Hello everyone!
This will be a long one, but a fast summary if you don’t want to read all: I ran out of money to work full time on the game, and will still work on it on free time, working on current patch, that grew very large (couldn’t find a easy fix), so it will take some time to release.
edit: The game will still be up on steam, the only thing that changed is I won't be able to put as much time into the game.
Sorry for keeping you all in the dark for so long, so I thought it is due time to let you know how everything is going. First of all, thanks for being patient with the game, for playing it and not least of all, coming with all the feedback (the good and the bad, as it helps me improve the game).
I have some good news, and bad news, so start with the latter. Sadly my saved money and loaned money ran out before I was able to make the game a “worthy game”, even tried to “make it work” by working 80 hours / week, but I couldn’t do that for longer than a month. So sadly I can’t work on the game full time anymore, but the game is so precious for me, so I will not put it aside before I at least finish my bare-bone vision of the game, which is years ahead.
So, I’ve been working on a patch that grows out of proportions, you all know the pathfinding-issue, and that is the big issue I’ve been wrestling with. After no fast solution, so did I instead buy a tool from the Unity market, which I thought would be a fast-fix. But, that tool also had major performance issues out of the box. And even weeks trying to tweak it to fit into the game, so it didn't help that much, even trying their experimental-version.
So, I instead thought of another solution to it, to postpone the issue, and is also things I’ve planned to add later into the game, so taking down two problems with one stone, and that is, adding more “power” to both allies and enemies, because now the end-game combat is more or less a standstill as units are produced faster than they die. Sure, in hindsight so could I just lower the amount of units spawned, but then I would spend time only patching an issue instead of fixing it permanently. Plus it would make the game boring to only have a few units in a fight (the performance issue is because of multiple units “detecting” hostiles and what is able to be attacked)
That brings us to the current patch / Good news! :D
So my philosophy is that I want talents & equipment to feel impactful (compared to +3% damage for 7 seconds for your “entire party” in a MMO). And that brings an issue, if you want to gain x30% more damage per talent for an ability, so do the enemy have to scale a lot to “keep up”, it all works if you are the only one dishing out damage (like Diablo), the problem is with your allies, then they also need to deal more damage over a game session to “keep up”, to avoid only being cannon-fodder end-game, or even less useful. So the upcoming patch is bringing an upgrade-system to the game and new units / buildings.
- The starting castle now has technologies you can invest in to unlock new units and buildings.
- Blacksmith: that you can upgrade your core armies (footmen, archers, cavalry)
- Stables: Supports your army with mounts, so your footmen will train to become cavalry
- Mage-Tower: train mages, which are like glass-cannon with area attacks
The enemy is also gaining stronger unit types that can dash out area-attacks. This will make the end-game battlefield have different types of units, not only weak “cannon-fodder”, but also these key-units to keep an eye out for, as they can decide the outcome of the battle. That also means, the enemy will deal much more damage = you are more likely to die, even more so if you focus on only offensive talents / equipment (glass-canon). Which brings the next issue, dying AND losing after a long game over a simple mistake / facing a new enemy (looking at you, nasty Vraal). So, I’m changing that you don’t lose upon dying, instead respawn at base, as long as your castle is still standing (You will still lose if the castle goes down as usual though).
This will make a >30min game not as irritating by dying by a simple mistake. (Maybe I’ll add a hardcore-checkbox option in the lobby, with maybe a +x% progression bonus, if that is something asked for).
Also added more ideas on what to bring to the game, which can be found in the Discord server https://discord.gg/R7sn7qRHYA (in #roadmap)
But I was wondering, do you want me to create a Trello / post more often with updates on how “larger patches” are going, e.g. what is finished and what is remaining? It will however mean I will have to take time from working on the game, I could maybe do a summarized/small post each month to let people know how it is going?
I understand if some of these changes are breaking things you like with the game (e.g. no longer 1x life), but don’t forget, it is Early Access, so please let me know if it is so! As a solo-dev, so are your ideas worth gold. Maybe you see a good adjustment for a new issue, an option to enable/disable a new feature, or in worse case, remove a new feature that just made the game worse (put it on a shelf, for maybe a adjustment that could fix it)