Hello Everyone,
It has been a hectic week, and to top it off it appears there is some growing hostility within the community. It's been a month since we've updated, and there are specific reason(s) for this; let me detail them.
ABD: A Beautiful Day is an enormously expansive game, encompassing such a vast paradigm to be a basic platform for displaying the last hundred thousand years of human expansion. To build such an organism is a tremendous feat, requiring both the beginning functionality and the end functionality. To do this responsibly, we have to design the platform basics in a way that can contain the end-game content structure in mind. Let me give you an example:
Tier 1 Human Warrior: 100,000 B.C.E. - A brutish mug that swings a club and can perform basic stone tool creation.
Tier 38 Cosmic Infantry: 2762 C.E. - A well informed, incredibly adaptable multi-function Infantry Soldier capable of deploying in both Gravity Based Environments (GBE) and Zero Gravity Environments (ZGE).
The structure behind each of these units posess the same fundamental basics, and unless we want to break the game half way through the tiers, requiring a month or more of a setback, we have to plan ahead. By doing this, we can stride through the development of the game without running into major issues, as well as making a more all encompassing experience. In the end, it will pay off heavily for the setbacks that have delayed us so far. Right now, this doesn't really help the average player get back into the game.
The upcoming update, which we will be continuing to internally test through the weekend, is a large part of the fundamental basics mentioned above. Everything is looking pretty good, so we will probably do the update early in the week perhaps on Monday or Tuesday.
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What will this update have? If you've read the last announcement, you know there will be a LOT. It appears as though basic crafting is making its way in too, which leaves you with:
-Functional UI
-Resource Gathering
-Inventory Management
-Crafting
-Building
Aside from the only recorded kill since launch (courtesy of yours truly) the remaining core function is Combat. After we push this update, Combat is the next priority item. Once Combat is in, we have the basic pillars of any standard RTS out there, except we are only a percentage or two in!! While you guys are enjoying building your empires and mutilating eachother by next weekend, we will be pumping the game full of content as time progresses.
What content?
-More Items
-More Resources
-More Weapons
-More Tools
-More Gatherables
-More Animals
-More Environmental Items
-Dynamic Terrains
-Dynamic Environments
-Statistics
-Tracking
What does this mean right now? I will be putting some screenshots up on Twitter this weekend so you can get a glimpse at what the update will include. I can finally say that we are out of the woods, this has been such a crazy ordeal and we are finally to a point where we can deliver the long awaited experience you've all been waiting for. It looks like we will have made a lot of our landmarks we wanted to achieve by November, which is going to make the month of November a pretty exciting month. Both for player involvement ingame, as well as whats to come.
I will make a follow up announcement with specific notes Jack wants to include, we'll tag it as patch notes, and be watching pretty intently very early next week. I can't wait to see the glow of campfires in the distance again!!
-Robert