Hey there!
We hope that you are well and managed to stay sane facing the current challenges! After over two months we wanted to give you a sign of life and tell you about the things happening for Malmyr behind the scenes.
As mentioned a couple of months ago, we both have a "normal" day job to be able to continue work on Malmyr and upcoming games. Even though we would love to put more time into gamedev, all in all, the plan is going fine.
Localization
In our last State of the Game post we detailed our plans on localization and that we wanted to provide machine learning based translations as a cheap and fast solution.
The plans changed.
After long discussions about what standards we would like to achieve and seeing how the machine learning translation performed on the English -> German test, we decided to use it, if at all, only as an emergency solution. As a result we are opting for professional localization instead.
For now this means, that after reviewing player numbers and getting a lot of quotes, we will most likely release Malmyr for three additional languages: German (translated by us), French and Russian.
We do know that there are huge and awesome communites that speak other languages, like Italian, Spanish or Brasillian Portuguese! Sadly we just cannot afford translating the game into more languages right now. But, depending on how well the first localizations perform, this may change in the future.
Major version: Malmyr 2.0
With the same patch that will deliver localization, we want to improve Malmyr even more. There is still one major point that players have a hard time to grasp: How the marketplace and food delivery to houses works.
After reviewing the mechanic we decided that it is actually not bringing much to the table. So we will remove it. That means that you are now free to place your houses wherever you want, they will get their food from the global food storage. The kitchens now will produce food globally. There also will be a couple of other smaller improvements. One example would be that Malmyr now finally has a speed up button.
The third part of the Malmyr 2.0 upgrade will be about the magical runes you can find in Malmyr. All in all runes have been received well and people like the idea, but they are still not used enough. We think this is due to them not being powerful enough and not offering the player enough meaningful ways to actually make use of them.
Therefore we are revamping the whole rune system. Parts, like terraforming and using them as a passive buff, will most likely stay. Other parts, like the way runes are currently crafted will see bigger changes. As of now, it is not clear how exactly the system will change, but we will keep you posted.
This also means, that now you have the chance to leave your footprint on Malmyr: Tell us what you would change, add, remove or improve regarding the rune system in the comments!
One last thing: We just started a small giveaway for three keys of Malmyr. If you want to join in or just help us out with some reach, retweet and comment on this https://twitter.com/zieglergamedev/status/1401604930608193537.
As always, thank you for your time.
Stay healthy and don't forget to review Malmyr :D.
Yours
René
Twitter @zieglergamedev
Discord Official zieglergamdev GbR Discord