Hello Everyone!
I hope you are all doing well heading into the winter season. It's been almost 2 months since the last post about v0.3, so I just wanted to make another update on how it's been going and why it's taken what feels like an eternity to get this update out.
Let's dig in!
What's happened since the last update?
The last update I posted on Steam was on October 1st, which hinted at the new logo and that the update was in the final stages of polish and had entered private testing.
Since then I've managed to complete a lot, but more issues have arisen during this time which have delayed the release of this update. Specifically, these mainly pertained to...
Multiple shader issues across different systems (lowres view, expansion view, etc)
Finnicky controls that have required multiple tweaks (based on PT feedback)
A LOT of small UI related issues; sensitive scroll bars, non-functional buttons, unfinished windows, certain settings not working, etc.
Multiple obscure entity issues related mainly to the FSM system that most entities now use (some examples being bad unit pathfinding, drones freezing, drone route configuration flow, etc)
Multiple model-rendering issues, mainly being caused by the new rendering pipeline
Missing features from prior versions (placement animations, range indicators, route previewing, etc)
Bugs with some of the new gameplay systems (engineering, quests, infinite worlds, etc)
A ton of new issues from new entity types caused by object pooling
And the biggest offender: THE SAVE SYSTEM!
The damned Save System...
This has easily been the most time consuming aspect so far. What I originally thought would only take a couple days to update ended up taking over 2 weeks to fully update and finish. I was NOT expecting this to be such a large undertaking, and whilst it's done now it required a lot of tweaking to get right.
Without going too deep into it, the issue was mainly with supporting the new game systems and infinite worlds, specifically with saving/loading chunks. There were SO many issues that arose from this, and it ended up eating a lot of my time to get right. Things like non-grid aligned entities not saving, entity state context not saving, entity references causing bugs if the referenced entity was not yet created, etc.
Whilst it is functional now, I cannot begin to even illustrate how much of a headache this was, ESPECIALLY because this system is used heavily by the region manager during active gameplay, allowing you to seamlessly and quickly switch between regions.
So where are we at now?
Without spoiling too much, we (being the testing group) are finally beginning to actually test the gameplay side of this game. Most of the bugs have been fixed, any major annoyances or missing QOL features have been addressed, and I think I've solved most of the balancing issues.
With that said, there is currently an issue with the quest system in regards to how objectives are tracked across regions and prior to a quests' activation. This is very important as objective tracking needs to be robust enough to work consistently, otherwise soft-locking progress is possible. I have a solution in the works but we have yet to actually test this and see if it works (hoping by the end of the weekend)
When do YOU get to play?
My goal this month has been to get experimental out before December, and while there's still a slim chance of that happening, if history shows us anything that probably isn't gonna be the case.
I have put my BEST foot forward for this update, and I hope everyone will see the increase in quality once it's out, but alas it is still not quite ready yet. I will do my best to keep everyone updated here on Steam, but if you're looking for more consistent updates, the best place to do so is over on our Discord server.
You can join using this link: https://discord.gg/vectorio
I understand the ongoing frustration with the current state of the game on live, and to those who have been waiting patiently but keep getting let down, I am sorry. I do not have any valid excuse for this; this is a released early-access game, and that means there are expectations for updates to be delivered in a timely manner, and for a continuous back and forth between the community and the developer to create a game everyone enjoys. This has been anything but the case with Vectorio.
I promise everyone here, that for future updates & future games entirely, I will do better. While I am proud of v0.3 and am very excited to share it with you all, this is the LAST time I approach an update (or early-access game for that matter) like this.
The next announcement you see should be the release of v0.3 onto experimental, but if any other issues arise during this time I will make sure to let you all know. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy.
Cheers,
~ Ben