Hi everyone!
Here is this months state of the game with a slight delay as we just released the research update 2 days ago! Be sure to check it out if you haven't done so already! This SotG we want to give you an update on our roadmap as well as on our TODOs and things you can expect in the coming weeks.
Roadmap:
We decided on one "big"-ish change in the current roadmap and that is that we merged the Visual Update and the Diplomacy Update together into one big update, the Visual & Diplomacy Update. We thought it would make more sense to merge these updates because both of them on their own are not nearly as big or content rich as the research update because each focuses on a specific area in the game. The result would have been that each update would only be of interest for parts of the community. The Visual Update would have only be of interest for those that dont have to run the game on low settings and only for those that are interested in visual changes / improved graphics. The Diplomacy Update on the other hand would have only be of interest mostly for multiplayer players. On top of that the merge cuts down on development overhead like creating a trailer for each update as well as other preparations.
So Tldr:
- The merge will cut down the development time (only one trailer instead of two, one testing phase....)
- The merge will make the update more interesting for a broader part of the community
Having said that, here is an updated look at our roadmap:
Visual & Diplomacy Update:
We dont want and cant give you an exact list of what will be part of the update just yet, as we just started development but here is a list of the headline feature we are planning to bring with this update:
- Particle effects (smoke for chimneys for example)
- Atmospheres around planets
- People running around in your cities
- Diplomacy menu including diplomatic actions between players (will be expanded upon with the military update of course)
- Trading between players
- Statistics menu showing item production and consumption rates (We have pulled this into this update based on your feedback!)
Current state:
QoL and Bug fixes from last SotG:
Here is a list of QoL features and bug fixes from the last SotG that were already shipped:
- Display tile placement requirements for buildings (ocean/land/coast) - Shipped with 0.2.0
- Building a mine directly on a resource deposit from the resource menu - Shipped with 0.2.0
- Warning if a player wants to destroy their last spaceport/warehouse on a planet - Shipped with 0.2.0
- Warning if a player tries to colonize a planet without iron, coal and clay as their first planet - Shipped with 0.1.7
- Improvements to the gamma slider - Shipped with 0.1.7
- Upgrade hotkey for upgrading a building - Shipped with 0.1.7
- Multiple desync fixes - Shipped with 0.1.7 & 0.2.0
Big TODOs:
This a list with the biggest TODOs we currently have on our list:
- Rework and upgrade of the Tutorial system as mentioned in the last SotG (This one might ship with the next big update)
- Statistics menu showing item production and consumption rates (Coming with the next big update as mentioned above)
- Terraforming (No ETA for that yet)
Quality of life:
There are still a couple of QoL features from last time that we are working on but there were also lots of new good suggestions from you that we added to our list:
- Hightlighting the connected farm fields when selecting a farm
- Showing more info in the overview camera (like what faction is owning which planets...)
- World seed is annoying to type in
- Add information about the upgraded storage capacity to the tooltip of the depot
- Show information about the stats of a spaceship in the construction cost tooltip in the spaceship yard
- The camera is moving way to fast when zoomed in
- Setting a minimum amount of items that will always be kept in storage by trade routes
- Chat size and overflow improvements
- (Lots of item consumption / production rate suggestions that we will bundle into the statistics menu)
Bugs:
We are currently aware of a couple of bugs that you have reported to us:
- Buildings / spaceships sometimes dont load correctly and are invisible or corrupted (We just found the issue (finally) and this will be adressed with the next patch)
- Ships on trade route sometimes just stop and need to be unpaused
- There is still a potential desync in multiplayer when building or upgrading something
- Sounds sometimes overlap very akwardly
- Technology effects sometimes dont apply correctly
- There is another bug that is sometimes causing tooltips to get stuck
Again we hope this gives you an overview of what we are working on and whats coming next! Thank you for playing!
TeamJA