Lorenzo Digital Roadmap: The update you were waiting for!
Greetings, people!
Today we'd like to share a little more insight of what's lying ahead on the (hopefully) last steps of this Early Access path. Our starting plan was to publish 10 major updates, from 0.1 being the first playable alpha to 1.0 being the update leaving Early Access, while obviously collecting some data (through gameplay sessions and user reports) to integrate as much feedback as possible from the community.
So before we move to what's left on the schedule, we felt like it was nice to share some little peek at the numbers, to figure out what we've been doing lately:
As far as 2020 goes, we've been working on a total of 209 tasks, usually ranging from few hours to a couple of days long, which represent small bits of work we usually follow during our daily routine. Sometimes, one ticket on Trello equals to one task; most of the time, it's actually split into smaller tasks, which are closer to the game architecture (thus helping programmers figuring out how to do it).
But hey! I bet you are here to learn what was that secret stuff we were working on, right? Ah well, nobody cares about spreadsheets anyway, so...
[h2]> Version 0.9 will bring multiplayer in Florence[/h2]
And finally! Playing online was one of the main features unlocked during the Kickstarter campaign, and we couldn't wait to put our dirty hands into it. :) As you can imagine, the game structure needed some slight fixing around to allow multiplayer to work (and some major testing overall), which is where most of our time went lately. We decided it was worth putting everything aside for a moment to provide this feature, as it was among the main requests both we and Cranio Creations receive everyday :3
We are planning to release the new multiplayer feature (which uses Steam, so no further authentication or subscription is required on your side) in the next few days, starting tomorrow.
[h2]> Version 1.0 will make everything stable and improve the AI[/h2]
For those who like playing Lorenzo like Han from a galaxy far, far away, there is still work to do on the general AI performance in terms of sheer score, Leader management and general decisions.
Now, those who have followed the development for a while may have noticed there has been a general, albeit small, improvement in the average score the hard AI gets every time. Our plan is to fiddle more with its behaviours to hopefully raise that average (well, median actually) around 80 or more, or at least to make it feel more competitive towards the same assets players usually prefer. The only issue with that, is we need more and more game data! So every completed match, either ours or yours, matters to this common goal.
Now, as we work towards this, there will be time to deal with all other bugs and reports which were temporarily set aside, which we will discuss soon.
[h2]> And then? What's next?[/h2]
After we hit the final release, surely there will still be some minor issues to fix around, so no worries: we won't disappear. We will update our Trello board to track all new requests and then figure out what goes where. And of course, we will leave our user report system inside the game, so you'll be able to reach out whenever you need.
[h3]Speaking of Trello...[/h3]
While we were prepping up the multiplayer stuff, I took the chance to clean up our Trello board, to move the tickets to the next release, archive the outdated ones, and generally tidy up the place.
Here's a little more detail on each category on the left of the next release:
As always, feel free to reach out here, on our BoardGameGeek dedicated thread, or through other official channels.
Before we depart, one final thought: remember Studio Clangore is a small indie studio, and as such, we literaly depend on people's opinion and kindness. Because of this, we want to thank every single one of you who contributed (and still does!) by sending reports, sharing opinions, writing on BGG, or simply talking about the game with friends. This really means a lot, both to us and to the almighty Cranio Creations.
See you soon!
Today we'd like to share a little more insight of what's lying ahead on the (hopefully) last steps of this Early Access path. Our starting plan was to publish 10 major updates, from 0.1 being the first playable alpha to 1.0 being the update leaving Early Access, while obviously collecting some data (through gameplay sessions and user reports) to integrate as much feedback as possible from the community.
So before we move to what's left on the schedule, we felt like it was nice to share some little peek at the numbers, to figure out what we've been doing lately:
As far as 2020 goes, we've been working on a total of 209 tasks, usually ranging from few hours to a couple of days long, which represent small bits of work we usually follow during our daily routine. Sometimes, one ticket on Trello equals to one task; most of the time, it's actually split into smaller tasks, which are closer to the game architecture (thus helping programmers figuring out how to do it).
But hey! I bet you are here to learn what was that secret stuff we were working on, right? Ah well, nobody cares about spreadsheets anyway, so...
[h2]> Version 0.9 will bring multiplayer in Florence[/h2]
And finally! Playing online was one of the main features unlocked during the Kickstarter campaign, and we couldn't wait to put our dirty hands into it. :) As you can imagine, the game structure needed some slight fixing around to allow multiplayer to work (and some major testing overall), which is where most of our time went lately. We decided it was worth putting everything aside for a moment to provide this feature, as it was among the main requests both we and Cranio Creations receive everyday :3
We are planning to release the new multiplayer feature (which uses Steam, so no further authentication or subscription is required on your side) in the next few days, starting tomorrow.
[h2]> Version 1.0 will make everything stable and improve the AI[/h2]
For those who like playing Lorenzo like Han from a galaxy far, far away, there is still work to do on the general AI performance in terms of sheer score, Leader management and general decisions.
Now, those who have followed the development for a while may have noticed there has been a general, albeit small, improvement in the average score the hard AI gets every time. Our plan is to fiddle more with its behaviours to hopefully raise that average (well, median actually) around 80 or more, or at least to make it feel more competitive towards the same assets players usually prefer. The only issue with that, is we need more and more game data! So every completed match, either ours or yours, matters to this common goal.
Now, as we work towards this, there will be time to deal with all other bugs and reports which were temporarily set aside, which we will discuss soon.
[h2]> And then? What's next?[/h2]
After we hit the final release, surely there will still be some minor issues to fix around, so no worries: we won't disappear. We will update our Trello board to track all new requests and then figure out what goes where. And of course, we will leave our user report system inside the game, so you'll be able to reach out whenever you need.
[h3]Speaking of Trello...[/h3]
While we were prepping up the multiplayer stuff, I took the chance to clean up our Trello board, to move the tickets to the next release, archive the outdated ones, and generally tidy up the place.
Here's a little more detail on each category on the left of the next release:
- Working on - That's what we are focusing on at the moment, if it's not yet ready for the next release.
- Bugs - Plain and simple, stuff that doesn't work. This usually has top priority as it may lead to unwanted crashes, soft locks, and whatnot. This list should be empty when 1.0 kicks in.
- ToDo - Generally speaking, this is what we feel like it's necessary to bring Lorenzo to the quality standard we had invisioned when we started. Most of this will be dealt with when 1.0 is released, but something else may slip after the major update.
- UserReport Issues - this is basically what was reported by you guys (at least, the most of it) which we haven't dealt with yet, either because it's too time consuming or because it wasn't reported by a consistent amount of people. We will have to consider the amount of resources we will have after the 1.0 release, then plan accordingly. Currently there is no estimated time for these, but things may change in the future.
As always, feel free to reach out here, on our BoardGameGeek dedicated thread, or through other official channels.
Before we depart, one final thought: remember Studio Clangore is a small indie studio, and as such, we literaly depend on people's opinion and kindness. Because of this, we want to thank every single one of you who contributed (and still does!) by sending reports, sharing opinions, writing on BGG, or simply talking about the game with friends. This really means a lot, both to us and to the almighty Cranio Creations.
See you soon!