news does not mean the end of Synekism, quite the opposite, it just means that we'll break tradition and stop the monthly releases for a well-defined while.

The reason for this seemingly sudden change is the sudden change in our competition landscape with the rise of a giant volcano. With the announcement of the game we thought would never be revived it became clear we need some drastic changes in order to remain relevant - since direct competition is out of the question. In addition, the last few monthly updates have become somewhat stale with very minor visible updates due to serious time constraints on our part, constraints which are about to be relaxed.

The plan is that we'll start work on version 0.5 which will give Synekism a bit more distance from the city simulator recipe. We will continue releasing progress updates at least on the first of every month as going dark is not our goal here. Synekism will return on September 1st, 2012, with hopefully a completed core design on which we can then build upon.

I want to emphasise that we are not going dead or dark, just regrouping. Our emails and forums will remain open and frequently monitored if you have any questions or concerns.

I guess I should also say that everything above and this sentence are not part of some April fool's joke. It's just a coincidence.

Idimoris Website

March 12, 2012 at 4:24 pm

It's hard to tell, I know, but we're not just a team, we're a company called Idimoris. Today Idimoris gets its very own website generously designed and created by Kyle Carter. The link is: http://www.idimoris.com.

It is only a landing page for now with almost no information but it will eventually serve a greater purpose. In the meantime enjoy the orange glow.

Chrome Malicious Warning

March 1, 2012 at 11:08 pm

After a recent Google Chrome update it seems Synekism's installer was falsely labelled as "appears malicious". It seems to be a common problem among small time software publishers. Apologize if this caused any concern.

There's not much help from Google on the subject but we learned that having the download link secure (so using https:// instead of http://) would "fix" the problem. So we switched our download links (not the main synekism.com link) to secure links and therefore you should no longer see any Chrome warnings for Synekism downloads.

For the more sneaky people out there, the ones that discovered our direct download links, the direct links may still cause Chrome warnings. We are using a shared SSL certificate (provided by our host) so the actual (https) URL is a bit convoluted and there's no reason to publish it. Just use our download links.

March 2012 Monthly Update

March 1, 2012 at 1:59 pm

We had a user-visible-heavy(er) update last month so it's only natural we went back to backend-heavy(ness), of course. So, March brings little in terms of visible updates. The simulator got some adjustments pertaining to highrises and we fixed some minor bugs.

On the other hand, we spent significant time this last month planning. Among a zillion things we need to work on the priority right now is cleanup, refactoring, and a new save file format. The new format will allow much quicker save file amendments while always maintaining backwards compatibility. Expect the new format live sometime this summer.

Also, and this is still un-dated, we'll soon have a blog. Updates will be rare to begin with. We still prefer to spend more time on the game right now instead of public relations. The primary topic will likely be details on what is taking us so long and why so many "under-the-hood" updates.

CHROME MALWARE FALSE POSITIVE: We noticed this download may be flagged FALSELY as malware by Chrome (and only Chrome). We assure you, having access to the entire source code and never having had this happen before, it is perfectly safe. We are working to fix this mess. Sorry.

WARNING: Our new installer is much more reliable but also more aggressive in its cleanup. The new installer will delete everything in the install directory of the previous Synekism installation and similarly for the current installation upon uninstall. You should not have anything in this directory but if you do please kindly relocate it.

New Zone and Building Layouts

February 1, 2012 at 5:23 pm

February's update brings much needed (user-visible!) changes. The zoning tool will now use a new layout which attempts to place lots perpendicular to their road. Also, many buildings, especially lower density ones, will no longer take up the entire surface of the lot.

As an update to the entire project as a whole: progress is slow but steady.

WARNING: Our new installer is much more reliable but also more aggressive in its cleanup. The new installer will delete everything in the install directory of the previous Synekism installation and similarly for the current installation upon uninstall. You should not have anything in this directory but if you do please kindly relocate it.

January 2012 Monthly Update

January 1, 2012 at 7:00 pm

January's update is not going to impress anyone though we did do significant work on the lot and buildings systems. The one noticeable feature is that lower density buildings can now build on higher density lots. We got really close to getting buildings to not take up the entire lot but soon realized that it would be impossible to get it right without a renovating our zoning code.

This lack of progress is just simple laziness and holiday craziness. Work should pick up for the next release. Happy new years!

December 2011 Monthly Update

December 1, 2011 at 1:35 am

December's update suffers from a rather disruptive development month and some planning errors. As such, there are no new features. However, progress has been made on our installer and system requirements. Also, we now have a wiki at: http://wiki.synekism.com. It's currently in read-only mode and does not contain much information but this will soon change.

We have a brand new installer. You won't notice much, but let's just say that patches starting with "our installer was confused again..." will be a thing of the past. In addition, we used to have two different executables. One would only work on Windows Vista and above and used DirectX 10.0 while the other could work on either Windows XP, Vista, or 7, and used DirectX 9.0c. We have eliminated this distinction in 0.4.3 and now have a single executable which will try to use DirectX 10.0 and if that's not supported automagically switch to DirectX 9.0c. Finally, we now store all external files like UI textures and cursors inside the executable which means all you will see when Synekism installs is an executable, Synekism.exe, plus the readme and clientspecs files. The above two modifications make it possible to move Synekism.exe to anywhere on your computer and it will still work.

As for the disruption, we lost a member of our team this month, leaving the team size at just two. As this project was somewhat formal we had to deal with the matter in more official terms (legally speaking) which took some time. Nevertheless, the project still lives on. Though, to better focus on the game itself, we will no longer maintain our MSN Messenger account nor our Skype account. We check our email and the forums daily, however, so we can still be reached relatively quickly.

There is not much reason to upgrade this month, other than staying up to date. Next month should be more promising.

WARNING: Our new installer is much more reliable but also more aggressive in its cleanup. The new installer will delete everything in the install directory of the previous Synekism installation and similarly for the current installation upon uninstall. You should not have anything in this directory but if you do please kindly relocate it.

Data Views, Tooltips, and Goverment Lot Changes

November 1, 2011 at 1:11 am

November's release benefits from more user-visible updates than usual but also includes major changes to our code structure.

Synekism now has data views, though not much data yet exists to display, you now have a better insight into what the Simulator is doing. Data views can be enabled through the settings menu.

To make some use of the data views we introduced land value. For now, government lots will be the only ones increasing the land value of an area. With this change comes the restriction that high density lots will only develop in areas of high land value, that is, nearby government lots. IMPORTANT: Already developed high density lots will de-develop if the land value goes down so when loading cities from a previous version, before un-pausing, it is recommended that you use the land value data view to locate and address any unsatisfied high density lots with some additional government zones.

And in addition to making road segment midpoints visible while using the road or lot tools, we also fixed several bugs throughout the game.

Finally, Synekism now supports tooltips to help with our often strange icons.

PLEASE NOTE: Until we restore faith in our installer (hopefully by next release) please back up any treasured save files (in your My Documents/Synekism folder) prior to upgrading!

Very Very Sorry

October 2, 2011 at 8:12 pm

It just came to our attention that we had a HORRIBLE bug in our installer that essentially replaced all your saved files with those you had if you ever played a version of the game before v0.3.2.

The problem was that we moved our save location in v0.3.2 from the Program Files/Synekism location to your My Documents folder. To make this transition more seamless, when you installed v0.3.2 (and all newer versions) we copied the saves from the Program Files location to the My Documents location. Now, we still haven't tamed our installer and we were indeed REPLACING all saves in the My Documents location while not deleting the Program Files saves.

This problem existed in all our installers after v0.3.2 unless you manually deleted the Saves folder in Synekism's Program Files folder.

As a precaution, we would recommend you back up your saves prior to installing any future updates, at least until we have a proper installer. Also, if you have Vista or Windows 7, you can try to right click on an overwritten save file, go to properties, and see if there are any past version of the file under the Previous Versions tab.

We deeply apologize for any lost cities. Although it won't make up for it, future updates will soon make old cities obsolete as we add more features to the game.

We updated the current installer to v0.4.1.34a so that in no longer copies any files at all. You may wish to manually remove the Saves folder in the Program Files folder of Synekism.

Regards,
Damian
Synekism Team Lead