The End of the Beginning: The Long Road To Beta Is Driven!
Hello everyone!
Sorry it's been a while since I've posted a development diary, but if you have followed our Twitter you can see that we have been hard at work on the initial beta. Sometime in the next few days, almost 5 years of work will be culminated in the delivery of the first feature-complete beta version of AotSS to my publisher. It's a milestone both long in coming and yet it really only marks the end of the beginning, as they say. So what's next?
Well, with the new UI, while it's a huge improvement over previous versions, we want to really give the game a good UX (User Experience) run. We have some professionals reviewing the design of the game to look for things like:
That last is very important. The primary conceit of AotSS is that You. Are. A. Person. You are NOT the grey eminence of other 4X titles working in the shadows. You have a name. Stats. Age. Health. Mental health. Hobbies. Events. Skills. And you are mortal. If you die, the game ends. No passing on the kingdom to your illegitimate 3rd cousin from Iceland here. "L'etat, est moi' has never been more literal. So we really want the player to feel they are looking at their empire from a 30,000 ft (light year?) altitude, and focusing on the big picture of running an empire. While you CAN zoom all the way into a region level (think a country on a planet) as an emperor, you really can't do anything at that scope because you're not involved with city and regional governments - they work on their own. You are responsible for the planet they are on to be safe (provide military infrastructure) well-governed (provide enough adminstration sectors to properly run the planet) and above all, put someone competent in charge. You will run into the situation many times of wishing you could replace someone with someone better, but the House they belong to would be very upset if they were removed, and so is it worth lowering relations with a powerful House just to make one planet more efficient? If it's a provincial capital, maybe it is. That decision, and a flexible way for the player to judge the pros and cons of that decision, is a big part of the UX review.
Sid Meier has a simple design philosophy: every game must be a sequence of interesting decisions. So what interesting decisions can the player have in AotSS, and do they all feel important?
To test this, I did a 'option map' for a reasonably common situation in a game: a system governor who does not belong to your House refuses to open their System trade net to the Empire supply network. Since this is the primary way that the ruling House (you) gets materials like basic, heavy and rare materials, as well as food and energy, this could be consequential. So I made a partial list of the player's options, good or bad, and there ended up being over 60 things you could so, and I'm sure clever players will be able to think of more! (By the way, the list doesn't format well here, but you can see the list if you're interested on this forum post: Link to Quarter to Three
As you can see, clearly the ability to influence the world isn't an issue. In fact, the opposite now becomes: How does the player know *what* to do in order to generate a positive outcome? Certainly some of the options available have serious knock-on effects - you can take a system or planet by force, but can you withstand the combined fury of the other Houses if they throw in with the aggrieved House whose Holding you took? Can you deal with the collapse in popular support in the systems that are affected? Is the Holding worth what you paid to get it if you destroyed half the infrastructure to get it? Again, the player needs to know this information before they commit themselves to a major course of action. And that all comes with a good tutorial and knowledge set.
The next step is to tune the game. We have made the game 'smaller' with fewer Pops and less output in order to have your actions matter more. Now, generating a Farm or a Factory will tangibly affect a planet's output, as opposed to before where there could be literally hundreds of a sector on a planet. Now, planets hold less Pops, and migration from and to planets really matters, and designating a new planet as a colony of the Empire has weight - Pops have free will to move between planets (as long as the empire logistical network connects them!) - does opening a new planet too close to others drain those planets, especially if they are not very nice to begin with? Maybe that's what you want to do to knock down the power of a troublesome House - but you will also hurt the Empire as a whole by doing so. What's the balance?
Opening a new planet, unlike other games, is a really big deal - planets and systems have a lot of weight in AotSS since there are a relatively small number of them. You will get to know them like people - their quirks, their strengths, their weaknesses, and you will learn to get the most out of them - as long as the game allows you to! So keeping the scale smaller and allowing your actions to have more impact is important. We will be experimenting with the amount of AP (Action Points) you have as a player - you should ALWAYS feel that you 'could have done more' each turn, but you have to make decisions about how to spend your time and resources, even if it's on yourself!
In line with the first two items, we are making the design decision to recommend to the player to run their Empire through their Provinces down. Past versions of AotSS focused mainly on the planets, with a 'supply up' type of model. This is still important, but to feel like an Emperor, you need to be working with your large moving parts (i.e. your provinces, Primes, and Council), not your planets. This design shift is a WIP but already the game feels more 'Imperial' as opposed to 'planet micro'. You will still be able to interact with Viceroys but it will be more effective and efficient (provided you have the right people in place!) to deal with your Governors. We have also gone to a 'rank system' for Provinces and Systems - each Province and System is ranked high to low S,A,B,C,D. It is a quick way to see how 'good' your Province/System is - as well as how important it is to the Empire (and how prestigious a post it is to a Character!)
So to sum, we have a genre-changing game IF we do the following:
- Provide the player with the tools and UI to understand the game
- Provide the player with the knowledge to understand their choices and consequences of decisions made in the game, and to ensure that those decisions are interesting and important each turn
- Provide the player with the feeling they are one person in charge of a constellation-spanning galactic Empire
That's what we're going to focus on over the next several months. We know this game could be special, and we want to get this right! So stay tuned, the fun part is about to begin! And for those of you who have been on the ride since Imperia: thank you so much for your support! The game's come a hell of a long way, and if you have the pre-alpha you really should get this .9.2 build. It's light years from where the game was even 6 months ago. And we're really just getting started with pounding this game into shape!
Thanks, and the journey continues!
-Steve
Sorry it's been a while since I've posted a development diary, but if you have followed our Twitter you can see that we have been hard at work on the initial beta. Sometime in the next few days, almost 5 years of work will be culminated in the delivery of the first feature-complete beta version of AotSS to my publisher. It's a milestone both long in coming and yet it really only marks the end of the beginning, as they say. So what's next?
Well, with the new UI, while it's a huge improvement over previous versions, we want to really give the game a good UX (User Experience) run. We have some professionals reviewing the design of the game to look for things like:
- How easy is it for the player to figure out what to do?
- Is information easily accessible?
- Is the information the right information for what the player needs?
- How hard/easy is it for the player to get to the information they need?
- Are they playing the game on the intended scale?
That last is very important. The primary conceit of AotSS is that You. Are. A. Person. You are NOT the grey eminence of other 4X titles working in the shadows. You have a name. Stats. Age. Health. Mental health. Hobbies. Events. Skills. And you are mortal. If you die, the game ends. No passing on the kingdom to your illegitimate 3rd cousin from Iceland here. "L'etat, est moi' has never been more literal. So we really want the player to feel they are looking at their empire from a 30,000 ft (light year?) altitude, and focusing on the big picture of running an empire. While you CAN zoom all the way into a region level (think a country on a planet) as an emperor, you really can't do anything at that scope because you're not involved with city and regional governments - they work on their own. You are responsible for the planet they are on to be safe (provide military infrastructure) well-governed (provide enough adminstration sectors to properly run the planet) and above all, put someone competent in charge. You will run into the situation many times of wishing you could replace someone with someone better, but the House they belong to would be very upset if they were removed, and so is it worth lowering relations with a powerful House just to make one planet more efficient? If it's a provincial capital, maybe it is. That decision, and a flexible way for the player to judge the pros and cons of that decision, is a big part of the UX review.
Sid Meier has a simple design philosophy: every game must be a sequence of interesting decisions. So what interesting decisions can the player have in AotSS, and do they all feel important?
To test this, I did a 'option map' for a reasonably common situation in a game: a system governor who does not belong to your House refuses to open their System trade net to the Empire supply network. Since this is the primary way that the ruling House (you) gets materials like basic, heavy and rare materials, as well as food and energy, this could be consequential. So I made a partial list of the player's options, good or bad, and there ended up being over 60 things you could so, and I'm sure clever players will be able to think of more! (By the way, the list doesn't format well here, but you can see the list if you're interested on this forum post: Link to Quarter to Three
As you can see, clearly the ability to influence the world isn't an issue. In fact, the opposite now becomes: How does the player know *what* to do in order to generate a positive outcome? Certainly some of the options available have serious knock-on effects - you can take a system or planet by force, but can you withstand the combined fury of the other Houses if they throw in with the aggrieved House whose Holding you took? Can you deal with the collapse in popular support in the systems that are affected? Is the Holding worth what you paid to get it if you destroyed half the infrastructure to get it? Again, the player needs to know this information before they commit themselves to a major course of action. And that all comes with a good tutorial and knowledge set.
The next step is to tune the game. We have made the game 'smaller' with fewer Pops and less output in order to have your actions matter more. Now, generating a Farm or a Factory will tangibly affect a planet's output, as opposed to before where there could be literally hundreds of a sector on a planet. Now, planets hold less Pops, and migration from and to planets really matters, and designating a new planet as a colony of the Empire has weight - Pops have free will to move between planets (as long as the empire logistical network connects them!) - does opening a new planet too close to others drain those planets, especially if they are not very nice to begin with? Maybe that's what you want to do to knock down the power of a troublesome House - but you will also hurt the Empire as a whole by doing so. What's the balance?
Opening a new planet, unlike other games, is a really big deal - planets and systems have a lot of weight in AotSS since there are a relatively small number of them. You will get to know them like people - their quirks, their strengths, their weaknesses, and you will learn to get the most out of them - as long as the game allows you to! So keeping the scale smaller and allowing your actions to have more impact is important. We will be experimenting with the amount of AP (Action Points) you have as a player - you should ALWAYS feel that you 'could have done more' each turn, but you have to make decisions about how to spend your time and resources, even if it's on yourself!
In line with the first two items, we are making the design decision to recommend to the player to run their Empire through their Provinces down. Past versions of AotSS focused mainly on the planets, with a 'supply up' type of model. This is still important, but to feel like an Emperor, you need to be working with your large moving parts (i.e. your provinces, Primes, and Council), not your planets. This design shift is a WIP but already the game feels more 'Imperial' as opposed to 'planet micro'. You will still be able to interact with Viceroys but it will be more effective and efficient (provided you have the right people in place!) to deal with your Governors. We have also gone to a 'rank system' for Provinces and Systems - each Province and System is ranked high to low S,A,B,C,D. It is a quick way to see how 'good' your Province/System is - as well as how important it is to the Empire (and how prestigious a post it is to a Character!)
So to sum, we have a genre-changing game IF we do the following:
- Provide the player with the tools and UI to understand the game
- Provide the player with the knowledge to understand their choices and consequences of decisions made in the game, and to ensure that those decisions are interesting and important each turn
- Provide the player with the feeling they are one person in charge of a constellation-spanning galactic Empire
That's what we're going to focus on over the next several months. We know this game could be special, and we want to get this right! So stay tuned, the fun part is about to begin! And for those of you who have been on the ride since Imperia: thank you so much for your support! The game's come a hell of a long way, and if you have the pre-alpha you really should get this .9.2 build. It's light years from where the game was even 6 months ago. And we're really just getting started with pounding this game into shape!
Thanks, and the journey continues!
-Steve