https://packetium.com/devlog What changed in Packetium, in plain English. en https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-10-03-0 Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A desk's downloads come in from the street and a camera's footage heads out to it. A cable carrying both ways draws two lanes, one each side, each moving its own way. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-10-03-1 Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Every cable of the same speed used to move its dots in lockstep, evenly spaced. Each cable now keeps its own rhythm, with uneven gaps, the way real traffic arrives. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-10-03-2 Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 How many dashes a cable shows now follows how much it is actually carrying, so the busy hour looks busy and a fast backbone link moving a lot looks busier than a desk cable at the same percentage. The colour still says how full the cable is. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-10-03-3 Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Dashes are larger, sit on top of their cables rather than under them, and have a bright head, so you can tell which way they are going from a single still. They grow a little as you zoom in without turning into blobs, and fade where they pass under a name. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-10-03-4 Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A dash used to cross every cable in the same time, so it raced along long cables and crawled along short ones. It now moves at a speed set by what kind of cable it is, and a connected cable carrying nothing shows one dot that stays still. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-10-03-5 Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Traffic stands nose to tail at the end it is being sent from, just clear of the box, creeping forward, with red rings popping where it overflows and is dropped. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-10-03-6 Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 During an acceptance day, red barred rings pop beside the street box while the pool is turning connections away. The street cable keeps the colour its load gives it, because nothing on it is congested. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-7 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Winning the next job stopped the building you were already running: its cables went dark and its load read zero for the rest of its contract, so it could never overheat however busy it got. It now keeps carrying what its tenants ask for while you build next door. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-8 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A fault still open when you re-signed a contract could not be fixed afterwards: the call-out stopped half way, the box stayed dark and nobody was billed. It is now fixed and charged to the new term, which is the one paying for the truck. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-9 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 After a client refused to sign, the building you went back to was measured as carrying nothing for as long as the clock ran fast, even with its cables drawn busy. It is measured properly the moment you are back on it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-10 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 It sits under the money, beside the level you promised, and turns red once the month has already fallen below it. Until now an outage's cost showed up only in the books when the month closed. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-11 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 While something is down, the operations panel says what share of the building has lost service, so a dead closet switch no longer reads the same as a dead router. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-12 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The notes beside each cable were cut off mid-word. Each now fits and says something true: Cat6 is the cheap 10G for short runs, Cat6a carries 10G the whole 100 m, a DAC needs no optics but reaches only 5 m, and single-mode is for the street and anything past multimode's 150 m. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-13 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Hovering over a fibre cable in the shop said it needed an optic at each end but not what one costs. It now gives the price, and what the same optic costs in an Aegis box, which takes only its own. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-14 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The build, the engine and the save format now have a line each, so none of them is broken in the middle at any window size. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-15 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A built copy of the game compiled its simulation as debug code, so every tick ran with the optimiser switched off. It now runs optimised, and a busy portfolio's traffic is worked out two to three times faster. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-16 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Windows used to show the game's file as version 1.0 with no copyright. It now says Packetium 0.1.0, with a copyright line, and the game's own code carries the same version. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-30-17 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Three test scenes from the project's first weeks, and the debugging files that recorded where on the build machine the game was made, are left out of every build. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-18 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Pressing Address on public a second time handed out addresses that were already taken, and a game saved afterwards could not be loaded. A second press now carries on where the first stopped, and a bigger public block brings every addressed device across with it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-19 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Saving while you were looking at one of your buildings between jobs made it come back running on the last job's kind of traffic, an office behaving like a stadium. Every building now comes back as what it is. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-20 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The service level now weighs an outage by how much of the building it cuts off: a closet switch costs the devices behind it, an aggregation switch every closet under it, and the router or the street run still takes everything. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-21 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A box that failed late in a month was counted as down since the month began, so almost any breakdown cost the whole monthly fee. The service level now counts only the time from the moment something broke to the moment somebody fixed it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-22 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Every rack, cage, trunk and upgrade bought on the Cloud was charged to whichever building stood in that city, so a stadium could read as a losing contract because of a $150,000 rack. They are now on the backbone's own books, beside the traffic they pay for, your cash is exactly what it was, and games saved before this update have their past purchases moved across when you load them. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-23 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The panel showed what a building had earned, what it had cost and where its contract stood, but not what the contract started with, so the three never added up. It now starts with the bid (or the whole of the last term, after a renewal), adds what came in, takes off what went out, and the total beneath them adds up to the dollar. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-24 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Loading a saved game left the Cloud map saying no month had settled yet, with no figures for any city or trunk, until the next month closed. It now shows the last settled month exactly as it looked when you saved; a game saved before this update shows it again from the next month on. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-25 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Carving Voice addresses the desk phones and Cameras the cameras, and the floor subnet takes everything else — desks, meeting rooms, servers and radios — instead of whichever devices happened to be next. A device that already has an address keeps it, so buildings already addressed are left as they are. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-26 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 After every carve, and when going live is refused for want of addresses, the game now names what is still waiting: how many phones want Voice, how many cameras want Cameras, and how many other devices want the floor subnet. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-27 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 When a subnet ran out, its message always said it was one device short, however many were left over. It now counts every device that wanted an address from it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-28 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The point-to-point subnet is two addresses for a link between two routers, but carving it put two desks into it. It now addresses nothing on the floor. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-29 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 When a client refuses the handover, their building now goes quiet at once: no traffic on its cables and no rates under its switches, because nobody moved in. It stays dark until the next job is laid over it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-30 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Closing the job board after a refused handover used to leave you looking at the refused floor while the readout and the panel described a different building. The view now returns to the site you have running, so the floor, the readout and the panel all describe the same place, after a reload too. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-31 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The day opens at its own hour, three hours before the building's busiest moment, but it ran under a clock still showing the minute you pressed G, so two times three hours apart sat on one screen. The clock now moves on to the morning the building opens and the day runs on it; the line underneath shows when the day starts and ends. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-32 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The top line reads real time, four hours a minute or a day a second, and floor view or rack view, instead of internal names, and it shows the date on every screen, including while you build. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-33 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A box's figure added up every cable plugged into it, so traffic passing through a router or switch was counted on the way in and again on the way out. Every box now reads what passes through it once, the same figure the street shows, and zoomed out, a closet's marker shows its own desks' traffic. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-34 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Pressing U past the biggest circuit wrapped round to the smallest, and the day could then run on a circuit far too small for the building. U now stops at the top and says so. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-35 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Until now the only way to a smaller circuit was all the way round the list. Shift+U steps down a size at a time and stops at the smallest. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-36 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A building handed over below the 30% headroom the contract asks for showed the shortfall under a green accepted and said nothing more. It now says every box in it will work harder, and fail more often, for the whole term. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-37 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The operations panel said nothing was trending on a building accepted at 0% headroom. When nothing more pressing is going on, it now says the thin headroom is the risk and how much harder every box there is working. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-38 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Nothing can be built during the acceptance day, so the hardware list and its tab are put away until the day is over. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-39 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The lines were cut off on screen, and one promised a certificate the game does not have. Each now fits and names what sets the brand apart: any optic fits a Ferrite, an Aegis has the quickest hops but takes only its own optics at 2.2 times the price, and a Bitwell slows to 60% once it runs hot. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-40 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 On a narrower window a hint could break across two lines, leaving a lone word at the start of the next. Each hint now stays in one piece. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-41 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Sites in service, months on the books, postings, call-outs, runs and boxes are now written as one thing or several things, everywhere a player reads them. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-28-42 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A test build made from unfinished work named the version before it as though nothing had changed, so a bug report quoting it pointed at the wrong code. It now adds "with local changes" when that is so, and says the version is unknown when it cannot tell. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-43 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Pulling the gear out or leaving it and walking used to put the renewal straight back on the table, where signing it re-contracted an empty building at the full fee. The building is now handed back for good, even across a save and load, and pressing the button again no longer sends another van to charge you for nothing. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-44 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Its open jobs are closed as abandoned, no truck can be sent there, its gear stops ageing and failing, and nothing you buy later in its city is charged to its books. It no longer asks for your attention or turns up as the site that needs you most. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-45 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The renewal opens three months before a term ends, and walking away inside that window used to keep collecting the fee for a building with no circuit. The fee now stops with the service, and the walk-away summary says how much of the term you gave up. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-46 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A term ending at a building you were not looking at passed with no alert while its circuit kept billing against no revenue. Every renewal now slows the clock, is counted on the readout and marks its building on the World map. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-47 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 When a renewal is waiting at a building other than the one the panel is showing, the panel says so and takes you there, so it can be answered from wherever you are. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-48 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The operations panel, the readout, the World map and the books now mark a handed-back building as given up rather than as a site still running, and it no longer counts as in service. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-49 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A building that kept breaking never cost you any standing once the client had signed, and the board's call-out count sat at zero however often you were sent out. Every call-out in a building's first year now counts against the job that built it, and the board shows them as first-year call-outs. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-50 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A career saved before this update had none of its call-outs on the record. Loading it now counts each building's first-year call-outs, so the board may offer you a little less than it did. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-51 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Loading a saved game put every building you own back into the full, moment-to-moment simulation until you touched the speed keys, so a five-building career opened at 20 to 35 frames a second. The building you were standing in comes back at full detail and the rest go straight back to their lighter hourly model, the way they were when you left. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-52 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The floor view drew every device and cable in your whole portfolio on every frame, including buildings nowhere near the one on screen. It now draws only what the camera can see, which cuts the cost of drawing a five-building career to about a quarter. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-53 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Loading a game that had closed during an acceptance day froze every other building you own at zero, with no traffic on its cables and no way for its hardware to overheat. Those buildings now carry what they were carrying when the game loaded. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-54 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Every switch port searched all of its switch's cables on every frame, and every cable's traffic dots were rechecked every frame even where the load changes once an hour. Each cable is now looked up once, and dots are only touched when their load moves. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-55 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Every conversation a building opens needs a port from its NAT pool, and on the acceptance day the ones that find none are turned away and count against the service level. An online shop behind the smallest public block now loses around half its customers and the client refuses to sign, while an ordinary office behind the same block is untouched. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-56 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Before the day the checklist says when the pool is too small for the floor's busiest hour, during it the readout shows how many conversations are being turned away, and afterwards the sheet says how many public addresses would have held it. The cure is a bigger public block, never a faster circuit, because a conversation with no port sends nothing. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-57 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 NAT only ever used the first 64 addresses of whatever block you bought, so the biggest block on sale held barely more than the one below it. Every usable address in the block now carries conversations. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-58 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 With NAT on, the public block's line now reads how many conversations it can translate at once, so the gap between a small block and a bigger one is a number you can see. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-59 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 It measured the building's conversations at an ordinary moment rather than the busiest one, understating an office's login storm or a stadium's half time by a fifth to a quarter. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-60 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 On a computer set to German, French or most other languages, every price showed in euros at the dollar figure, sometimes beside a dollar sign on the same screen, and a computer with no language settings at all showed a ¤ sign. Every price in the game is now in dollars, wherever it is played. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-61 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A German computer wrote 2.5 Gb/s as 2,5 and 8% as 8 %, and a Finnish one showed the clock as 08.55. Numbers, percentages and times are now written the same way whatever language the computer is set to. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-62 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Some computers showed a loss in brackets, as ($1,234), the operations panel wrote $-1,234, and the books wrote -$1,234. Every loss in the game is now written with the minus sign in front. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-27-63 Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 On a busy shop or an apartment block, pressing 3 offered a router whose ports were each too slow for the closet cabled to them, though together they looked big enough. It now offers one whose every port carries what hangs off it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-64 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Pressing faster during the acceptance day stopped the day where it stood while the clock ran on, and nothing said why. The day now tops out at its own pace and says so when you ask for more. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-65 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 From the second job on, the readout kept showing the build checklist while the day ran, so the day's own running commentary never appeared. It does now, and while the day runs the key list shows only the keys that still do something. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-66 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The checklist held back "open the building" over a run that closed a ring, but pressing G opened it anyway. G now refuses too, and says which fault. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-67 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A day that came in at 99.87% against a 99.9% promise was shown as 99.9%, level with the promise it missed. Service levels on the handover are now cut, not rounded up. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-68 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The handover sheet rounded a 99.9% promise up to 100%, and the books, the board and renewals wrote 95% as 95.0%. Every screen now writes a promise the way the brief does. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-69 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Saving while a cheap switch was throttling itself during the acceptance day wrote its slowed-down cables into the save for good. The save now keeps what the cables are rated for. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-70 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Closing the game while the acceptance day was running brought the floor back ready to build, so the circuit could be changed and the day run again. The day now starts over by itself when you come back, on the same building, circuit and promise, and comes out the same. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-71 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A stadium is mostly access points and a datacentre mostly servers, and the checklist called every one of them a desk. It now counts devices wired and addressed, and the messages about addressing say devices too. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-72 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Every device on a floor was laid, drawn and named as a desk, whatever the client actually had. Each one now shows as what it is, so the file server that needs a faster port is called a server on the floor, in the inspector and at handover. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-73 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 With addresses handed out and nothing cabled, the checklist ticked every device as able to get out right under a line saying none were wired. It now says how many are addressed and how many of those are wired. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-74 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Pressing G before anything on the floor reached the street sent you to the address plan, and doing as it said left G doing nothing at all, or on a later job opened a day that could only be refused and went on your record. It now stops first and says what to cable. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-75 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Pressing F while zoomed out, or clicking your building on the world map, could land on the folded-up summary instead of the desks while saying you were back on the floor. Both now open on the desks. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-76 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The floor opened at exactly the zoom where desks fold into one "46 hosts" box, so the first turn of the wheel folded them. Desks now stay individual much further out, and the floor opens with room to spare. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-25-77 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A building used to open with its street under the checklist, its router under the list of keys and its back row of desks off the bottom of the screen. It now opens framed in the space the panels leave, from the street to the last desk. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-78 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 It names the cable, or the connection to the street, that will not carry the floor when it is busiest, without saying by how much. It is a warning rather than a gate, so you can still open the building and find out. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-79 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Space in a city and capacity between cities are now refused when you cannot pay for them, and the quote says how far short you are. Call-outs and replacement hardware still let you overdraw, because a building in service has to keep running. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-80 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A career the game could not read used to be quietly swapped for a new game, which then saved over it. It is now refused with a plain sentence, and one saved by a newer build is moved aside rather than deleted if you start again. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-81 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Saving now writes a separate file and swaps it into place, so a crash in the middle of a save leaves the last good one on disk rather than an empty file. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-82 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A keyboard shortcut used to throw the saved career away without asking. Starting a new game is on the title screen now, and it asks before anything is lost. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-83 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The Menu button in the bottom-left corner opens the settings, saves and goes back to the title, or saves and quits. Your buildings keep running while it is open, and it waits while the commissioning day runs. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-84 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 It says what the game is and which build you are running, and lists the licences of everything the game is built on. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-85 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Fullscreen, a frame rate cap, how far the scroll wheel zooms and which way, and whether the camera glides or jumps. Reduced motion stills the traffic dots and holds the port lights steady instead of flickering. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-86 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The game now opens on a title screen that shows where your saved career stands — the date, the cash, the sites in service — before you continue it. Starting a new game over a saved one asks first. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-87 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 From the second building on, the top line described a circuit to the street before a single cable had been laid. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-88 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A cable fault left in a building already in service showed up on every later building's checklist, where it could never be cleared. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-89 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A connection to the street cabled by hand kept whatever circuit the previous building had been set to, and the new site paid for that circuit for its whole term. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-90 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 At building and site zoom the moving dots were coloured by other cables' traffic, so a saturated uplink could carry calm green dots. Each stream now follows the cables it stands for. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-91 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The orange street box belongs to the carrier and nothing in the shop replaces it. Deleting it could leave a building that would never open. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-92 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Deleting a switch while a cable was being drawn from it left the cable attached to where the switch had been, and the next click paid for a run into nothing. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-14-93 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 After a client refused a handover, the next building was laid in the same spot, and zooming out drew the refused building's cables underneath it, connected to nothing. They are gone. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-13-94 Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 It said the offer was at the bottom right. It is on the right, and on the Cloud map it now tells you how to get back to it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-13-95 Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Once a floor is wired, the tab that opens the address plan now shows when addressing is what stands between you and going live, rather than colouring the edge of a panel nobody could see. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-13-96 Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 When a floor could not be commissioned because devices had no address, the game sent you to a panel on the right that had moved to a closed tab on the left. It now opens the plan and tells you where it is. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-13-97 Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The router the shortcut placed could reach its switch over only one gigabit, which the first office outgrows at its busiest hour, so that build failed whatever you promised. The shortcut now places the router the floor actually needs. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-13-98 Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A floor whose router reached its switch over a single gigabit, behind a faster connection to the street, was told its ports were the problem. The handover now names the run between the two boxes that bound. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-13-99 Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A rack, a cage or a private suite, picked with 1, 2 and 3 while a city is quoted. The rack is the size that makes the Cloud affordable in the first place, and it could not be bought by hand before. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-13-100 Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 One click on a city used to buy caged floor space on the spot, for over half a million dollars. It now quotes the space that city's market warrants and waits for a second click. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-12-101 Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A cheap switch still hot when the handover day ended kept forwarding at sixty percent of its rating for good, into service and into your saves. It now recovers its full rate when the day is over. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-12-102 Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Doing so started a handover day that never ran, slowed the clock to a crawl and froze every other building you own until the next job. It now does nothing once the client has the building. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-12-103 Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Every cable and switch put in on a second or later job was billed to the building before it, whose costs had already been settled. On a typical career that was about twenty thousand dollars a job that never reached the books. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-12-104 Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Once a client had signed, the build tools still worked, so a switch placed in their building cost nothing and a router could be pulled back out for a refund. The floor is locked from handover on. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-12-105 Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Opening a brief from the board used to commit you to the job, with no way back short of starting a new career. A brief now has a way out, and the offer stays on the board for as long as the board does. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-12-106 Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The client turning a building down used to cost nothing: the floor stayed open and the handover day could be run again until it passed. The day does not repeat now, so the job goes on your record as one the client would not sign and the board comes up. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-06-107 Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Once a client signed, a site's traffic froze at a single number for the rest of the term. It now follows the same daily curve the commissioning day uses, so the morning login peak still bites three years later. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-03-108 Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A sheet comes up when the acceptance day ends, with the service level against what you promised, how much of the demand was carried, the headroom left, the busiest link, and what the building ran closest to running out of. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-02-109 Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Its cards say its ports refuse third-party optics, and now they do: an optic in one of those ports costs more than twice the open-market price. It is charged per end, so a run between two brands only pays the premium once. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-02-110 Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Optics at the ends of a fibre run were free, so single-mode was unconditionally cheaper than copper. A pair of transceivers now goes on the bill, which is what makes the choice between copper and glass a real one at short distances. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-09-02-111 Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The cheapest brand on the shelf has always said it throttles above sustained heavy load, and it never did. A chassis held busy through the afternoon now forwards at 60 percent of its rating until the building goes quiet again, which is a thing you find out on handover day rather than while cabling. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-31-112 Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Click any cable and the panel names the VLANs it carries, or says it is untagged and carries everything. An untagged run is what a floor nobody has segmented is made of. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-31-113 Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A run between two switches carries the subnets that existed when you pulled it, so carving a new one afterwards can leave half of it stranded on the far side of the building. The checklist now names the run and the VLAN, and pressing T on a run makes it carry everything on the plan. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-31-114 Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Carving a block is where you draw a boundary between one set of machines and another, so each one now gets a VLAN number shown beside it on the plan. Devices pick theirs up from the address they are given, and nothing asks you to decide the same thing twice. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-29-115 Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Devices on the floor never drew any power at all, so a closet could be asked for more than twice its budget and still report itself comfortable, and the red ring the building view was always ready to paint round an overloaded switch never once appeared. A stadium's floor wants 12,213 W from closets supplying 5,500 W between them, which the checklist, the building view and the handover now all say. It is a warning and not a refusal: automatic wiring cannot yet size closets for power, so refusing would leave you nothing to buy. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-29-116 Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Nothing anywhere had ever checked for one, so a cable closing a loop simply became a building that misbehaved for reasons nothing named. The checklist now refuses to open the building until you pull it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-29-117 Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A handover used to report the service level you promised and the one you delivered, and nothing about why. It now names the thing the building came closest to running out of — ports, power, uplink or address translation — and how much of it you used. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-29-118 Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A job used to be one number: how many devices. The board card and the brief now name the mix, so four hundred devices reads as 288 access points and 64 cameras at a stadium against 220 desks and 120 desk phones at an office, and surveying a client who understated the site rewrites the line. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-119 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Rather than being written by hand, every figure on the page was taken from a real run, down to the address-block prices and the failure message about a 109.5 m cable run against the 100 m limit on copper. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-120 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The sign-up form works with JavaScript switched off. Your address is used for that one announcement and nothing else. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-121 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 It states outright that there is no store page, no release date and no price. A wishlist button on a game that does not exist yet helps nobody. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-122 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 One page covers the premise, what you actually do across a job, the two maps, the real-world networking limits the simulation refuses to fudge, and screenshots. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-123 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Nothing in the game changes here. Re-rolling the starting map and a pending change to how subnets are carved were each looked at and deliberately left for later. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-124 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Renting a trunk never charges you a build cost, yet the long-distance finance summary still claimed you had earned that cost back. Payback is no longer reported for a link you rent. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-125 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Open a rented trunk and its readout listed the roadside equipment along the route with none of your own fibre in use, exactly like a link you had built yourself. It now states that the link is leased, shows the fibre it runs over, and gives the monthly rate. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-126 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Two of the four starting subnets were drawn in the same colour, and each has its own now. Every floor's private address block is also named to match the current address plan rather than an out-of-date one. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-127 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Both uptime buttons used to light up when you picked 99%. Only the option you actually chose is highlighted now. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-128 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 On a link joining just two devices, an address was being held back for a gateway that is not there, so only one end came out addressed. Both ends get one now. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-129 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Dropping a city on itself used to upgrade or buy a trunk to some unrelated city. It now does nothing, which is what it always looked like it was doing. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-130 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Two panels were both labelled for the current contract but measured different things: one the running total, the other cash in hand. The health warning read the running total, so a healthy site showed as critical until it had earned back its build cost. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-131 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Drag out a new route and the quote is now what you will actually be charged when you let go: a few hundred a month for a leased ten-gigabit link, rather than the three-quarters-of-a-million-dollar cost of building and running your own 400-gigabit fibre. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-132 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Rent paid on leased trunks has its own line in the long-distance money panel, so the total matches the figures printed above it. That cost used to be subtracted invisibly, which left the infrastructure line reading zero for the whole opening act. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-133 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Failed address assignments were counted as successes by the commissioning check, so it sometimes told you to switch on NAT for a row of desks that had no address at all and could not have been helped by it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-134 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 When a device leaves, its address now goes back to the subnet it came from. Re-planning a floor over and over used to consume the free addresses quietly until the subnet had none left. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-135 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Splitting off a second subnet used to hand fresh addresses to every device on the floor, leaving most of them with nothing and blocking commissioning. Only devices that have no address get one now, and anything already working is left alone. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-136 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Quoted at one monthly price, address blocks were billed at another: a block quoted at around $1,143 a month was charged $768. The bill now matches the quote. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-137 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Take a device out of a building already in service, and the refund could go to the wrong budget, drive your balance below zero, and then quietly throw away your saved career when you left the building. All three are fixed. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-138 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Cycling through uplink plans walked straight past what the router at the door could carry, so the largest circuits billed you every month for capacity that never arrived. The list stops at the biggest one that fits now, and says so. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-139 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 No router could take an aggregation switch's uplink at full speed, so a large venue ran out of capacity long before it ran out of ports. There is a bigger one on the shelf now, and the arenas on the job board can be finished and handed over. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-140 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The readout for whatever you had selected could be covered by the panels below it, and on a shorter window the address plan was pushed off the screen entirely. They sit in one column now that cannot overlap itself and scrolls when it runs long. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-141 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Dragging fast fibre into a slower port provisioned the run at the cable's rating, and the checklist then complained about a run you had just been allowed to pull. It is provisioned at whatever the two ports and the cable can jointly do. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-142 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Dragging a cable always took the lowest free port, which is always an access port, so the SFP+ and QSFP cages could not be used by hand at all until every other port on the box was full. A run between two boxes reaches for a cage first now. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-143 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A connected port was drawn so close to the colour of an empty one that a switch with forty-seven cables in it read as an empty switch. Occupied ports are clearly lit now, and an uplink cage in use no longer looks identical to the empty ones beside it. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-144 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The shop and the address plan used to sit open on opposite edges of the screen for the whole build. Pick one from the bar instead — Hardware, Networking or Rack — and press it again to close it and get the whole floor back. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-145 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The number of times you had refreshed the board was not saved, so quitting and coming back dealt a fresh set of offers. It is saved now, and the board you left is the board you return to. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-146 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Some larger clients have offices elsewhere, and they only come to you if your long-distance network already serves those cities well. The job is the same job — one building, one handover — but you never see it until the trunks are there. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-147 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Every automated check names the screen it wants, so nothing ever started the way a player starts it — and a built copy still opened an early solver demo from the first week of the project rather than the editor. It opens the editor. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-148 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 The catalogue gains a larger router, so the fastest closet uplinks now have something that can accept them. Automatic builds place it where it fits. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-28-149 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 A cable now runs at the speed of its slowest part, whether that is either port or the cable itself. Every headroom figure you have seen until now was measured through ports that could never have passed that much traffic. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-27-150 Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 All three used to land on the last site you had open rather than the one you had selected. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-27-151 Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Wiring a floor automatically packed 51 desks into a 48-desk closet, which pushed nearly a hundred copper runs past their 100 m limit and left the last two closets built but carrying nothing. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-27-152 Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Every call-out you cleared counted against your service rate, so tidying the queue before a renewal could cost you the contract. A call-out raised inside the notice period now costs money but never lowers the rate, and an empty queue maxes it out. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-27-153 Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Because a backup job filled every link on its path to 100 percent, a well-built site was graded as having no headroom at all and then paid inflated running costs for the rest of the term. Backup traffic is now left out of the headroom figure. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-27-154 Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 An open heat alarm that costs you no uptime, docks no fee and clears with one cheap call-out could still sink a renewal. A site that met its promise every month for three years now re-signs. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-27-155 Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Left to build a site on its own, the game used to hang a stadium's worth of wiring closets off one ten-gigabit uplink, which then failed while the building's own ports sat empty and the big line into the site went unused. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-27-156 Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Occupants now match the building's type, instead of rows of identical desks all asking for the same bandwidth. Across the first four jobs, a finished site opens with 43 to 69 percent spare capacity, rather than so much slack that nothing could ever break. https://packetium.com/devlog https://packetium.com/devlog#2026-08-27-157 Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Owning more than one building used to mix the two together: the rack view listed every wiring closet you own, wear costs landed on the wrong gear, heat warnings fired at the wrong site, and an uplink upgrade could re-cable the site you last looked at.