Hey there!
As you might already know, December, brought the first release of "Custom Map" support. This means, mod creators can create custom maps you get from the workshop and play around in.
As more content and more types of content gets added to the workshop (which is hosted by mod.io), the more filtering becomes relevant.
So just a little reminder, that in the top of the workshop you can filter, so you ex. only see custom maps.
December/January is obviously also the peak-season for Fireworks Mania, due to New Years, so its always nice to see a lot of new players on my Discord, YouTube and here on Steam.
However, lets get to the more exciting stuff, lets take a look at a rough list of what's next on my todo/roadmap for 2023.
Optimizing map loading
The first thing, which I am already working on but it's not easy, is to load and list maps more optimal. As you know, it can take a really long time to just list the maps if you have a few installed and that's just good enough. As I was creating the custom map support, there are 1000 of things to consider and I was expecting this to become a problem, however, didn't think it would be an issue this fast. However, the modding community around Fireworks Mania are fast dudes, so there were quickly a ton of big maps, which makes this problem even more obvious.
The good thing is, I'm already working on improving this and I am pretty sure I know how to fix it, it's "just" a matter of making it working now. So give me some time and I'm sure I will fix it.
Another thing, that goes hand in hand with the above, is some optimization of actually loaded maps. Right now, its done in a way that takes up more memory than it should really, so as I improve the listing speed I will also improve how map mods are handled and loaded, that should (hopefully) make it use less memory in general.
Obviously, I can only do so much as its also something the mod creators have improve on their maps, but at least I know that I can at least do something, so I'll do that.
Optimize workshop
As you might have discovered, if you have a lot of mods installed, the current workshop UI is not really well optimized. I want to both update the UI in general but also optimize it to run smoother.
I don't know how I want it to look or how to optimize it - I just know it's something that I need to do to improve the overall quality of the game.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer is the most requested feature of Fireworks Mania and I totally understand why.
Before you go all crazy, let me give a little disclaimer to set expectations.
The game have from day 1 been made to be single player. Making a multiplayer game is in itself a huge task, changing an exciting singleplayer game with mod support to be multiplayer, is an insane task. However, I'm wiling to give it a shot for you guys!
Be aware, that it might end up not getting to work good enough for me to include it in the game.
What I'm trying to say is, I'm gonna look into it in 2023, but it doesn't mean it will ever be a thing.
I am pretty excited to start investigate this to be honest - I'm a nerd, so I like these technical challenges :)
I will share the progress, when there is something to share, here on Steam in these Developer News posts and on YouTube and Discord.
Others
There are a lot of other smaller things, I will fix and change and push in smaller updates in the near future. Mostly bug fixes and improvements, but the above is the big ones.
That was it for this "Developer News", Happy New Year everybody and thank you guys once again for the support!
Subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want to see video updates and live stream :)
- Enjoy!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/Fireworks_Mania__An_Explosive_Simulator/