Salutations Industrialists!
I'm excited to share the progress we've made over the last month and update you on our Alpha Roadmap. First, thank you to everyone that has given us their feedback on our latest Dev Diaries. Dev Diary 17 on Mapmaking and the Map Rework has proven to be one of our most popular ones yet! We have received a lot of suggestions and comments about the first draft of our provincial map layer on the globe. Of course, I'd like to remind you that this is still a first draft of the provinces. There will certainly be changes to the borders. Hopefully, you understood from the Dev Diary that we are taking our time to carefully research map content—political borders, terrain, resources. However, we ultimately do need to make some gameplay considerations, which will cause the map to deviate slightly from the real 19th Century political map, especially as we adapt it to a hex-based globe. And of course, we appreciate your feedback—we are collecting suggestions we have received from our community and will consider them for future map updates.
Also, as a reminder—we have assigned Discord roles to our backers who are already part of our server. If you are not a member of our server, please join via the link below to ensure that you claim your role! We'll be checking back weekly to assign roles to new followers. Of course, if you join and would like to get your role sooner, just say hello in the main channel and mention that you'd like your role. If you're not yet a member of our Discord server, please use this link to join!
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Accomplished in May
Front-loading Mapmaking before the Map Rework:
As mentioned in Dev Diary 17, a major Map Rework, discussed at the end of the video, is coming very soon. The Rework will optimize the map to run more smoothly and improve performance. Check out Dev Diary 17 for more information!
Our Technical Artists and programmers will be implementing the Map Rework in June. While they are performing this update, our Content Designers will not be able to edit the map. Therefore, we reshuffled some of our tasks that we outlined last month, to prioritize a development sprint on placing cities, terrain, and resources before the Map Rework begins. Ultimately, this means that we accomplished more on the map than anticipated, with events to be worked on in June.
Cities and Major Terrain Features
Our content design team has actually succeeded in accomplishing more than expected!
- The first draft of Cities has been completed across all regions around the globe.
- The first draft of Terrain has been placed in: Japan, Korea, Southeastern China, South Asia, Northern South America, most of Brazil, much of Sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe.
- We plan to make more progress on South America, Africa, and parts of North America in the first few weeks of June before the Rework begins.
- Lakes and Rivers will be placed once the Map Rework is complete.
Resources Placed
- While originally resource placement in Europe was planned for June, I'm happy to announce that our team has made significant progress placing resources in many other parts around the globe (Australia, South Asia, Russia, and Africa)—far ahead of schedule! Of course, as terrain is further completed, some of these may need to be moved, and additional resources added.
- Resources that have been added so far into the game include: Iron, Sulfur, Niter, Coal, Gold, Oil, Furs.
- Some resources, which are dependent on terrain or vegetation, such as Logs, will be added in the future to coincide with the map decoration for Forests.
New Military UI Inputted
- The new Military UI design has been completed, and has largely been input into the game. Inputting the Military UI will be complete by the release of our next stable internal build in the coming week. We'll share a teaser screenshot when it's ready!
Logistics System Inputted
- Done! The new Logistics System, as outlined in Dev Diary 15, has now been inputted into the game.
Technology and Research Designs Completed
- The initial design of Research Mechanics has been completed; however, it still needs to be finalized and input into the game. Our Content Design team has finished a draft of the Academia, Industry, and Military tech trees, which detail the research progression of each tech. We look forward to sharing this with you in a Dev Diary soon!
End of June
- Map Rework Work on the Map Rework will begin June 11. We aim for this to take about one month, scheduled to be finished around July 10.
- Content for Military Units This includes removing some placeholders and naming Military Units, along with refining the stats for each unit type
- First Draft of Major Prussian Events Since we had to prioritize the map before the Map Rework, we moved events tasks from May. As one of the pivotal countries in the time period, we are starting with Prussia to test and build out our event system.
- Add Provincial Data for Prussia This involves researching and inputting population data for each Prussian province (such as the number of people and the distribution of cultures, religions, and professions).
- Implement the New Diplomacy System Our programmers will implement the redesign of the Diplomacy System into the game. We also have a redesign of the Diplomacy UI planned in the future, so stay tuned for an update on that too!
- Input the revised and updated Leader System, including new UI and mechanics
End of July
- Finalize First Draft of Terrain As our team will not be able to work on the map in June, once the Map Rework is completed around the end of June, they will continue with editing terrain in July. We aim to finish editing altitude, placing terrain features, lakes, and rivers.
- Continue adding provincial data for other countries and regions
- First draft of Minor Prussian Events
- Complete the reworked Technology UI design to go with our new Technology system
- Input the revised and updated Construction and Building System, including new UI and mechanics As we prioritized mapmaking before the Map Rework to be done from June 11 to July 10, we moved the input of the Construction and Building System to July.
As our goals and expectations evolve, and as these milestones are reached, we will keep you updated!
Thanks for your support and for reading!
May your day be a gilded one!