Hey there everyone!
We were browsing the forums today, and we came across this thread which highlighted a few discussions about the game feature set and polish, namely that some of you were suggesting we should put as much time as we needed to get the game right, to not rush it out before it was ready. Quite a refreshing take, this is something you don’t often hear in game development.
It has been a while since we had an alpha for Worlds Adrift, or gave you a clear update on how development is progressing, so we thought you would like to hear what our Gamer-in-Chief had to say on the matter in response to the original post. Over to you Henrique:
It’s a very humbling exercise to read a post where you ask us to consider delaying the game in order to get it right. You know it, as well as we do, that it’s not often a development team gets to experience something like this. This is pretty awesome, really.
tl;dr: You’re right.
The long answer is that pretty much everything [we have previously said will be in the game] is already in the works at some stage or another. I’ll actually update the state of these items at the bottom of this reply to give you a better update on them.
The main issue we face [in developing Worlds Adrift] is that we’re not dealing with just features, but a new way of engineering a massive multiplayer game whose core tech affects each one of the features all the time, generating a huge amount of rework and debugging. Since Alpha3.5 we’ve been delayed by roughly 10 weeks as most of the team had to focus on the network code, with features’ development slowed down. Only in the past week have we picked up the pace again.
We’ll not launch a game that’s not ready, that is a commitment myself and the team have made to ourselves early on. While we’re still optimistic we can get the features in and properly polished before the end of the year, we will not hesitate in pushing the launch date if we find ourselves unable to deliver on our dev plan.
The upcoming Alpha4 will hopefully see a lot of stability built into the game, plus a few new features and tweaks. The bulk of the new features are scheduled for Alpha5 soon afterwards, and from there onwards is mostly polishing of what we’ve got, with a few new features making into the game if we all (dev team and community) deem them necessary to make up the first version of the game.
Onto the list, then!
– Custom ship hulls > In the works, advanced stage
– Melee combat > Design complete, dev yet to start
– Ranged combat > In the works, mid stage
– Some guns and melee weapons that suit all major play styles > In the works, mid stage
– Armour (could live without at launch but high enough on my list to mention it) > Not before launch
– A few more creatures > Design complete, dev yet to start
– A working game world (islands populated with creatures, stuff to do) > In the works, mid stage
– A progressive path that leads towards higher gear/areas/creatures > In the works, mid to advanced stage
*Advanced stage = currently in-game and working (internal build).
*Mid stage = being coded, about to go into the game (internal build) including rework (in the case of Ranged combat, for instance); or in-game already but requiring more work.
Henrique Olifiers, Gamer-in-Chief
Hopefully that has helped give you a clearer picture of what stage the development of the game is at. If you have any questions, just add them in the comments or hop into the forum.
Right, back to what’s been happening in the team during the week!
You may have missed our latest livestream on Twitch this week - it was a pretty spectacular one! We showed off some new and unseen gameplay from our latest in-house playtest, presented by the charming Colm and charismatic Malford. Luckily, it’s all saved here for you, so grab a cup of tea and some snacks, sit down comfortably, and enjoy an hour of beautiful new things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og5yzzWV_es
Finished? Didn’t that hour go quickly? Lastly, we wanted to present a little sneak peek of the Island Creator update that’s coming next week. Here is a screenshot, showing the new environment tab, to whet your appetite. There will be a lot more besides that in the update!
If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments or in the official forums. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. Oh, and add us on Snapchat too - we’re showing off lots of behind-the-scenes stuff there that you won’t see anywhere else.
Take care, and have a great (AND SUNNY) weekend.
The Worlds Adrift Team
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