Moonshine Madness is now Wander!
Hi everyone, my little game has gone through tons of major changes and is now ready to show it's new face, but first, let's divide this update into parts, that will explain what's going on, what will be going on, and why all of this happened in the first place.
So to start you will find:
- What happened to Moonshine Madness and what is Wander
- What changes have been made and what is new
- What are future updates going to bring
- How to help me with developing of Wander
Now let's just into these topics.
1. Moonshine Madness to Wander, what happened
As times goes on I tend to evolve my ideas into new things, when I sit behind screen and code every little thing and implement changes I usually think about what else can be added how to make it more fun. I have a problem of always thinking the product is not good enough and trying to adjust it to make it better.
That's what happened here. When I started this project it was supposed to be one silly little game that I wanted to add more maps into maybe even mods but then I decided instead of doing that, I will create one launcher and put all of my ideas into it.
Moonshine Madness no longer represented what I had to offer. Moonshine Madness turned from a game into a gamemode inside of a launcher. Together with other titles I needed to create a name for this whole packet and after long time of thinking I came up with Wander.
Why Wander? Some might ask, well lots of name are already taken to be honest and I wanted for the name to have a meaning. Wander should represent a journey, as in when you open the launcher you can wander and select numerous games to play with settings you can choose and different players you can encounter. This project is now much bigger fish than it was in the beggining and will require even more work but I am excited to work in this.
2. What changed in the game
This one is gonna be a largest topic probably, there's so much to talk about, basically from 1 game, it's now 3 games. But in order to get through each change carefully let's go step by step.
- Let me start by noting, that even tho I have much more experience now, i am still begginer and you will encounter bugs in the game.
A. Main Menu changes
Let's start by mentioning that main menu was changed.
- A new splash screen and loading animation for main menu
- New music
- Lot of UI changes to the settings and controls menu
- Matchmaking and lobby browsing has been disabled due to new gamemodes causing an error and should be fixed within few days. Although it is possible I will delay turning on Matchmaking as I am considering if I will leave it in the game as the game took new direction
B. Changes to Moonshine Madness
- Tons and tons of bug fixes
- Added 2 new regions, snow alley that is gonna sometimes replace mud alley. And jump alley that is gonna sometimes replace fall alley. I'm aware that these names might not mean much as of the moment, but when map customization comes in, you will be able to see all the regions, not to mention even now you will see map changing its look.
- Optimization update, Moonshine Madness was my first game and I was clueless which cause a lot of bad coding and elements that were causing fps drops, i have mixed most of those and are still working on more.
- Lots of new sound effects
- Emotes added
C. Moonshine Brawl
A completely new gamemode which features an arena where your main objective is to push your enemies off the platform.
- Moonshine Brawl added
- The game currently includes 1 map, 1 player skin and 4 items
- New music and sound effects
- Option to add Bots has been added
- Teams option has been added
D. Dominion Unleashed
My third game and current face of the game as tons of work has been put into it. In this game a fight between 2 races happen. Each race has its own buildings, units and playstyle.
- Dominion Unleashed added
- 2 Races with 1 hero, each one has it's own buildings and units.
- 1 Map at the moment
- New music and sound effects
E. Overall changes
The game has its new direction and with that the future updates also will be divided. From now on you as player will decide which gamemode gets update the most, as the one with largest player base will be updated more frequently, but don't worry, each gamemode will continue being updated, but since i'm only one working on it, the less played gamemode might go longer without an update, unless there is a game breaking bug that has to be fixed.
With this topic done, let's move to the next one.
3. Future updates of Wander
There is ton of stuff I have prepared and think about but the speed and amount will be depending on funding as it's not cheap to develop games.
A. Moonshine Madness
I'm already working on new 2 new regions to be added and will probably make a video about it rather than explaining it in the patch notes. I want each region to have its own logic and challenge behind it so a lot of thought process goes inside it to really make it unique.
Major character movement update. The game unfortunatelly has to go through completely changing its movement logic as when I started I wasn't very experienced and made some bad decisions in coding. Right now the current logic is limiting me in so many ways that stuff that was supposed to be added already has to be delayed.I wanted to add stuff as turning player into a snowball and being able to push him around, or a TNT that can be blown up and throw away players, but due to physics being hard coded, it will not allow me to do it. So get ready because a lot of new stuff will come with this change!
B. Moonshine Brawl
I'm planning to add multiple that will have some kind of terrain changes for example the map could be getting smaller or it could be moving. This gamemode is a small one so not many major changes will be made but as time goes on I will be changing the camera logic and other stuff to just make it smoother.
Bots are currently very simple. The logic behind them is very simple and it was my first attempt to create bots, just give them some time and love, they will eventually become much tougher and maybe even cause problems later.
C. Dominion Unleashed
I am very proud of this gamemode which I would say is unique as I don't think there are many, if any, games like this. There is big future for Unleashed as I'm planning to add, different races, different heroes, different maps and so much more, there are just so many ways I can update this gamemode and I can't wait to work further on it.
2v2 Gamemode work in progress! I am planning to add 2v2 option as I already prepared setup to implement it. The logic behind it is simple but since I will need to change animations and models once I get enough funding, I decided to wait with it until then. Once I will be changing all of the animations and stuff, I will also implement option to team up with your friend against the same threat!
D. Overall future changes
Where are the bots for other games? Will you add them? Why haven't you added them?
A lot of you are interested to fill up your numbers using bots that unfortunatelly it is not that simple. In order for bot to work I have to code it and create a behaviour that will mimic the player to a certain point. For Unleashed it is just not possible at the moment. My current coding knowledge is not enough to create a bot that would farm to get money, purchase units, purchase buildings, upgrade units, upgrade workers, leave base to attack enemy, enemy units and enemy workers while also going back or even defend his base. It is just too much for me.
Moonshine Madness bots to be added. However for moonshine madness it is possible and I will add them, currently I have to change whole logic behind movement, once I finish that, I will work on changing map logic and once that is done, I can create bot logic that will follow map and evade players, or attack them.
Now let's move to the last topic:
4. How to help the development
There are so many ways, one of them being let me know of the bugs in the game. As a solo developer and with very few testers, many bugs might have slipped through me and remained in the game. The best way to let me know is to post them on discord or visit a steam discussion where I will separate forum into parts for each game, where you can report these bugs. I will then write them down and remove it once I fix them.
Funding, to work on game of this scale requires a lot and I am not graphic designer or whatever, meaning I have to pay people to make models for me. By purchasing the game you already helped me a lot and I thank you for that. However if you are interested in helping the game further, visit my discord where you will find crowdfunding and other stuff where you can support this work of mine.
Last but not least, coding advices. I've been working on this game for about 1,5 year now and I am nowhere near calling myself even a decent programmer. I'm still fixing my inefficient lines of code and also constantly run into new errors and problems. If you are interested in helping me if i run into one of these problems and I can't figure it out how to fix it, I will be posting questions on my discord from time to time possibly.