I get the feeling I've been working on too many things at once lately. It's understandable because there is so much I still want to get done from here on, regardless of how far we've come, but it feels like there are too many "unfinished" features in-game right now. I'm actively working on towns, villagers, crafting skills, and multi-player, more or less all at once, with 5-6 other things I'd really like to get started, all while trying to clean up the project to get ready for the possibility of additional staff.
In light of which, I'd like to take this opportunity to reassess where priority should be given, both in my opinion as well as the communities. I have prepared a small survey to try and gauge how the community feels about how things are, what's to come, and would very much appreciate everyone's time in answering:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8XYVZSD
As for my own thoughts, here are the things I am working on right now:
1. Multi-player
Multi-player has 1-2 major bugs at the moment I'm actively working to fix. I am also working on improving the connection process both to better explain the current state of an attempted connection, and to bind server-side saves to client SteamIDs, and/or offer per-character password protection for servers not interested in requiring an active Steam connection.
A number of features are currently turned off in multi-player, most notably caves and towns. Caves and floating islands shouldn't be very difficult to get working and more than anything just have not been tested yet, and should make there way into multi-player soon. Towns will no doubt require a bit more work, and are not currently planned to be added to multi-player until they are further fleshed out in single-player.
Multi-player specific features such as partying and being able to tell where your friends are on the map or compass, I do want to get the basics of in and working, but for the most part plan to dedicate most of my attention to single-player most likely until we have additional staff.
2. Town buildings and villagers + Steam Workshop
The current town system has a strong base, but is still missing a lot of meat. I want to re-enable the custom building + villager summoning options with less strict building requirements as the primary (cheapest) means of summoning villagers rather than the current pre-made structure plop method. While still of course offering the plop method for people that aren't as interested in building. This also plays into the first phase of Steam Workshop integration which I have been researching lately. In short, an in-game way to upload saved structures to Steam Workshop for sharing with other players around the world. Steam Workshop integration once working, will eventually branch off to items, skins, quests, and more, but with most of those types still further down the road.
Villagers, or town NPCs, were temporarily turned off while undergoing some changes, and have remained off for too long. I want to get them at least appearing again as soon as possible, but ultimately am looking to upgrade them into having stats and skills that grow over time. This may be more of a luxury system than something needed right now, and judging by the results of the survey may be pushed to the back burner.
3. Crafting and harvesting skills and facilities
One of the biggest "eye-openers" I've come to accept over the past couple months is that Solace Crafting is not a game where player level is the deciding factor as to where a player can travel and survive. It's not difficult for a level 20 player to craft and enchant gear strong enough to let them survive just fine in level 25 or 30 territory, for example. That switch in mentality, that it's more about gear and skills than it is actual player level has done away with my hesitation to add more crafting and harvesting skills. I was worried about making already "overpowered" equipment even stronger, but realize now: that's ok! I want to add an "offensive rating" and "defensive rating" showing roughly what level monster your offensive and defensive capabilities should be on par with. This will be pending some equipment math changes as there is some multiplication currently being used that gets out of hand at higher levels.
The current enchanting skill tree gives a decent example of where I want to take crafting and harvesting skill trees. Providing higher level recipe unlocks as well as improved skills to be chosen and unlocked over time. With the recent implementation of schematics we have already started to introduce more powerful equipment, and soon with skills like "smithing melee damage" it will be possible to specialize specifically to your characters play style, slowly making their equipment stronger and stronger. This also plays into the benefits of multi-player play, as one smith can focus on armor, while another can focus on weapons. Note that there will of course never be any skill caps added in single-player limiting anyone from upgrading both armor and weapon skills, for example, it will just take longer to try and "master" both by yourself.
4. Continuing towards version 1.0
There is a lot that I was originally planning to get in prior to 1.0 that I think now will actually be better after 1.0, the biggest of which is the elemental planes. They will add a lot of depth to exploration, new resources, new monsters, and so on, but I think some of the more obvious features that we are still missing and general optimizations should be checked off before we dive too deep into more "advanced" features such as that. Some of the features I consider important for version 1.0 include cooking, fishing, monster skills, and quests, as well as adventuring jobs and classes.
I should make it loud and clear, here and now, version 1.0 will be no where near the end of development for Solace Crafting. It's a major step to transition out of "Early Access" into "Released" and is also a prerequisite for many players and organizations that are tired of early access games being abandoned and so just don't cover/play them at all. Releasing version 1.0 is most likely not something I can do on my own, as optimization and polish is a big part of it. But, as sales slowly increase, the prospect of additional staff grows closer and closer to reality.
As always, feel free to comment here, start a discussion on the discussion boards, or join us in Discord at discord.gg/solacecrafting and thank you everyone for your support!
Kyle Postlewait
Big Kitty Games