The game has sold beyond my expectations. With 1000 copies in less than 12 hours. Please excuse me if this post makes no sense, as you can imagine, I haven't slept much.
So, a big thank you to all who have supported me this far. If you weren't aware, Songs of Syx was kickstarted 4 months ago, found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/songsofsyx/songs-of-syx With those funds, and the ones I'll receive now, another year of development is firmly secured.
Also big thanks to the volunteers in the community and its managers! You are really taking a load off my shoulders! Thanks to Superwutz, who is now part of the development team.
First off, some bug fixes:
- The damned message panel can now be closed. (it could be closed with right click, but now also through clicking the 'x').
- Crashes when pressing the wiki button is gone. Instead no wiki will be opened, because there isn't one yet for all room types.
- Steam screenshots should now work. Unfortunately the in-game screenshots made by clicking buttons /pressing prtsc are not connected to steam yet, but will be in the next major update.
- Mac unplayability: When playing on mac, the steam overlay goes rabid and completely takes over. I have no control over this. The only fix now is to disable it. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9394-yofv-0014 Long term fixes is Steam fixing it, or me dropping Mac support, if it's not acceptable.
- Crashes when clicking play. This seems to be conflicts with other software running on your PC. I've had Bandicam as a culprit for example. try turning those off.
Criticism
A lot of criticism is based on the lack of polish and lack of user-friendliness really and that is fair and expected.
But please keep in mind, I'm a solo developer and just an ordinary homo sapiens, not a AAA studio. I've also tried to make it clear that despite having in development now for 7 years, it is still rough. I don't spend much time on polish and balancing yet, simply because that gets in the way and constitutes extra work as I continue to add new features and mechanics.
That's how it's going to be, but the reason I'm launching on steam now, is that I believe a threshold has been reached, where enough foundation work has been built to allow me to focus more on making it all, well, fun and intuitive to play.
So the game ATM is aimed at people who want this kind of game hard enough to live with hiccups, bugs and other bumps along the way.
In the end I hope to make a great game for the mainstream audience, but it is not there yet and not for the vast majority of people at it's current state. I expect this to change within 3 years. And I don't expect to release 1.0 for another 5 years.
UI
This is an ongoing process. I think the current one is better than the demo, but I've heard it still isn't... perfect. I'll continue to work on it, but I'd love to hear more concise suggestions on how you'd like the UI to be in the future, where to move buttons, how to group functionality and so forth, so please let me know if you're up to that.
Multiplayer
A lot have asked if there will be multiplayer, especially since I have a button for it :). The button will be removed. It won't have multiplayer in any foreseeable future. the closest thing to it will be a mechanic, where you can optionally upload your cities to a server and let other players raid and conquer them. But this is pretty far off.
The Coming Months
Apart from that, you guys seem to enjoy it, which gladdens me. I've already started on the next update. It will focus on your subjects. I'm making races more modifiable and adding slaves and nobles, although they'll be primitive at first. ETA: 6 weeks. After that, I'm going to revisit the production mechanics, and make some new rooms and try to solidify that. Meanwhile I'm hoping the modding community picks up and that they donate a feature or two to the main game :)
You can see what I'm doing here: https://trello.com/b/wF5RYqdF/songs-of-syx
The Future In General
The primary goal for the next 1-2 years is fleshing out the base-building aspect of the game. This includes adding religion, heath care, alcohol and many other features. The foundation for empire management and battles are there, but they'll have to wait a bit until this is done, so that the game can be enjoyed in some aspect for the mainstream audience. Fear not though, battles will be spectacular with ranged units and artillery and you'll spend most of late game conquering and enslaving the world.
All right, thanks for playing and don't forget to communicate your feedback.
AND DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE A REVIEW!
/Jake