Its been a rough couple of months. I've seen ArsonVille sales trickle along slowly, but with no updates from my, I'm surprised its selling at all. Lots of things have been going on, and I'm taking a look at where I am and what I need to do for the loyal players we have.
Here's whats happened on my side:
I took a good look at where ArsonVille was sitting. Basically the game was developed over a 48 hour period for Ludum Dare, and while this pushed me to create a game that was complete and playable, it meant that a lot of compromises were made within the code itself as part of its creation.
If I had more time, I would have done things differently. (Lets come back this this point later). And I felt that the ability to improve and move forward with the game and changes requested by players and the community in general, were not easily achievable with the code base in its current state.
Back to that previous point: "If I had more time, I would have done things differently". Yes, this is very true. However over the last couple of months I have come to realise that while I would have approached it with a cleaner design and better overall construction, the single most important thing that stands out about ArsonVille is this: Its complete, and its released.
Thats a far more important point than the cleanliness of the codebase. I've been looking at the product as a whole, and not taking a very iterative approach to the release of updates and improvements.
During January I began a complete rewrite of the game, which was looking promising. It currently has support for moddable tiles, tile types, and tile objects. This would allow me to open up the game to the steam workshop and allow people to create things other than trees and houses to be generated on top of tiles, or to create new tiles themselves (perhaps sand, or gravel??).
I did this complete rewrite using a new technique that i heard about at Unity's Unite conference. While its touted as a successful and good approach, it worked for up until a point where things became almost too loosely coupled in the game, and I was unable to move forward.
Here are some screenshots of what is capable in the current rewrite build, noting that the gameplay side of things is a shambles, so while it can look pretty, its essentially unplayable.
New terrain look and feel
This removed the gaps between blocks, and the simple cubes for terrain were replaced with a very simple model that gave the impression of some uneven ground. The effect looked quite nice, and this is something I want to get into the upcoming builds of ArsonVille.
Moddable
The rewrite is completely moddable. You can replace, and create new Tiles (ground), objects, fire, trees, birds. They would ideally be managed and subscribed through the steam workshop.
This is an example of a simple tile replacement to change some of them from cubes to cylinders. No code required.
Massive maps
Watching the world burn is pretty fun. I enhanced the world generation to allow massive maps. This was later extended for endless maps (scrolling and map generation). While this was pretty, the mechanics of how this would work, and how to reliably see whats going on when your fire spreads to multiple fronts on a large map, are unsolved problems at the moment.
Level Editor
This just needs to happen. With an effort to engage friends while still remaining a singleplayer game, I had the idea to support weekly challenges for certain map seeds, and then extend that to user-created maps through an ingame level editor. The level editor is in early stages, but its where the rewrite started, and how all the moddable functionality got included.
This is a sample of the scene and UI for the level editor:
Campaigns
Another one that just needs to happen, so that the single player nature of ArsonVille can feel a bit more rounded out. I began work on the campaign maps and menu adjustments to support the campaign selection. This introduced multiple player profiles, and difficulty levels which in turn caused the creation of the flexible burn algorithm component to the moddability of the game. This burn algoritm customisation may or may not be kept.
What next:
Phew. I'm glad i've been able to at least provide a glimpse into what has been going on behind the scenes with ArsonVille.
I need to chop all this stuff down into achievable pieces that can be attacked in some sort of priority order. I am but one man, with a full time job, and I need to maintain the velocity that will keep players happy, and the regularity that keeps then engaged. I also need to be sure not to overcommit. Overcommitting to features or work on a game like this being developed in the public can lead to a few nasty things: Burnout (loss of interest) or just plain failure and inability to deliver updates. Neither of those are desirable.
My goal henceforth is to keep a light pace and rhythm that keeps things moving, but also affords me the time I want and need to work on other interesting projects being published under the Slavitica name.
Promises:
- A website, for webby bloggy things. Nothing fancy.
- Development blog every 2 weeks
- Release every 2 weeks
- Keep momentum by engaging the community and switching up release and post weeks to keep myself engaged and refreshed
Fallbacks:
- Sometimes releases can't happen, lets be honest. In such cases, a release could be filled with an additional post, explaining why. This acts as a good retrospective for myself as well as ensuring the community is kept up to date
Finally, requests:
- I need to be held accountable.
- I have a full time job, and this game development is in my free time, but:
- If I miss a target or if anyone feels that I need to provide more or other information then please, let me know.
Schedule:
- Next release: Wednesday 8th March
- Next blog: Wednesday 15th March
Thanks to all ArsonVille players out there, for sticking with me, and for supporting Indie Game Dev. I love you all.
