TV Station Manager (version 1.0)

Official site: http://www.tvstationmanager.com



Since this thread has been derailed a bit, I'm going to start a new one with the history, and rename this one :p

Looks interesting man...but kinda hard to download.

Heh just wait 2-3 days please :D

I'm in beta testing right now, I'll put a message up on the beta forums, now that I think about it!

Okay, first observations with not a lot of playing time.



As Patty is explaining I saw a "because" that was spelled wrong, towards the beginning of explaining the advertising in a sentence that goes "I suggest you start with easier deals because..."



I started a sports oriented station (surprise surprise) and bought the "sport news" show, it kinda made sense. If I were to play it at 7 PM and again at 11 like ESPN would, will it go to a new show or will it re-run the same one (I haven't tested)? In the early days and perhaps all time, I'd want to do the same show twice in a night because it's straight news.



You might be giving too much of the game away for free. Unless I'm missing something, the only thing I can't do is create my own shows. You should make it so we can't save or something unless we buy the full game. So if I wanna sit there for 10 hours, fine, but no saving.



Course knowing me you'll be getting my money pretty quickly cuz this looks pretty cool.



The website is coming up very weird at home, I only can see part of it. At work during the day I could see the whole thing. I'll have to check tomorrow.

Thanks for feedback. I have a tester that's going to fix those grammar mistakes

About the game length, in the demo you can play just 1 week. Also you don't have access to all the advertising possible. And yes, the main missing thing is the production studio, along with the possibility to play more than 7 days.

Don't know if to reduce the trial time, 7 days seems right (if you play at maximum speed shouldn't last a lot).

Strange that you have problems with website, is hosted on my main server, so should be quite reliable (I hope...!)

Ok 7 days isn't bad...I've barely simmed one day. Here's what the site looks like...and it's the same at work now so the site is definitely different.



http://www.kengoding.com/Pictures/TV.jpg" style="max-width:100%">



There is someone else who's had this concept before, I found it on download.com. I just figured you should know in case they have some kind of rights to the idea.



http://www.download.com/TV-Manager/3000-7496_4-10559180.html

Ha I must have messed up with the width :D

Yes I know about the other game, but on the other hand there are lots of other boxing / soccer simulators so you can't really copyright an idea (luckily, otherwise you wouldn't see anymore games!).

Ok... I'm getting the idea that there are no daily costs for just staying in business, am I correct? I would think that we need it to cost say $20,000 a day just to stay on the air, but our advertisers would pay a little more.



Keeping track of how often I show movies could be cleaned up a bit. I can see how many times I've showed it and the last time I showed it, but I might want to know that I put it out there three times last week. After a couple weeks it'll get muddled.



I'd like an auto-insert for shows available. If I'm running a series of 80, it would be nice to just have it come on at 7:30 every day for the next 80 days. Because I can't see what I did yesterday anymore, I might mess up the time. I'm guessing people would want their favorite show to be on at the same time every night! If they don't care, you should put it in that they do, ratings go down if I show it at 7 today, 9 tomorrow, 11 the next day, and then back to 7.



Reruns will be a big sticker for me, as I sorta mentioned in the last post. A lot of TV shows will have a new episode just once a week from the new season, then the rest of the week it'll be reruns. I'd like the option to do a new show, or pick any of the past shows to rerun. That way I could do a 7:00 and an 11:00, or I could run a new show on Monday and then go through the archives the rest of the week. It'll give people something to look forward to on Monday (lots of viewers so I do the big advertisements on that day) while still giving them their daily feed. We'd need designated seasons on the shows too... "The Jab season 1 episode 4". Discounts on the old seasons if you buy them, premium for the new season!



Then again, you might have this planned to only go so long before you win or lose... but it would be cool to be open-ended, be able to continue the game even after you "win".



Oooooh two parters in a series... if I show episode 5 and 6 back to back because they go together people love it... or even the next days... if I break them up and leave people hanging for a long time they get upset.



I'm gonna drive you crazy mon!

Part of me wants a better mix of ads... as a fledgling I can't even hope to draw the numbers that most of the ads demand, so I'm stuck with the little bitsy ones. That's ok but I usually hit my quotas quickly and waste advertising space because they come out. On the other hand, once I get going the big ones will be so essential... so I dunno. Maybe I expect too many results too fast hehe.



Pretty hard... which means a good challenge!

Haha yes you're going to drive me crazy

The game was made for a more "casual" audience, so while some of your suggestion are cool (like showing old episodes) right now would be hard to implement (some people said is already very hard as it is!).

Anyway as always... I can make updates later, if I find out that people love this game like UBM or Magic Stones



About your question, there are daily costs for the station, around $10,000 if I remember well. The ads indeed are hard to place, so sometime you're stuck, but you need to use the "Promotion" tactic in the Company Management screen.

With it you can "lure" a certain target public to your tv when the campaign is active. So you can met some ads criteria that otherwise you wouldn't...



Yes, it is a hard game

Been getting any feedback from less vocal customers than I? I just haven't gotten around to buying yet... been pretty busy and there's so many games to choose from when I do play hehe.

Heh, yes the game is doing well. People seems to like it, and even the "humour" I tried to put inside it seems working! (wasn't really sure of it).

They say the most fun part is making your own show... a pity is available only in the full version

I've officially released it, so maybe you can check the new demo even if the changes aren't so many vs the beta (a few bugfixes).

looks nice

Is there a german edition planed?

At the moment no, unless someone volutarly edit the following files in data subfolder:

actors.ini

ads.ini

programs.ini

speech.ini

texts.ini



all in all about 1000 lines of english text to translate...

mh, i don't have a good grade in english...but now i have a lot of time xD i will see what i can do

Just wanted to say that I'm working on an update already, a user found some weird bugs and I'm fixing them, plus I'm going to change how the advertising works, since many people find it too hard to play now

No kidding.

Yes well the main difference is on how advertising work. Before was too hard to match a specific public attendance, now is way easier and after all more realistic