With many of the most pressing issues taken care of, and the frenzy of the first several days of launch now settling down, I thought I'd take a moment to discuss the first leg of Early Access development.
The pace of hotfixes should slow down as I move to a more healthy work/release schedule. But I have a lot planned for new content, and still more polish for the launch content. I'll break each category down to be more specific, but these are the primary goals for month 1:
Improve the user experience based on feedback
Polish and complete the Simulator
Add new content
Fix lingering bugs and strange upgrade interactions
The User Experience
I've been reading all of the feedback in all of the places, and watching videos and GIFs from various users, and there's a few areas where things could use some clarifying that I didn't realize needed it.
A lot of new players are skipping the tutorial and not checking the controls. I'm not sure if this is because people expect this to play exactly like the original Gunlocked, but it has lead to a number of players thinking there are attacks they can't avoid taking damage from. I don't like mandatory tutorials, personally, so I want it to stay optional, but the first couple of times you play a game after the next update, you can expect to see this pop-up at the start:
This will also show up at the appropriate time in the tutorial to clarify that as well.Another issue that has come up is around the confirm pop-ups that happen for various menu interactions. Some users think they're interactive buttons to be clicked on, but they currently just indicate which buttons to press to confirm or cancel. Initially I thought I'd just communicate this more clearly, but I think it will be easier to simply make them clickable buttons.
You can still right-click to instant cancel. There's more bug fixing to do (you can spot some in the GIF), and I want to make them dynamic so you don't have to move your mouse so far to click them, but they're coming along. Gamepad is still the way I recommend you play this game, but I'm working to make sure the mouse experience is as good as it can be. Not everyone wants to or can use a gamepad, and I respect that.
Finally, there's a number of smaller updates coming based on feedback in the Discord that will touch on multiple systems. Nothing worth making a GIF for though.
The Simulator
The Simulator is a sandbox mode that opens up as you play through content in the main game. It's in a very early state right now, and actually wasn't even a planned feature. This is something a user in my Discord requested, and I obliged because I thought it had a lot to offer for the genre. It wasn't part of my initial pre-launch roadmap, which is why it currently says "Alpha" on it. But I'm making good progress now, cleaning things up, adding more polish, squashing bugs. There's not a lot more to say about it, other than it's a big focus right now. I'm sure you all just want to know about upcoming content anyway.
New Content
Content patches are divided into two groups: Regular and Major, Medium and Deluxe, Alpha and Omega...You get the idea.
Regular updates will be smaller content drops that offer a mix of new things, filling out systems that already exist. New pilots, bosses, NPCs, utilities, achievements. There's a lot in the works.
Major Updates will be themed updates that cover a number of interconnected systems of content types. Many of these will be about adding brand new systems, or dramatically expanding current systems. These will take more time and testing.
Regular Update 01: The Supply Drop
I touched on this in the last hotfix notes, but the first regular update planned will expand the selection of utilities significantly.
Some users have expressed frustration at so many chance-based abilities in the early offerings. This wasn't specifically by design. I designed pages of upgrades, and as I chose the ones for Early Access I seem to have selected more of the chance-based ones. But the Supply Drop update will add a whole host of new utilities with various other means of triggering, none of them luck.
This update should also help fill out some build archetypes that aren't yet viable, or as powerful as others just yet. Testing on this update will likely begin by the end of the week.
Major Update 01: The Symbionic Update
This is the most requested feature at the moment, and with good reason: Symbionics are great! If you're new to Gunlocked, Symbionics were a secret way to improve a number of weapons with hidden bonuses in the first game. They weren't required, but acted as a fun surprise with powerful new effects.
The new Symbionic system greatly expands on the depth and breadth of the system, and will give those of you looking for more direct weapon modifications a lot to work with. The system is huge compared to the original, and it will take some time to cook, but it will follow the Supply Drop update.
Alongside the Symbionics, will be the updated Codex: An expanded depository (I said depository) of Gunlocked knowledge, that can be accessed to understand more about the game, and see what you have and haven't discovered.
Like Symbionics, it's greatly expanded, offering more information than before, and also being accessible during a run. This might prove useful with symbionics...
What lies beyond...
I have the entire roadmap to 1.0 planned out, but development can change at any time, especially as I receive more feedback, so I'll hold off on setting too much in stone just yet.
You can probably figure out a lot of what's coming by looking at what's in the game already, but if sales are good, there's a bunch of fun ideas I'd like to explore to expand this beyond anything I've previously discussed. Only time will tell on that front. But either way, there's a lot of content coming!
Let me know what you think below!