ZEPTOPOLIS

[orion70]

Can't wait for the cartridge to be released!

[chysn]

One hundred years!

The cartridge version's diskette support makes frequent saves really convenient, so I've been playing the same city over the last few days, finally hitting 100 years (turns).

At this point, most Homes and Businesses are covered by all public works services (the occasional fire still flares up, as you can see, so there are some gaps), and the budget surplus is about 130 per year. I was trying out these little circular neighborhoods, which seem to be pretty efficient. The structure in the center covers the whole neighborhood, but it gets tricker placing public works around the edges.

This game is the first time I've gone over 255 residents, and I learned that the version attached to the original post has a high-byte bug which causes the count to roll back to 0 after 255. I've fixed this, and I'll post the update soon. It's really hard to get this many residents, though.

[chysn]

One more feature for the cartridge, because there was room. You get to the Ruleset Menu with F3.

Rulesets can be loaded from tape or disk to change the rules, and I have a few rulesets made. But a couple alternate rulesets are immediately available on the cartridge to increase or decrease the difficulty level, or change the revenue chart. You can either start a new city with a new ruleset, or change the ruleset at any point during the development of your city.

Here's my first turn testing the Disasters! ruleset. It's basically a mulligan!

[Mayhem]

Excellent, where will the cartridge be available from?

[chysn]

Excellent, where will the cartridge be available from?

It'll be available on my Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/BeigeMaze), and I'll post the link here when they're ready. I'm really just waiting for the labels, which should be here in a couple days. I have more cases and PCBs on the way, too, but I have enough to get by initially.

Updates: The labels came today! So I'll get the Etsy listing up very soon.

Also, I squeezed one more thing into both versions (well, it wasn't much of a "squeeze" on the cartridge). If an Earthquake hits a Lake, a new Lake forms on adjacent land, destroying anything that was there. This is called "Flooding" in the game. It's fairly rare, but after playing a 100-turn game, I wanted a mechanic that would change the landscape in small ways over the long term.

[chysn]

Excellent, where will the cartridge be available from?

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1058772460 ... -cartridge

[chysn]

I added one more feature before shipping out the first few ZEPTOPOLIS cartridges this morning, "Hands-Off Mode." The first time I played SimCity with my cousin, we let it just run overnight so we could see what sort of havoc happened while we weren't watching. Being a turn-based game, you couldn't just let ZEPTOPOLIS go. Until now.

If you engage SHIFT LOCK during the end-of-year evaluation routine, the routine will simply start over for as long as SHIFT LOCK is engaged. So you can run the game for long periods of time with no maintenance to see just how bad it gets.

Here's my 100-year city 50 years after I left the scene. It's lost most of its residents, and it's running a sizeable deficit. There's been one instance of flooding. The remaining residents are happy because Homes and Businesses come and go in loose response to each other. It's still quite recoverable. After hundreds of years, the money runs out, and you might as well start over.

It's a fun feature, and is in both the cassette and cartridge versions.

[chysn]

A comment by @Mike on another topic reminded me to add one more thing

[orion70]

Got it
Quite expensive overall, including taxes (hopefully, customs are included too), and shipping to Italy. But having this on a cartridge... Priceless!

[chysn]

Got it
Quite expensive overall, including taxes (hopefully, customs are included too), and shipping to Italy. But having this on a cartridge... Priceless!

Thanks, I'll have it out tomorrow!

My understanding of customs charges to the E.U. is that it only applies if the value is €150 or more. I'll write the actual price on the package, so if my understanding is correct, you should be good.

I know that shipping from the U.S. to Europe is absurd. It's not Etsy gouging, either. Etsy actually gives me a discount from the actual US Post Office rates! More than half my sales are to the E.U., so I see those crazy shipping costs all the time, and that makes me appreciate people buying my games all the more. I'd like to have a European distributor who can get physical media to people more reasonably. On two occasions, I've started conversations with TFW8B, but they're not really interested.

Anyway, thanks again! It'll be on the way soon!

[Mayhem]

My understanding of customs charges to the E.U. is that it only applies if the value is €150 or more. I'll write the actual price on the package, so if my understanding is correct, you should be good.

Sadly that changed last month. The limit for any item coming into the EU from outside is now zero. So everything gets taxed. It's been done to stop cheap Chinese and Russian imports being resold inside the EU by sellers, but hurts everyone. So no matter what you've declared, it will be taxed for any one in the EU.

The UK limit is still 18 GBP, so I hope you can write well below that when I get to ordering the game.

What you can do is register for tax with the EU (have an IOSS number you quote on the customs forms) and have the buyers pay the correct VAT in advance so they then don't then have to pay the admin fee of it being handled and charged when it reaches the EU. A friend of mine has recently done that because he ships a lot to the EU but it costs him 100 GBP per month to be registered. So yes, I imagine this is why a lot of sellers outside the EU are now stopping sales because people are complaining (wrongly) to the seller about the huge admin charges and refusing the item, having it sent back and getting a refund. It's a complete fucking mess imo. And sellers can't see the benefit of forking out as much as that just to be able to sell to the EU without hassle.

It affects the UK going to and from the EU now, but we've had since the start of the year to adapt to it. And it obviously doesn't affect anything I get from the US, Japan, China at all.

[chysn]

What you can do is register for tax with the EU (have an IOSS number you quote on the customs forms) and have the buyers pay the correct VAT in advance so they then don't then have to pay the admin fee of it being handled and charged when it reaches the EU.

Etsy has an IOSS number that they put on the form when I purchase shipping through them. They collect VAT and suggest writing the value on the package so that buyers don't need to pay VAT twice. I'd like to hear what Orion70's experience is when the package shows up, to see if anything extra needed to be paid...

[orion70]

Hope not, it's been quite expensive even w/out customs

[Jeff-20]

The custom cart looks lovely!

[Mayhem]

Etsy has an IOSS number that they put on the form when I purchase shipping through them. They collect VAT and suggest writing the value on the package so that buyers don't need to pay VAT twice. I'd like to hear what Orion70's experience is when the package shows up, to see if anything extra needed to be paid...

Didn't realise Etsy handled IOSS for you, that's quite a good thing actually.