This week, I moved to a new apartment. It took a bit more time than expected, but I'm mostly set up now. Zun has continued to fully focus on working on the game, but because of my absence, he focused more on 'background technical issues' than significant new features.
Because there aren't a lot of exciting game-related things to write about the current week, it seems appropriate to talk about the past and the future. Most Friday Blogs assume you've read a decent amount of other blogs, and we notice that they can be confusing to new players/readers. Let's start with a decent summary of the past so we know where we're standing.
Prior to Spring 2017, developing Colony Survival was just a hobby. We had barely any players, received no attention and earned no income from the game. But that changed rapidly. After some YouTube videos, we quickly got a massive amount of attention. We decided to release the game ASAP, and the launch was very successful. Colony Survival become our full-time career.
Colony Survival 0.1.0 was a glorified tech-demo that was tested by a handful of people. There were lots of improvements to be made. We focused on releasing as many small updates and patches as we possibly could. Quick, simple fixes that didn't break existing structures and had a big pay-off had the priority. Fixes that took more time or required people to start a new world were postponed.
After more than a year of doing this, we started working on 0.7.0 in the Summer/Autumn of 2018. Starting a new world is absolutely required in 0.7.0. That's why we want to combine 0.7.0 with many "background fixes" that also break older worlds; we don't want to break savegames regularly.
Initially, we wanted to release the update "feature by feature", instead of combined as one massive update. But most new features depend on each other: multiple colonies are useless without trading, happiness items are useless without the happiness mechanic, etcetera. We don't want to break people's worlds and force an update on them that feels half-finished.
0.7.0 features that are finished, but unreleased:
- Every player can start multiple colonies
- Players can invite other players to share ownership of a colony
- An entirely new world with new biomes, new trees and other improvements
- The happiness mechanic: recruiting colonists generates unhappiness, provide them with special items to boost happiness.
- The ability to set up a server from the main menu without having to browse folders for colonyserver.exe
- Full LAN support
- Entirely new save system that fixes crash corruption and prepares the way for Steam Workshop/Cloud Sync
- Lots of new jobs and items
- Lots of technical fixes and improvements, solving many common problems
0.7.0 content we're working on:
- Unique content in far away biomes
0.7.0 content we've still got to get started on:
- Trading
- Transport, like little boats
- Small things like "what are the requirements/costs for starting a new colony, does it require the banner tool?"
We'll release the update once the entire list above is finished and it has been thoroughly tested. We've tried predicting when it's done, but it's very hard. Some things take longer than expected, others shorter. We fully understand where Valve Time comes from now!
We've already got some post-0.7.0 plans. Here are ideas we're thinking and talking about regularly:
Industrial Content
For the end-game, we'd like to transition from late-medieval to early-modern tech. Things like steam engines, oil, mass production and electricity. Perhaps we'll even add nuclear reactors and jetpacks :)
Realistic stockpile
For a long time, we've been thinking about making the stockpile realistic. Currently, crates work like portals into some magic inventory that can be accessed by any other crates. We would love to make transporting items from mines to furnaces, from furnaces to anvils, etc., a feature. This could open op gameplay like setting up rails and letting colonists fill little trains/minecarts that go from station to station transporting goods.
More varied monsters and guards
On one hand, we'd love to have different types of guards. Guards that can slow monsters down, poison them, do area-of-effect damage, etcetera. On the other hand, we'd like to expand the range of monsters as well. Monsters that can attack from a distance, boss monsters with lots of health, monster with (magic) armor that require specific counters, and many others.
We're not sure in what order and how exactly we'll tackle these things, but we're looking forward to the future!
Bedankt voor het lezen!