First of all, I can't thank you guys enough for making Dice A Million reach the insane number of 10k (now 11k!) wishlists, it is absolutely mind-blowing to me. These past few weeks have been crazy!
So, some of you may know from the 1st demo back in February that I used to do monthly development updates (tho I only did two to be fair lol), and they slowed down mostly because I was finishing this new demo and wanted to release it asap. Anyways, since it's been almost a month since the 2nd demo came out, development posts are back baby! There's a lot to talk about, present, near future and far future, so let's get rolling!
DEMO 2 LAUNCH RECAP
As I've said, this launch went far better than what I could have ever imagined! A lot of new people came in and we're forming a really nice community over on the discord server, so that's awesome! I also wanted to thank everyone that made videos covering the game on Youtube, I try to watch everything but it's becoming too much, and that's a good sign I for sure!
Also, as you know I've been pushing some balance and QoL updates, as well as patching out any issue you may find, which brings me to the next point!
FUTURE DEMO UPDATES
I sorted out mostly everything I wanted in the demo with the addition of starter packs, the changes to extra value, etc, and I'm already slowly getting back into working on features for the full release. but there's still some things I wanted to address.
PERFORMANCE ISSUES
As the weeks passed by you guys started discovering some broken combos, and I mean broken in every single way. I'm aware that performance when rolling absurdly high numbers (like ~e100) is lacking and the game can become very laggy if there's a lot of dice on screen. I 100% know where the issue comes from, and I won't be explaining it here in detail but to summarize, it's basically a problem caused by a system I implemented to make big numbers as precise as possible, which they aren't 100% precise in computers by default (I also didn't know this when starting developing this game lol). I'm already working on a patch compromising precision for performance (which is preferred in almost every scenario), which will probably be ready in a couple of days, I'll let you guys know on how it's going, but here's a little teaser :)
BALANCE ISSUES
The other major complaint with the game right now is that there's basically one way to break it, and yes I'm completely aware. Some suggested making multipliers additive instead of multiplicative for the most part, and that's something I've thought of from the beginning but decided against. I'll think about it tho, as there's clearly a gap between multipliers and other strategies in the game. That being said, there's a lot of dice/rings that aren't present in the demo that make other strats a lot more viable, take a look at Mahjong Tile for example!
so yeah this is my next point of focus after the balance issues are fixed, thank you guys for always leaving your feedback, I hear you loud and clear :)
FUTURE
So, after that's done, what happens? Well, I can't confirm at the moment, but the demo will probably be participating in Steam's October Next Fest, with a small content update dropping with it. Don't expect a ton since that will already be close to the game's release, and I feel like the demo already has what it needs, but it'll be a nice treat for sure!
GAME RELEASE
As I've stated before, the game will most likely release on late 2025 / early 2026, this is of course bound to change, but we're going at a great pace! Most of the pieces I want in the full release are already in place, so don't think that only the content in the demo is what I've done, far from it. Just that the [REDACTED] needs some reworking, and I need to add one last [REDACTED], oh and also if I have the time I'd like to add some [REDACTED]. So yeah, not a whole lot really! :) I'm spending time in balancing and updating basic stuff right now, cause that's the most time consuming thing that it's still left to do.
That's all for now!! I'm super excited to finally be able to show you what I've been cooking all this time, the game goes MUCH deeper than what it seems from the demo, I assure you that :) Also, be sure to join our discord server to stay in touch!
Anyways, til next time!