Hi folks!
First, I want to apologise for the recent radio silence; work on the Progression Update has been going on for a lot longer than I expected, as I kept finding more adjustments I wanted to make to the basic game structure, and time just got away from me.
This update has taken far longer and includes far more changes than I originally predicted, and I should have been posting updates here in the interim to let people know! Sorry — I promise I'll be better about communicating what's going on with development from now on!
So, with that said, I'm now working on the final few bits and pieces of the Progression Update, and I'm fully expecting it to land into the default Steam build within the next week or two; I have only two tasks left to finish up (both UI-related), and then it just needs to go through testing. So.. we're really close, now!
Anyhow, those were the most important things I wanted to say in this announcement. But if you'd like to know more about what's coming in this update, I've prepared a little sneak peek below, so do read on! (On the other hand, if you'd rather be surprised, then it's safe to stop reading now and I hope you'll enjoy discovering everything I've been working on when the update drops in the near future!)
-T
New stuff in the Progression Update
My main goal with the progression update was to fix up some big issues I was seeing with how players were progressing through the game; how new versions are released, how you acquire new technologies, how new character class slots are unlocked, and things of that sort.
Introducing: The Changelog
The first big issue I wanted to address was the "optimal strategy" of setting up an autoclicker to speedrun version updates by rapidly placing hundreds of tufts of grass, or other inexpensive scenery items. It just didn't feel like a valid representation of what real game development is like. (I wish I could have completed this Progression Update faster by installing an autoclicker! :D )
So, we now show everything you've done to work toward the new release in a changelog window that's visible in the HUD. We still award build points for virtually any sort of edit you make to the game (in fact, we now cover even more edit types than we did before, including free edits like changing character type abilities!), but you can no longer earn all the points for a new release from doing a lot of a single type of edit. Instead, issuing a new release now requires making many different *kinds* of changes.
Additionally, big changes like opening up new regions, adding content for new levels, adding new player classes, new monsters, and other novelties all give extra bonus points in the changelog. Hopefully this will all be fairly intuitive once you see it in action!
Have you ever wanted to write release notes for your game's updates? We've added that as an option, too, immediately before releasing a new version of your game. Alternately, you can use our pre-generated ones!
Technology Development
Another major issue I was concerned about was that I had tied developing new technologies to releasing new major versions of your game. This turned into a problem because the number of major versions could be very limited and they could be spread quite far apart, and many technologies presented were unbalanced, unclear, unexciting, or even outright unimplemented!
In the Progression Update I've flipped the unlocking of technology onto its head. Where you used to have to issue a major new release to unlock a new technology, you can now develop new technologies whenever you want to — just pay the costs and assign some developers to implement them. And what's more, completing new technologies now awards build point bonuses toward your next release!
Additionally, all technologies offered to the player are now fully described and implemented! This involved implementing several unimplemented old technologies, removing a few old technologies which couldn't yet be implemented, and adding a whole bunch of new ones to the list! And I still have plans for a lot more which will get added over time in future updates!
Character Type Slots
We used to hand out extra class/monster/npc slots based on your subscriber count. That worked, but often resulted in you having heaps of unused "player class" slots when what you really wanted was monsters, or vice versa, and the unlock system just never felt satisfying to me, since you as the player had no choice in what you received.
Now, you can instead pick what slots you want to unlock, and do it whenever you want, all via the same new system we're using for developing technologies. Even better, like with technologies you now get build points for adding those new character types to your game!
Psst.. as part of this, you can now (finally!) unlock extra slots for custom-per-dungeon monster types, and custom-per-dungeon bosses. That epic 5-boss dungeon you've been dreaming about ever since the Dungeons Update came out? As of this update you can finally do it!
And another thing
And there's a bunch of other exciting stuff in this update as well. To just quickly pick out some of the bigger items:
- More work for game masters! Game masters can now (optionally) respond to user reports of toxic game chat, or of cheaters, and you get to specify the policies they should follow for warning or banning players who get caught.
- New 'bug' system! The game's 'bug' system has been completely rewritten. There are now multiple types of bug which behave differently, ranging from causing full-on computer crashes for your subscribers to minor typos, and you can specify how and when your developers will deal with each of them, either as general policies or you can view the bug list itself and manually mark individual bugs to be fixed.
- Sometimes you just need to reboot the servers You can now take your whole game down for maintenance (which makes debugging easier and faster), or even schedule regular weekly maintenance periods so you don't even have to remember to do it manually.
- Game map preview! When starting a new game, the game now lets you preview the new game's map before you start. It also now shows and lets you modify the map seed, so you can share the seed with other players if you'd like to each begin from an identical starting map.
- Game logos! We now have the beginning of a system for generating custom logos for your game; you'll find this in the 'New Game' UI flow, or (for older saves) in the 'Game' status sheet. I'm looking forward to adding more editable logo prefabs to this system in the future, but I feel like it's already a big improvement toward giving your game its own unique visual identity!
- More sandbox options! I've added a whole bunch more Sandbox mode options, for folks who just want to get creative without needing to worry so much about the simulation aspects of the game!
All of the above plus lots and lots of bug fixes and more than a few performance improvements! Oh, and this new update is still fully compatible with all your old saves. So feel free to keep playing in those if you like!
And finally.. as an extra bonus for the folks who've read this far down.. if you're really keen, we have a preview build of this update up on our public 'test' beta branch right now; please feel free to go and have a play with it and let me know what you think of all these changes!
Thanks again for your patience with how long this update has taken me to work out, everyone; it's taken a lot longer than I intended, but I'm really happy with these changes and I feel like we're very close now!
Talk more soon,
-T