Hello my fellow Metal Heads.
Again, it has been a long time since my last update, and I'm sure many of you who follow Metal Heads, or are new to the game, have the same question "Is this game dead?".
IS METAL HEADS DEAD?
The answer is "absolutely not".
However development IS very slow for a number of reasons, but firstly, I want to show you what is and has been worked on before I give you excuses.
WHAT HAVE I BEEN WORKING ON?
NEW BOARD GAME GOALS/MODES
There are new goals that can be reached now, but this is up to the host to decide what mode to play.
But the host can create a custom mode that allows them to combine goals, for example, the primary goal might be to collect GOLDEN GEARS, but the secondary goal might be to reach a series of static checkpoints. There are other factors such as if rounds are limited or not that determine the win conditions, but this will certain make gameplay a little more interesting, and I'm excited to see what modes you come up with.
There will be more modes and goals in the future too.
BOARD GAME CUSTOMIZATION SETTINGS
Firstly, there was the implementation of a plethora of general gameplay settings to add, create UI elements for these settings, and then make sure that these settings carry over into the board game.
This in itself, is a pretty mammoth task, but it's one that I know is absolutely worth it. I LOVE customization in games, it might be a lot more work for developers, but it's those games that tend to do really well as it gives the player the choice on how the game plays.
If the player doesn't like something? Let them disable or change it.
While this is simple in theory, it does create a lot of conflicts, contradictions within the gameplay, that can cause some sillyness to occur, but still, I think I'll let you all decide on what chaos to unleash on your boards.
If you want to run with 200% speed, and start in random locations on the board with each player getting anywhere between 0 and 50 plectrums to start with, and pre-place 20 traps/deployables, go for it!
NEW ITEMS
I have created a bunch of fun new items, and worked a bit more on existing items, removing bugs etc from them. This took some time, especially with some of the newer items requiring some advanced AI navigation that isn't built into unreal engine. Such as an item called "Swoopy Boi", it's not great, but it works.
ITEM THEFT/GIFTING
Players will be able to give items, or collectibles (such as Golden Gears or Plectrum Points) to other players, or they may steal them. This took a bit to get working, and is still not finished, as there's a few bugs to iron out and visual polishing to do. This may not make it into the update, but I'll do my best.
I would have shown you a GIF, but it's nothing special to look at right now.
ITEM WHEEL
As part of the customization update, I wanted to allow you to choose how many items players are allowed to carry at one time. This meant that I needed to create an item wheel. This has turned out to be absolutely fantastic for gameplay, as players can activate some items prior to movement, and then equipped themselves with a deployable item for when they do their movement turn.
ITEM SETTING CUSTOMIZATION
After creating the new items, I worked on allowing players to customize individual item settings. These are relatively basic settings, such as if the items are available to purchase at a shop, or only found on random item tiles, but some items allow further customization, such as the Stun Mine, players can, for example, control if it stops the player entirely, or slows them down, and for how long.
And if you really like, you could make the double jump do more than just a second jump.
CURSE EFFECTS
I got to working on the effects of players being cursed. Now players have a curse level, the higher the curse level, the more bad stuff happens, but in some instances, the more cursed a player is, the better.
Every single item, tile etc has some effect from the curse, including the move wheel (which you all know about already), but also the dice can be cursed.
There is still more work to be done, such as adding a BLESS amount, which serves to counter the curse, and to give players buffs, but the curse effect already adds so much more interesting gameplay.
The effects of the curse, can of course be tweaked within the board game customization settings too.
Here's a few things the curse may or may not do depending on how cursed you are.
GAMEPAD USER INTERFACE NAVIGATION
I had to implement my own gamepad menu navigation system, as the built in system does not work well, and some of the plugins in the marketplace also do not work well.
This taught me a lot of new things, but also took a long time, and was easily the most problematic thing to work on, however it is now at a point where I am slowly updating all user interface navigation with this system so that those with gamepads can navigate menu's the same as in every other game. It's such a small thing that is bare minimum in any game with controller support, but turned out to be nightmarish to implement.
This menu navigation is still being worked on and optimized wherever possible, I run into bugs here and there, but it's getting to a point where it's easy for me to implement throughout the rest of the game.
This may sound silly but the biggest hurdle I have to worry about now is seemlessly switching between mouse/keyboard and gamepad, which some plugins do, but I've also found that they result in a lot of other problems with input.
WHERE IS THIS UPDATE CURRENTLY AT? WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE BEFORE YOU CAN PLAY?
I am finally at a point where the update can be played OFFLINE. I will be testing with people who have not yet played the game, or have little gaming experience to test the user experience, to observe how well they can navigate menu's and such. If they are struggling, then I need to do better, and ask for feedback on what would help make things more clear.
Games should not feel like work, they should be fun and intuitive.
Once I am satisfied with the offline functionality and have eliminated whatever bugs show up, I will begin to ensure that everything is working ONLINE.
This will firstly be done on my own with multiple PC's set up, I have found this is the most efficient way to remove most network related bugs, but then I will begin private testing with the Discord community.
Once I am satisfied with the state of online play, there are a few major bugs I wish to iron out if I don't already crush them (such as player 1 sometimes just not spawning, but everyone else does).
Then I will polish things up wherever I can, do some marketing stuff, and launch the update for everyone to play.
WHAT'S NEXT AFTER THIS UPDATE?
I will primarily be focusing on new board game maps that I have previously shown off.
I held off on releasing these because the board game mode is pretty bad currently, so I didn't see much point releasing pretty new maps if the board game mode was still bad.
I will of course still be adding more to the board game customization, fine tuning, tweaking, bug fixing etc, but the major focus is on new board game maps.
WHEN DO YOU GET TO PLAY?
Sadly, I cannot estimate when you will be able to play, I know it has been a long time in development just for this update, and if Metal Heads was making enough money for me to work on it full time, the update would have been done already.
I do need to get into a habit of keeping you all in the loop however, I have been so stretched for time that when it comes to working on the game, or updating the community, I end up working on the game, which is not the right approach to take.
I just don't want to make posts with nothing to show, that's all.
WHY IS DEVELOPMENT TAKING SO LONG?
The main reason is I have a full time job that takes up the majority of my time now, and is necessary in order to pay the rent, food etc.
It is the work/life balance that so many struggle with. I am no different as a solo developer.
That said, I try to squeeze in as much game development into my life, wherever possible, and have been making better progress as of late due to managing my spare time more efficiently, but there's always room for improvement.
The board game customization update was something that was supposed to be fairly straight forward to do, but I have run into a plethora of technical problems within Unreal Engine (this is in no way discrediting this amazing engine btw) which I have needed to learn about and figure out how to work around or fix.
Some of these technical issues took literal months to fix, some were 3-6 weeks, and a lot of the time, I would resolve one issue, only to be presented with another, this has been incredibly frustrating and exhausting, but it needs to be done, and thankfully I perservered, got through a lot of the issues that was hindering progress.
I am now at a point where I am doing local offline testing of the update, which is pretty massive.
Whilst I do this, I am continuously making improvements to the update, to the UI, to menu navigation etc, and the overall user experience.
There's still a LOT to go before I am satisfied to release the update, because to me, it feels like this update is a second chance for the game, something to breathe new life into the game, and if I release it half baked, it's just going to result in disappointment, so I am really striving to improve the quality of gameplay significantly.
LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS
I hope you are all rockin it!, and if you have any questions, or wish to discuss this update, please feel free to either post in the comments, post on the DISCUSSION FORUM, or join the
OFFICIAL DISCORD
I appreciate you all for being patient, and I appreciate any understanding given.
Once again I apologize for the lack of updates, and the lack of transparency surrounding development, but now I feel at least I can actually show off what I've been doing.
THANK YOU AND ROCK ON!
