Hey everyone!
This week’s update is a little late - I was travelling this weekend and then feeling a little under the weather. Regardless, we were able to make some decent progress implementing the new features, so I want to talk about that today.
Whenever we create new features, there are usually a few steps: First of all, we design the feature, trying to figure out what the game needs. Secondly, we try to create the new system, see how it works out, and adjust the design in whatever ways we think fits best in practice. Thirdly, I usually rewrite the “experimental” initial approach of the feature, so it is cleaner and more scalable. After this third step, I usually put it into a single building or into our experimental map (depending on the feature), and call it more or less done. However, that is a little optimistic. There is, of course, a fourth step needed, which is to also implement across the rest of the game.
As a result, we’ve had a lot of features which hadn’t gone through the fourth step yet - something that isn’t too difficult to do, but that still requires some work to be dedicated to it before we can release the v.0.8!
Among the features I took through the fourth step this week were, for example, the strategic and tactical map. So far, the setup had only existed for our experimental coop map, but it is now available in all maps. Another implementation improvement was our multiplayer save loading. After adapting it to be local as I mentioned last week, I now also implemented that only the host can try loading it, and that every player is automatically assigned the faction that they played with before.
Another improvement was made for the mineral veins. So far, the 3 types of vein had been hard coded (iron, gold, gems). In the past week, I was able to refactor this to be able to handle any number of minerals (this will be important for the industry update (0.9) as well). Consequently, we’ve also added stone and coal as possible mineable resources already. This is something we strongly feel is needed for 0.8 already, as it will also add needed progression and a sense of satisfaction as you advance up the island.
Completing these steps gets us closer and closer to actually finishing 0.8, and we are excited about getting them ready for release!
Until next week!