v0.3.3

Compatibility

• Everyone in a session needs 0.3.3. Players on 0.3.2 can't join a 0.3.3 game.

Lobby and hosting

• Redesigned the multiplayer lobby, with a separate hosting port that can be changed before anyone joins.
• Added a host setting, Different mods: Allow / Refuse. With Refuse, a player whose mods differ is turned away with the list of differences, and the host is told.
• Reworked the settings window: a saved game now offers the full list of world and player settings, and the host's choices are applied to every player.

Banning players

• Added bans. The host can ban a player from their card on the Business page or from the lobby. Bans are kept by the host across sessions and restarts, for Steam and direct-IP joins.
• Added a Banned players list with Unban, and an option to remove everything a banned player owns.

Chat and the Business page

• Restyled the chat window; it can be moved and remembers where it was left.
• Rebuilt the Business page: a player list, offers, loans, access and company tabs, and a confirmation for company mergers.

Merged companies

• Reworked how a partner's shop is handed back when they return: stock, items and cleaning done while they were away now go back to them.
• Reworked absences across a host restart: the partner's shops keep being run while they are away.
• While a returning partner's shop is being handed back, other players are told it is not available right now.

Rivals

• Reworked how a session continues with a different host: the rival companies' history now carries over, which targets rivals failing and closing shops after a host change.
• The Rivals app on joined players now shows the host's figures.

Shops and money

• Goods now keep what was paid for them on every player's game; shoppers still see the store price on what they carry.
• Patched the mop getting stuck in cleaning mode (the "fused mop").
• Patched a stock box being emptied and removed while a player carries it, which could leave the player unable to click or save.

Leaving a game

• Patched errors when leaving to the main menu (clock catch-up, weather and rainy-day errors).
• Patched a crash when quitting the game.

v0.3.2

Going Public 0.3.2

Compatibility

• Everyone in a session needs 0.3.2. Players on 0.3.1 can't join a 0.3.2 game.

Rivals

• Reworked how rival companies treat players. Rival attention, price wars and copycat shops now follow each player's (or merged company's) own businesses instead of the whole session pooled together.
• Price wars in a neighbourhood now run one at a time; a later one waits its turn. Prices recover when a war ends.
• Rival speeches now play for the player they are about.
• Other players' shops now count as competition when demand is worked out.
• Patched rival news and messages disappearing from the phone for players who are not in a company.

Customers and money

• Reworked how customers are handed over when a different player starts running a shop. Customers carry on and keep their seat or machine, and each sale is counted once.
• Patched the owner's hourly sales count billing customers a partner was serving, including customers who walked out without buying.
• Patched partner sales causing the owner's customer list to be rebuilt, which brought in extra customers.
• Patched stock handling when a customer walks out without buying while the owner is away.
• Patched the owner's last till sales being lost when leaving through the menu, Quit, closing the window or Disconnect.
• Patched a partner inside the host's shop at midnight not receiving the new day's customers.
• Other players' customers now move more smoothly and show their activities (gym machines, seating, dancing).

Merged companies and staff

• A stand-in now starts from the owner's real till.
• Reworked rentals and leases for merged partners: an own rental is no longer treated as a partner's, lease ends are recorded, and an offline member's lease is no longer ended.
• Deposits made by merged partners now reach the owner.
• Staff tooltips now show the owner's hours, working days and demands.
• Patched schedule rows disappearing for staff assigned to another shop.
• Patched staff moved into a partner's shop going missing, and leftover candidate copies hiding a partner's employee.
• Patched an extra stand-in worker appearing in a partner's shop. Visitors now see the owner's real staff, and shifts change while they are inside.

Shops and work

• Customers sitting at or queueing at furniture a partner edits now leave, or move to another till, instead of getting stuck.
• Skipping time no longer stands a player up from a work station mid-shift, and shifts end at closing as in single-player.
• A work panel that was opened but never started now closes when the player walks away.

Vehicles and traffic

• Patched traffic piling up on top of other cars when a player steps into or out of a building or underground garage next to another player.
• Buying a car while a partner's car sits on the delivery spot now places the new car next to the spot.
• Patched the icon of an abandoned hand truck staying on the map.
• Players in different underground garages no longer see each other.

Connection and hosting

• Adjusted Steam connection speeds per player, and a busy network port no longer blocks hosting.
• A player refused when joining now sees the reason.
• Patched hosting on Linux / Steam Deck (Proton).
• Starting a New Game after a failed load no longer carries over the old save's owners, cash and loans.

Bug reports and diagnostics

• Patched in-game bug reports being lost, and IP addresses are now blanked in reports.
• Added diagnostics that record what the game was doing if it freezes, plus recorders for car collisions. These only write to the log file.

v0.3.1

Installing: use the BAMP Manager — it fetches the right build and keeps everyone in step. Everyone in a session must be on 0.3.1; older versions can't join (the connection is refused with a message naming the fix). Manual install: unzip into the game's ModsLocal folder so that ModsLocal\BigAmbitionsMP\BigAmbitionsMP.dll exists, replacing the old folder.

This is a bug-fix release for 0.3.0, mostly for merged companies. Thank you to everyone who used the Report button — nearly every fix below started from one of your bundles.

Company mergers

• Sales: a shop no longer loses most of its day's customers when a partner is inside it. The machine that runs the shop now serves its live customers whenever its own player is inside, and a partner's visit no longer swallows the owner's sales.
• Hiring: a member can book a recruitment campaign for a partner's shop at the agency; the owner's side prices it, pays for it and runs it. A partner's running campaigns show in the agency's list (view only).
• Training: a member can send a partner's unassigned employee to training with the normal Train button, and "in training" now shows for everyone instead of "No tasks".
• Purchasing agent: an order aimed at a partner's warehouse is now bought and delivered. Your agent pays from the company wallet, the goods are stored by the machine that runs that warehouse, and anything that does not fit is refunded with the game's usual message. A plan that mixes your own and a partner's warehouses shows two import lines in the bank history instead of one; the total is the same.
• Schedule: a partner's schedule page no longer comes up blank (or refuses a right-click delete) after someone leaves a station in that building.
• Shop work: a partner's mopping and shelf stocking reach the owner; a borrowed vehicle starts from the owner's real damage and fuel; a member with no shop of their own can share newly hired staff.
• Selling a business to a partner clears its objectives, map pin and business page on the seller's screen at once, and a sale where the host is the seller no longer lapses as "declined".

Time skip (sleeping, waiting, working a register)

• The skip now runs twice as fast.
• A customer who physically walks in during a skip is billed once, not twice.
• A shop you are standing in for an absent partner now earns during a skip, like your own.
• A skip that ends part-way through an hour no longer loses that hour's sales.

Stability

• The clock no longer freezes at the top of an hour when a rented building has a business type the game cannot identify (usually a business from a workshop mod that is not loaded).
• The lobby's "mods differ" warning now compares the mods the game actually loaded, so matching players are no longer warned by mistake; when they really differ, the log names the difference.
• A nameless item inside a box no longer breaks the hand truck ("couldn't interact with anything").
• A sale can no longer take the money and the stock without handing over the item; goods on a cart are no longer destroyed when another player handles the bag.
• Schedules no longer reset or crash when the owner's copy refreshes under an open page; a shared shop's schedule copy can no longer overwrite the owner's real schedule.
• Money that arrives or leaves while the interior designer is open is no longer clawed back or refunded on close.
• A helper's deposit into a till or station reaches the owner instead of vanishing.

Guests and partners in your businesses

• A permitted guest or merger member can use a bed, a TV and a workout machine, enters a cinema or theater without a ticket, is not charged for a haircut, and gets the nightclub dance boost — the same as the owner.
• A visitor without permission can no longer lose goods on a friend's shelf.

Hamptons houses

• A house another player rents shows its furniture to players nearby without entering; furniture changes appear item by item; a house whose tenancy ended empties for everyone.

Vehicles and traffic

• Every traffic car one player can see exists for everyone in range, and traffic brakes for other players' vehicles.
• A car parked in an underground garage is no longer hidden forever; auto-park for a joining player no longer lands inside parked cars or in the lane; leaving a friend's car puts you on walkable ground.
• A borrowed vehicle can no longer take a slot in your own warehouse and break the driver page. Taxi fixes for Hamptons addresses.

Platforms

• Linux (Proton): the save folder is resolved before the mod hooks the game's routine for it, which should fix saving. We could not test this ourselves — please report how it goes.
• Mac and Windows players on the same game build can join each other, and the building lists survive an older Harmony loaded by another mod. Also untested by us.

Joining

• A returning player is let back in without the host's click; a new joiner is told the host must approve. A player who joins after a week boundary no longer carries last week's staff hours.

Known issues

• Furniture and food delivery to a partner's shop is still not offered as a destination.
• A few reports are still open because we could not find a cause in the logs: a black screen, supermarket customers leaving with baskets, a ghost at the till, and a car problem after moving out of a shop. If you see one of these, please press Report right after it happens and say what you were doing.

When something goes wrong

Use the mod's report button (top bar). The bundle carries both players' logs and the game build, which is what we need to trace a problem.

v0.3.0

Installing: use the BAMP Manager — it fetches the right build and keeps everyone in step. Everyone in a session must be on 0.3.0; older versions can't join (the connection is refused with a message naming the fix). Manual install: unzip into the game's ModsLocal folder so that ModsLocal\BigAmbitionsMP\BigAmbitionsMP.dll exists, replacing the old folder.

Company mergers (experimental)

Two or more players can now run their companies as one. Propose a merger from the Permissions tab; the other player accepts, and from then on every member sees and works the other members' businesses as their own. This is new and may still have bugs: the confirmation box says so, and the top-bar Report button is the way to tell us what went wrong.

• Businesses: every member's shops, warehouses, factories and headquarters show as the company's on the map, in BizMan and on the leaderboard; walking into a partner's shop works like walking into your own, including registers, storage, the designer and the schedule.
• Money: one company. Every member's income and spending rows show to everyone, coloured by member; the company is billed one tax bill; a bonus or a salary is paid once, by the machine that runs that shop; a merged save records each member's equal share so nothing is created or lost across save, reload, re-forming, leaving or dissolving.
• Headquarters: every member's plans (pricing, purchasing, logistics, HR, headhunter) show on every member's headquarters pages, with the owner's real figures — stock, capacity, destinations. Edits made on a partner's plan are sent to the machine that runs it and reflected back to everyone; the page redraws the moment the change lands. Deleting a partner's logistics plan, changing a manager, adding or removing a destination, and ordering an import all go through the same route, and the game's own notice shows when an order cannot be placed.
• People: one candidate pool per company; any member's worker can be put on any member's HR plan; a partner's staff appear on your rosters; a business phone message reaches every member, with a button to answer it; the daily "employee resigned" and "finished training" notices reach every member.
• Alerts and notices: the objective panel on the left now lists the same business alerts for every member — a partner's empty stock, idle or missing staff, unpaid licensing fees, missing items — taken from the machine that runs the shop rather than guessed from your own copy of it. The top-right notices about company businesses are shared the same way. Personal items (your tax bill, hunger, energy, your own contacts) stay yours.
• Goods: pallets and boxes can be moved between members' buildings; the transfer is confirmed by the receiving side before anything is taken.
• Absence: when a member is offline, another member's machine takes over running their businesses, and hands them back when they return.
• Leaving: any member can leave at any time, and a dissolved or cancelled merger removes every cross-member item — partner people, plans, cargo — from your game.

Traffic

• A car handed over between players is no longer cut off while it is still on screen; it ends only once out of view.
• Patched a crash in the game's traffic density pass that could fire during a load or a join when the camera cell was off the grid.
• Traffic runs on your own machine while you are far from every other player, and ghost cars near the host no longer jerk.

Game update and platforms

• Updated for the game's 16 September patch: the tax table, the logo cache and the pinned-items list were re-seated, and three hooks that had gained a second overload were pinned to the right one.
• One download now runs on Windows and macOS; the mod binds the game's Steam library at run time. The macOS file picker and bug-report folder paths were added.
• The Options "Game speed" slider works again in a session and follows the host's setting.

Small fixes

• Shelf and register warning icons now show for helpers and merger partners.
• A rival's monologue no longer plays on the host when its message goes to another player; no player's shop can be taken as a site for a rival's wave.
• A guest who tries the package tool on a partner's fridge now sees why it is refused.
• The unpaid-tax warning names the company bill; a finished recruitment campaign and the headhunter's result reach the member who started them.

When something goes wrong

Use the mod's report button (top bar). The bundle carries both players' logs and the game build, which is what we need to trace a problem.

Going Public — v0.2.3-beta

Installing: use the BAMP Manager — it fetches the right build and keeps everyone in step. Everyone in a session must be on 0.2.3; older versions can't join (the connection is refused with a message naming the fix).

See your friends on the map

• Every other player now has their own colour, used everywhere the mod shows them: their shop pins on the map, their businesses on the leaderboard, the directions pin to their building, their icon in the interior designer. Colours are assigned once per player and kept; you can change any player's colour from the Mods tab in Options.
• The map's filter list gains a Players section above Status, with one row per online player in their colour. The row's checkbox shows or hides that player's live pin (their door, or the Hamptons house itself); the tick is saved with the world like any other filter, and starts ticked the first time you see a player in that world.
• The row's crosshair points the game's own guide arrow at that player: an edge arrow with their name and live distance that follows them with the map closed, hides while you are indoors, and lights the crosshair in their colour. One tracked player at a time; click again to stop.

Rest, needs and menus

• Power nap: a button in the rest dock while you are in a bed makes rest recover faster until you get up. The host chooses in the lobby whether the button exists for the session.
• Energy and hunger no longer drain to collapse while a menu, the map, the designer or a phone app is open: a need under 10 holds until the menu closes.
• Difficulty and Game speed are greyed out in Options during a session, so nobody can outrun the host's clock.
• The rest dock can no longer be dragged off screen, follows the cursor at any UI scale, and comes back on screen when reopened. A +1d button moves the wake target a full day. The owner of a boat can sell it from the dock while sleeping on it.

Money and permissions

• A helper selling a friend's stock, through the item popup or the designer's Sell tool, is paid only once the owner's copy confirmed the sale at the owner's price; the stock leaves once, and designer sales settle when the designer closes. Two duplication exploits closed.
• You can no longer sell a friend's car you hold a key to; the Sell button is gone from that popup.
• Opening another player's shop page shows a real valuation instead of breaking the page; an unvisited AI shop's page opens on a client as well.
• Accepting a training or honorary-degree offer you cannot afford now shows the game's own notice instead of failing silently.

Vehicles and hands

• Your car no longer vanishes on your screen when a friend drives it out of a building you then walk out of.
• Moving furniture while holding a mop no longer leaves a second mop stuck in your hand after you put it away.

Joining, rejoining and saves

• A first-time joiner into a loaded world starts with that world's own settings (starting cash, difficulty), not the default preset.
• Rejoining after time has passed serves your newest copy, never a day-old one; the host's Save & Exit waits for everyone's uploads to land first; a second click is ignored.
• Joining into a world whose clock has moved keeps your schedules in place: staff sick days, deliveries, campaigns, insurance offers and tax bills shift with the clock instead of all firing at once.
• Staff inherited with a purchased or merged business no longer all call in sick on day one.
• Entering a friend's shop, an AI shop that changed type, or an empty building no longer bounces you back to the street.
• The mod no longer leaves stray portrait pictures in your character folder, and its diagnostic snapshots are pruned to the newest thirty.

If the host leaves

• A client who loses the host keeps playing offline without the traffic error storm; traffic hands back to the game cleanly.
• Offline saves strip the multiplayer-only objects (ghost cars, synthetic rivals, injected staff) and restore them after the write, so the save loads cleanly later. A buy-out offer sent offline is refused with a message saying why.
• The protections that keep the game's own code away from multiplayer-only state now hold in offline play too.

Connection and identity

• A direct-IP join that nobody answers now explains what to do instead of showing a raw error word.
• A machine whose Steam account changed since the mod first ran gets its own identity, instead of keeping the old account's; two players who once shared an account no longer appear as the same player.

Stability

• Ghost cars no longer leave dead radio listeners behind that turned the host's screen black on entering or leaving a building.
• Business records no longer re-broadcast on every check, removing a periodic stutter on every client.

When something goes wrong

Use the mod's report button (top bar). The bundle carries both players' logs and the game build, which is what we need to trace a problem.

Going Public — v0.2.2-beta

Installing: use the BAMP Manager — it fetches the right build and keeps everyone in step. Everyone in a session must be on 0.2.2; older versions can't join. This release is built for the current game build (the two Big Ambitions updates of 1 and 2 September); the host now refuses a join when the two games are on different builds and says so in plain words, so update Big Ambitions on every machine first.

Updated for the September game updates

• Re-attached the game hooks the 1 September update moved (stock counts, the training-school door) and retired the one the 2 September update made unnecessary, so the "game hook failed to install" notice no longer appears on the current game.
• Adjusted the bench/bed/work/study skip to the game's new clock-based finish, targeting the hourly stand-up during a long skip.
• Restored the client's rival list, which the update had emptied, and the shared-shop Deliveries and Insight tabs that went blank with it.
• Reworked the radio so the station can be changed again after placing furniture, and so the music keeps playing through menu opens and closes.
• The phone menu's clock and date now keep running while the menu is open in multiplayer.
• Added a game-build check to joining: a mismatch is refused with a message naming the fix, on both screens.

Private driver in multiplayer

• Every player now sees a friend's private driver: the summoned car, the car that arrives at the destination, and a friend's arrival car appear on all machines as the same model and colour, labelled "'s driver".
• A friend can ride a player's driver like a taxi at no fare: click it, walk over, pick a destination. The driver waits for its owner afterwards rather than being sent away; a driver hailed while still on its way resumes its approach to its owner once the friend has boarded.
• After a ride, the car drives off as ordinary traffic and stays usable until it despawns normally, instead of vanishing on the spot. Added a check so the car that appears at the destination never pulls the departing one out from under onlookers.
• The host's traffic now brakes for a friend's driver and can no longer drive through it; on the summoning player's machine other traffic no longer shoves the car around.
• On a client's machine the traffic system now runs for that player's own service cars only, so their driver approaches, honks, stops and drives off the way it does for the host, with no ambient traffic spawned locally.

Traffic

• Reworked the host's traffic budget to follow the game's own numbers: a player alone sees exactly what the game would give them, players standing together share one allowance instead of doubling it, and a world starts with the same number of cars as vanilla.
• Widened the traffic car pool so rare car models have spare slots for private drivers; the game's own asset data is restored afterwards so single player is untouched.
• Traffic cars now release their brakes when a mirrored car or a departed player's body disappears in front of them, instead of holding position indefinitely.
• Mirrored cars no longer trip the game's underground-parking, elevator, Hamptons and turnstile triggers for a player on foot; a borrowed car you are driving still does.

Passengers and vehicles

• A passenger in a friend's car can now Sleep from the passenger dock: the skip runs and the energy bar recovers. The loiter button is hidden while seated, since the dock owns that vote.
• Clicking a friend's private driver no longer answers "Vehicle locked".
• Granted cars no longer vanish and reappear on the borrower's screen when the host's grant table refreshes mid-handshake.
• A borrowed car's exit and a player's building exit no longer show the avatar inside someone else's building for a moment.

Shops, staff and permissions

• Helpers with business permission enter the owner's gym or nightclub without paying the cover charge; a visitor without permission who pays now credits the venue's owner instead of nobody.
• Orders served by a helper at a partner's register are priced from the owner's own table and judged with the customer's real tolerance, so the owner books the sale at its real value.
• Walls repainted by a helper stay repainted when the owner returns.
• Helper mopping now clears the dirt on the owner's screen as well and moves the cleanliness meter; the mop and cleaning stance show on the helper's avatar for others.
• Ticket booths, hairdressers and gym shelves in a partner's shop now deliver what was paid for and credit the owner: the ticket admits you, the haircut applies after paying, the shelf purchase is mirrored.
• AI businesses left without an interior when a world is hosted from a client's copy are restored from the game's default layouts; player shops are excluded.
• Remembered tills are matched by identity instead of position, so same-layout interiors no longer bind staff to a station in the wrong building.
• Empty AI staff lists now fill from the host on demand, and poaching an employee is arbitrated by the host so both machines agree on who was hired.
• Customers walking in a shared shop follow the game's current animation contract instead of sliding.

Saving

• Quicksaving in multiplayer works again; a menu save with an untouched name keeps the current session's name, and a deliberate rename is honoured.
• The save file written when a player disconnects is dated correctly.

Settings

• The default "Needs drain %" for new games is now 40 (energy and hunger at 40 % of the game's rate). Existing worlds keep the value saved with them; the host can still adjust it per save.

When something goes wrong

Use the mod's report button (top bar). The bundle carries both players' logs and the game build, which is what we need to trace a problem.

Going Public — v0.2.1-beta

Updated for Big Ambitions 1.0.

The mod now runs on game version 1.0. Several of the game's systems changed names or shapes in the update, and the mod has been rebuilt against them.

Going Public — v0.2.0-beta

Installing: use the BAMP Manager — it fetches the right build and keeps both players in step. Everyone in a session must be on 0.2.0; older versions can't join (protocol change).

New: helping run another player's business

• You can grant another player access to a business you own, and they can now do the day-to-day work in it from their own game — without owning it and without you being there.
• Schedule and staffing: set opening hours, hire from the owner's bench, assign employees to a shop, and move staff between the owner's businesses. Bulk assignment works on a whole selection at once.
• Pricing: set retail prices on a shop you've been given access to.
• Warehouses and factories: stock, delivery drivers, production recipes and vehicle slots are all manageable on a shared building.
• The business manager: Insight, Deliveries, Marketing and Settings all work on a shared business. The figures shown — stock on hand, sold last week, revenue — are the owner's real numbers, not a local guess that happened to look plausible.
• Marketing: start, change and cancel campaigns, and call an advertising agency. The agency dropdown lists the businesses you have access to, and the campaign is placed on the owner's business.
• Settings: rename a shared business and edit its logo. A rename regenerates the sign, the business cards and the billboards, so the new name appears everywhere rather than only in the menu.
• Uniforms: set the uniform for each job. You can pick one of the owner's presets, or one of your own — yours is copied into their game so it stays available to them.
• Anything that would take money out of the owner's pocket the moment you click it is greyed out and refused. Ongoing costs the business itself carries — a marketing campaign, a delivery contract — are allowed, because the owner's own books settle them.

Connection

• Large transfers no longer hold up the game. Passing a save between players is a megabyte-class handoff, and it used to be queued ahead of everything else on the same link — the clock and other urgent updates could sit more than 30 seconds behind it. Bulk data is now paced, and the clock runs in a lane that bulk cannot occupy.
• Rejoining a session could leave your clock frozen, because a rejoining player was still being told "paused" after the session had already resumed. The clock stopped at its source and no freeze warning noticed. Fixed.
• Joining no longer sets off a burst of save traffic that competed with the join itself.
• A busy shop's stock now syncs in a fraction of the data it used to, and interiors send changes rather than resending themselves repeatedly.
• Leaving a session now completes its final handoff before the connection closes, instead of racing it.
• Weather is now decided by the host alone — clients no longer schedule their own rain, so everyone sees the same sky.

Storage

• Storage now behaves the same way in your hands, in a vehicle, in your building and in someone else's: the same rules everywhere instead of four sets that disagreed at the edges.
• Filled bags move as one object and keep what's inside them; boxes pour out as loose items, matching what the base game does.
• Sealed boxes can be taken whole out of a vehicle instead of being refused.
• Selling a bag now sells its contents with it.
• Handing an item back to another player can no longer destroy it.
• A borrowed vehicle shows the owner's real cargo detail rather than a summary.
• Paid and unpaid state now follows the goods correctly through every one of those moves.

Furnishing and interior editing

• Rearranging a building in a shared session now sends only what actually changed. Previously a whole interior travelled on every edit, which is why two players furnishing the same building could undo each other.
• An item being placed is protected while the placement is in progress, so it can no longer be swept away mid-move.
• Items stacked on or attached to furniture now survive being moved — previously the things sitting on a piece could be lost when it was rearranged.
• Closing the interior designer sends the whole edit as one update instead of a stream of partial ones.
• A cancelled placement now cancels cleanly instead of leaving the placement stuck.
• Fixed a case where a borrowed cart could get stuck in your hands after crossing between buildings.

Saves and loading

• Multiplayer save folders now carry forward when the game updates, so an update no longer leaves the save picker looking empty.
• A save that is refused now leaves the session as it was, instead of partly changing it on the way out.
• Loans are now captured at the same moment as the rest of the save, so they match the world they were saved with.
• The save picker now shows what is actually on disk.

Around town

• Loitering: you can now call a vote to skip time from anywhere, without needing a seat or a bed.
• Locks: anyone holding a key can lock and unlock a building, not just the owner.
• Billboards: another player's billboard campaigns now appear on the billboards you can see.
• A skip-time vote that cannot proceed now says why, instead of appearing to do nothing.
• Driving with the map open is now handled properly on all three control paths.

Shops and businesses

• A closed business now clears its prices everywhere, instead of other players continuing to see the old ones.
• Business figures shown to a player who doesn't own the business are now taken from the owner's machine rather than recalculated locally, which is what made several of them wrong.
• A till now identifies the building it belongs to, fixing duty assignments that landed on a blank address.
• Work stations are identified by the station itself rather than by its position, so two stations close together are no longer confused.

Going Public — v0.1.17-beta

Installing: use the BAMP Manager — it fetches the right build and keeps both players in step. Everyone in a session must be on 0.1.17; older versions can't join (protocol change).

New: businesses can change hands

• You can now sell a business to another player: send an offer from the Business app, they accept, and the money, ownership, staff and furnishings all transfer in one step.
• Joining players can now take over AI businesses too — the takeover is arbitrated by the host, and the shop arrives furnished and staffed on every machine.

Save storage reorganization (one-time, automatic)

• Saves are now filed by playthrough, the same way the base game files its own saves. Until now, two different playthroughs that used the same world name shared one folder — which could silently overwrite one world with another. That collision is no longer possible.
• The first time you open multiplayer on 0.1.17, existing saves are reorganized into the new layout. Files are renamed in place — nothing is copied, deleted, or rewritten — and a small undo record is kept beside them. You'll see a one-line notice when it happens.
• Multiplayer saves now also appear in the game's own load window, and can be deleted from there.
• The save picker groups saves by world and loads exactly the entry you clicked.

Loading older saves and rejoining

• A save is now treated as one moment in time for everyone in it. Loading an older save gives every player that save's version of their character — a newer copy from a later session can no longer be mixed into an older world. That mismatch was the cause of rented rooms and furniture silently vanishing for the player it disagreed with.
• If a save predates a player entirely (they hadn't joined yet at that point), they create a fresh character when they join it — matching what was true at that moment.
• The save made when a player disconnects is now dated correctly and is properly offered again when they return; previously it could be wrongly rejected or wrongly preferred.
• A player's stored copy now refreshes at save time when the session holds something newer, so a world saved while they were away no longer freezes them at an old state forever.
• Coordinated saves now respect the game's own "can't save right now" moments (casino, driving school, interior designer, placing items) — the save waits instead of silently not happening.
• A save file that fails to load now aborts cleanly back to the menu with a message, instead of continuing into a half-loaded world with players welded together.
• A failed or interrupted save can no longer overwrite a good save slot.

Starting and joining sessions

• Session starts are held until the world is fully populated, so everyone begins together instead of some players entering an empty city.
• Players who join mid-game now recover everything that arrived while their game was still loading — this closes a family of issues where NPCs, rivals, or world data were missing for a joiner until they rejoined.
• Rival businesses are no longer regenerated when joining an existing world, and their identities now stay consistent across machines — this ends the "only my teammate shows on the leaderboard" and "the rivals changed" issues.
• While someone joins, both sides now see download progress (a line in the lobby and per-player progress in the overlay).
• The age field in the lobby is now a proper two-digit field and can no longer create a character who immediately dies of old age.

Shops and businesses

• Paying for boxes now shows them as paid on every machine within seconds — other players no longer see (or trip over) stale unpaid boxes.
• Helpers you've granted business access can now take set-down boxes and shelf stock in your shop and the change carries over correctly to your machine; players without access are still refused.
• Checking out with a basket in a friend's shop now hands you your shopping bag correctly, and baskets carried by other players now show their proper colors.
• Renting a building while you're standing inside it now publishes your interior to the other players right away.
• A joining player's business valuations now match the host's numbers instead of being computed locally.
• Player-owned shops are skipped by an AI-only daily valuation pass that could crash on them.
• Internal staffing entries no longer appear in the schedule view.
• Another player's to-do items can no longer show up in your list.
• The host's own shops can no longer be mistakenly recorded as belonging to someone else, and orphaned business records now heal instead of accumulating.
• Renting and vacating now roll back cleanly on every machine when the request is denied.

Vehicles

• Borrowed cars: the owner no longer collects parking tickets while a friend is driving their car, and the fine state lands correctly wherever the car is returned.
• Revoking vehicle access mid-drive no longer snaps the car back to where it was borrowed — it hands back where it actually is.
• Pushing a friend's handtruck no longer wedges you (releasing it works everywhere, including after crossing roads), and exiting any borrowed vehicle now cleans up fully.
• Parked carts no longer appear inside other buildings that share the same interior layout.

Around town

• Broken map pins can no longer freeze the city map or strand a subway ride.
• A player going briefly off the map can no longer crash the traffic system.
• Shielded a vanilla NPC animation crash that could take down the session.
• Radio: a crash when a guest used a radio is fixed, and station, on/off and volume changes now carry over to everyone; a partially loaded station list now repairs itself.
• The "no home" penalty now clears itself once you have a home instead of sticking forever.
• Getting out of bed immediately after getting in no longer strands you, and leaving a register or workstation can no longer freeze your character.
• "Only the host gets hungry": an old flag baked into earlier saves deadened hunger and energy for everyone else — every machine now heals that flag automatically.

Performance

• Removed a once-per-second hitch that grew over long sessions (a background check was scanning the whole scene four times a second).
• Busy shops no longer re-send their entire interior every two seconds — only actual changes travel now.

When something goes wrong

• If another installed mod is incompatible and prevents multiplayer from starting, a banner now names that mod (with its Workshop link and folder) instead of the button silently not appearing.
• If the players' installed mod lists differ, both sides now see exactly that in the lobby, live; and version-mismatch messages tell each side who needs the update.
• Sharing layout blueprints no longer triggers the mod-difference warning.
• If the mod's own game hooks fail at startup, multiplayer now warns or refuses to start instead of running half-broken.
• Bug reports now capture more of what's needed to fix an issue in one pass, and player names are scrubbed from what's sent.

Going Public — v0.1.16-beta

Installing: use the BAMP Manager — it fetches the right build and keeps both players in step. Everyone in a session must be on 0.1.16; older versions can't join (protocol change).

Saves and joining

• A player whose save file went missing from the session — the usual cause was closing the game mid-save — is now served their most recent save from the session's history instead of being started fresh. The lobby start and the mid-game join use the same lookup, so both paths are covered.
• When a save fires before a player's upload has arrived, the host now fills that player's slot from the newest copy it holds, so an abrupt exit no longer leaves the session with a missing player file.
• A player who rejoins with near-empty data can no longer overwrite a developed building or a live business name; the developed copy wins and is pushed back to them.
• A client that is still loading no longer answers save requests — a half-loaded world can't write over a good save slot.

Placed items and signs

• Factory workstation settings — selected recipe, priority, produce-up-to — now carry over to the other players.
• Renaming a sign or pointing it at a product now updates for everyone right away instead of staying stale until a rejoin.
• Custom images made in the business designer (storefront signs, billboards, logos) now show for every player, not just their owner.

Around town

• Parked cars are already in place when you step out of a building instead of popping in around you.
• World data arriving mid-load no longer tries to act before the world is ready — this removes a burst of errors (including a ghost-car flood) that could hit right after joining.

Getting stuck

• Typing into a text box no longer counts as movement: letters typed into the bug-report window could stand you up mid-interaction and wedge the game so beds, benches and cars all refused until a rejoin. The trigger is gone, and if the wedged state ever appears anyway it now clears itself within half a second.

Performance

• Removed a recurring hitch (roughly a tenth of a second, once per second) that hit drivers whenever another player was working a register.
• Mod windows now scale with the display and the game's UI Zoom setting instead of rendering half-size on high-resolution screens.
• A repeating game-side radio error (seen with certain audio content setups) is now shut off after several failures instead of retrying — and stalling — every couple of seconds for the rest of the session.

Housekeeping

• The mod is now fully inactive in single-player, including the bug-report button.
• Much quieter logs: repeated status lines print only on change, making bug reports easier to read.