Hi everyone,
You were probably wondering when we are going to release EA 0.7.2, as almost a month passed already since we launched EA 0.7.1. Don’t worry next week we are going to release the next version: EA 0.7.3. Some of you may ask why we are skipping one version and instead release a different one. We want to answer that question in this short update.
So to give you some kind of context. We are usually working on several development streams in parallel in order to be able to:
a) Not overload one version, as it’s way harder to stabilize it.
b) Have more development time, particularly for bigger features.
Internally we have a pretty big setup (automated deployment, ticket scheduling, etc.) to be able to work on different streams simultaneously. Usually that works pretty well and our release cycle has been quite stable. So finally, what happened to EA 0.7.2. Originally we, of course, wanted to deliver EA 0.7.2 to steam already 2 weeks ago, but circumstances prevented that and we had to make a decision. We made changes and bugfixes for the same feature set in 2 different development streams (EA 0.7.2. and EA 0.7.3), which resulted in conflicts that would have taken significant time to resolve. So we had the following options:
- Release EA 0.7.2 as it was with a feature not completely finished with some, not game breaking, but annoying bugs.
- Try to get the important bugfixes and feature changes up into the EA 0.7.2 development stream. We would have needed to merge a lot of files manually, which would have costed a lot of time which could potentially result again in new bugs.
- Skip EA 0.7.2 and start stabilizing EA 0.7.3 but as a result push back the release date for you guys.
We went with the third option, as we don’t wanted to release an unfinished feature or spend a lot of valuable development time on trying to replicate an upcoming version.
That said, we are really excited about releasing EA 0.7.3 to you very very soon as the version contains really a lot of very cool things, which we think will make you happy. For example we started implementing a system to provide all members of a AI dynasty with tasks to fulfill, you will see the first signs of that system already in EA 0.7.3. And, amongst many other things, we've reworked the combat system :)
Thanks for your patience!
-Purple Lamp Development Team