Hi all!
Another week down and another lengthy post from me 😊
There has been a lot going on at Sloth HQ, and I’m just going to dive right into it.
Minor Update 2
ETA: 8th July
This update is a tad smaller, as we are working on a number of bigger changes we want to get out to sooner that we originally planned (see AI, and Preview Branch topics below)
However, we do still have some updates for you this week that we think will make you happy 😊
- Aliens will start arriving on the train; if you have already called them, they are coming back!
- We’ve updated some AI pathfinding which should decrease some amount of AI ‘litter’ you are seeing around town
- Minor Bug fixes
- Minor Stability fixes
Major Update 1 – Player Suggestion Pack is the Winner!
ETA: Details next week
After reviewing all the awesome feedback we received from our community, we decided that we wanted to give our community the opportunity to feedback into what our first major update would look like.
Thank you to all of you who voted, but also to those of you who have raised your feedback to us. This really helped inform where you wanted us to focus first.
The Suggestion Pack was voted on by the community, so this is where we’ll focus our attention first.
This pack will include the following updates:
- Expanded Player and Town cosmetics
- Open up a new area of the town map
- Add in a new tourist ‘teleporter’ that ensures tourists can reach your new building area
- Extend some zones to give a bit more space
- **Stretch Goal: Zone customisation
We are excited about this pack and think it’ll bring a lot to players!
The team will need a few more days to investigate the details of the workload in this pack and we’ll have an ETA on it next week.
Ongoing AI Updates
In releasing Update 0.4.47.15713EA it uncovered a few bugs with how AI works, as well as some User Experience issues around AI and how it behaves.
I talked a bit last week about how AI is a spider web of systems here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2195120/view/4200250669025535502?l=english
AI is going to be an ongoing bit of work. We will continue to work on solving issues as an ongoing basis. And we’ll likely be featuring updates on a weekly basis about what we are doing, and what issues have been uncovered.
Some of the issues raised from the last update are:
- AI will pick-up and put down an item repeatedly (sometimes looks like it is juggling)
- This issue is related to it knowing it has something to do, but not being able to reach its destination. We have decided to rework the logic around AI’s pathfinding and decision-making to help with this issue.
- AI continues to process items even when no storage is available
- Under investigation!
- AI not tidying up, or picking up stuff on the ground
- This is an issue around how the AI is processing priorities, so we need to adjust the priority of this
- AI harvesting new materials when items are on the ground
- This is another priority-based issue; we need to adjust the priority of this
- AI in Fishing Zone leaving piles of fish around
- We are looking to move Fishing over to fixed fish-type catch spots. This means AI, and you, know exactly what you are getting when you drop a line in 😊 As this changes how fishing works, community feedback on this is going to be useful.
Speaking of community feedback… we are looking to bring forward our plans to adopt a ‘second’ branch. Which leads on to our next topic nicely!
A ‘Preview’ branch
Those of you who play a lot of Early Access games you may already be used to the concept of a second, opt-in, branch. Its name can vary, but you might be familiar with Beta, Unstable, Untested, Feature, Preview...
For us, moving forward, what we want to do is push our updates in this Preview (opt-in) branch and give it some time to percolate with our players before we adopt it into the ‘main game’ branch.
This is great, because it means we will be able to have some early dialogue between us (as developers and community) about what the impact of changes are, before we adopt them into the full game.
I’ll have more details on this next week – however, we are hoping we will have this adopted by Minor Update 3.
Wheels in Motion Pack
There is a bit of a silver lining here :D I know some of you were really excited about what this pack would bring to the table, and we promise it’s not getting scrapped.
What we are going to do with this pack look to split it out into smaller pieces and deliver these items over time.
The other nice thing about this pack is that it’s not all dependant on our Code team, so Art and Design have time to work together on this.
So, you’ll likely see our future Minor Updates containing bits from this.
What is a Minor and Major Update?
Just in case you are curious what these names mean. Here’s something I prepared just for you:
Minor updates are generally going to include following:
- Include ongoing bug fixes
- Include ongoing quality of life updates
- Include small content updates
Major updates are generally going to include the following:
- New major features! Yay
- Large content updates
- Gameplay updates
Living Roadmap Updates
We are now at the first juncture where we want to update our Living Roadmap! The winning pack for Major Update 1 will be reflected in this, and I’ll looking at updating with other details where I can.
I am sure there is more I could write, but honestly, I suspect you are just as excited as we are to start diving into the updates – both Minor and Major 😊
Next weeks update from me should be an exciting one:
- Further details on the Preview branch
- Details on what Minor Update 3 will contain
- An ETA on when Suggestion Pack is expected to hit Preview Branch (and then main game)
- Updates to our Living Roadmap
Let me just close this out by saying ‘Thank you’ to everyone who is joining us on this journey! We are a small, but mighty, team and we are working hard to make sure your voice is heard, and you continue to enjoy Go-Go Town! through each and every update.
- Cheryl