Vecter News

I've been hard at work these past two and a half weeks building two features I really like. I like them so much in that I thought them worthy of an announcement!

[h2]First up, the colour picker:[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

With this feature you can quite literally modify every colour aspect of the game. One of the advantages of keeping true to single-colour wire-frame graphics is that awesome customisation options like this one can be created.

Not only that, but if you hit the export button, it generates a code that you can paste in a forum, or a chat or on the Community Hub and share your creations with the world. Here is an example.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1945234274
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1945234596
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1945237486

Furthermore you can just select and copy that code, then go back into the game and press the Import button. Presto now you are using someone else's colour scheme.

I can't wait to see what you guys make. If you're having trouble using the import/export I recommend checking out the release notes here which contain gifs showing how to use the feature.

[h2]Up next, Player Stats[/h2]

This is a pretty low impact feature but it did take some code tickling under the hood and it is a prerequisite for Steam Achievements. Can't give stuff I you can't track stuff.



Sadly, they don't do much right now... Apart from display themselves... But you can take a screenshot and post it in the community hub to show how much you die.

[h2]Vecter is heading to EGX Rezzed 2020[/h2]


That's right everyone I'll be there to meet you all and hopefully get some more people to try out my little baby. I do recommend you come by and say hi even if you have been playing Vecter because:

a) It's nice to say hello :)
b) I'm not coming to demo it on a regular PC, I'll be there with the Vecter Arcade Machine



And, depending how much time i'll have to prepare, the arcade machine will have a special leaderboard attached to it that will only be available for the 3-day period during EGX and will only be accessible from that Arcade Machine.

One of us! One of us!

Okay that's it from me, I'm out catch you later! bye bye! Happy holidays! See ya!

So version 0.1.6.0 ey? I recommend checking out the full release notes here but in short: New Play Menu, new Training mode, new bug fixes and, of course, NEW BUGS!

Everyone likes bugs right? But seriously these things are a damn nightmare to squish...

Also, the Steam Awards Nominations are happening! I'm really hoping to get Vecter nominated for the "The Outstanding Visual Style Award" award and would appreciate any help if you think it may be a deserved spot.

The only reason I'm so confident this could actually happen is because so many new reviews have been pouring in telling me how much they enjoy Vecter for it's synthwave artstyle. Getting a nomination means that Vecter would go to the Steam Awards in December and that would mean A LOT of new people would learn of it an get to enjoy the awesome synthwave experience at no cost to them.

It's hard getting noticed when you're an indie, and it's even harder to get noticed when you don't have a revenue stream so any help is greatly appreciated.

But otherwise yeah, that's it from me, pretty straight forward. If you like the game and want to support its development further, first please understand that there's absolutely no requirement to do so in order to play. It is free and it will be free forever. The servers might go down at some point if I can't afford to maintain them, but it will still run offline just fine.

If you still wish to support the development you can do so by:

- Sharing with your friends, family, strangers, pets, enemies, favourite cosplayers, Elon Musk
- Voting for Vecter in the Steam Awards, particularly under "The Outstanding Visual Style Award"
- Leaving detailed steam reviews, as that helps me improve the game.
- Throwing money at my face every month: https://www.patreon.com/vecter
- Throwing coffee at my face once: https://ko-fi.com/taranasus

A'ight, I've said my bit. Pace!

I'm about to touch on a somewhat controversial and unpopular subject within the game-dev world: listening to your players. Developers, both AAA and Indie are very reluctant to do this for several reasons:

• Gamers don't know what they want
  
• You can't make everyone happy
  
• Your game will lose its identity and uniqueness in the process 
  
• It's not fair to take people's ideas and then make them pay for it
  
• I can't listen and answer every one, when will I have time to develop my game?
  

Yet I've been doing exactly this since April, and the results are quite the opposite of the general opinion. With a game sitting at a 95% approval rating and which has been featured on the steam Free to Play hub under New and Trending, I'm very much in a position to completely rebuke the above claim. Here's what I've noticed:



Shocking, I know, but this is a very dismissive point of view from the get-go. Yes, you are the developer and it is your baby but you are going up against individuals that have potentially played your game for longer than you have been developing it. I'm okay at my own game, but I couldn't even dream of having the skill some of my top players have. Those individuals have played hours at a time! They know every kink, every exploit, every mechanic they can user and/or abuse, DO NOT IGNORE THEM! You might disagree with them, and that's fine, but don't just outright ignore them as they have some valuable input and insight you couldn't dream of having, because you're too busy building the damn thing! 

"But my top players will only be concerned with late-game aspects. What about the rest of them?" 

They are not, and they are not the only ones trying to grab your attention either. You will get beginner players sharing their problems with you quite often if you give them a platform to do so. Most of you now have a discord server, how about including these three channels: #features #feedback and #bugs, then let people fill them out and just direct them to write their problems there. You will get plenty of people complaining outside those official channels, that's fine answer them on their platform of choice and always end your answer with a suggestion to join the discord server where they can contact you directly with feedback, features and bugs. 



Color-picker or music-driven colour changes? Electronic music or Heavy Metal? Arcady or Simulation? You truly can't have everything, but you sure as hell can have a compromise. 

When two opinions clash, you can stick yourself in the middle and be the decider which will potentially make you very unpopular if you make the wrong choice, or you can have a vote. A fourth channel on my server is called #polls, and boy is it useful: 



Take the difficult decisions out of your hands and let your community decide for you what's best. "But if you do that then..

...your game will lose its identity and uniqueness"

Will it? People came to you because they liked what they saw, to begin with, why would they want to change the essence? Yes, you will have the random troll saying "Make it more like COD" or some nonsense but those are easy to spot and ignore. And say you want to take on board every single stupid request, once you put it in a poll you will know exactly what the majority of people want, and the majority of people on your discord don't want another COD, they want your creation, but better!

It's not fair to take people's ideas and then make them pay for it

It's not your decision to make. If someone willingly came over to you and told you "you should do this because it'd be better", they are telling you this because they want to have a better experience and they also want to feel a part of the development process. The charitability of their actions is not really a concern for them since they just want to better enjoy your creation. You have the difficult task of implementing the change, so it ends up being a semi-equal exchange. 

I can't listen and answer every one, when will I have time to develop my game?

I currently have around 800 daily players for my game and about 300 discord members of which 20-30 are extremely active on the server. I can easily keep on top of the situation by spending 1 hour per day answering questions on discord, steam community hub and twitter. If you have so many requests that it would eat up the whole of your day, you are definitely big enough that you should consider a community manager. Sometimes I may need to spend more time, sometimes it's quiet and I don't have to say a thing, but it's by no means overwhelming.

I know it's difficult to take criticism, trust me I know. I once tried to make the menu more visible by adding some black backgrounds to the buttons and someone literally said: 



Yeah... it hurt, but looking back on it they had a point. I removed it a few minutes later and everything was fine. However here's what they have to say because I'm so responsive and accepting of feedback:



So give your community a voice. They might surprise you!

If you want to be part of the development process, join us on https://www.vecter.online/discord

If you want to support me even more, there's a patreon https://patreon.com/vecter and ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/taranasus link where you can throw money at the problem.

Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to enjoy Vecter!

Hello and welcome to another exciting update brought to you by the guy that has a love-hate relationship with sleep. I want to take this early-morning opportunity (4AM at the time of writing) to announce Vecter's new Patreon page!

But why does it need a Patreon page? That's a good question and hear me out as I have a good case for it: Last week Vecter got unexpectedly featured on the front page of Steam's Free to Play Hub. This is, of course, amazing news since it brought a surge of new players and 10x'ed the number of active players. But you see, 10x'ing the players also means a big spike the hosting costs for the leaderboard and shadow playback features.



While I can afford to cover this bill no problem, I need to be mindful of the future. According to Microsoft's predictions, this bill is not getting any smaller over time.



If another wave of new players come in like this, having another 10x situation would put a significant hole in my wallet and that's just not something I alone can afford.

Also, considering the AMAZING reception it has had on steam



I want to do more with Vecter:

• I want to build an arcade machine!
  
• I want to take it to gaming conventions
  
• port it to consoles (and still charge no money for it, I'm very adamant that this should be a free game!)
  
• make a multiplayer mode (co-op and online)
  
• create amazing merch and memorabilia for people
  

and a million other things... all of which require more income and time than I currently have as a full-time backend developer.

So, the best way to get all of the above done and still keep the game free for everyone without employing some of the more questionable monetization methods popular these days is to rely on the generosity of those who can afford to chip in and make a good thing great.



Some things should be Free, and I think Vecter should be one of them. I really hope that together we can make this a reality and continue the development and improvement of Vecter for years to come!

I encourage you to check out the Patreon page. There are some interesting rewards there that will get you involved in the development process in some unique ways and as time passes I'll look into adding even more rewards and more pledge tiers to subscribe to, in the hopes of finding something that satisfies everyone.

It's the first time I'm undertaking something like this, thus I ask for your patience as:

Hello Followers!

How are you all tonight? Feeling good and happy? Having a nice Monday? (Seriously, reply in the comments I'm happy to hear how you all are doing).

Today at 8PM GMT marked 1 week since Vecter has been released and oh my God what a week it has been...

Your desire and excitement to play literally brought the backend down. I had to spend Friday evening in a mild panic re-writing it to be more efficient, because I never expected such a explosion in players. This is by far the best kind of problem to have. I've never had to write code in a complete frenzy with an ear to ear grin before. You guys are awesome and if you feel up to it, i challenge you to try it again!

But let me not bore you any longer, I've said my piece and now I want to show you a little stat info-graphic I've prepared. It's ugly as sin but right now it's literally the best of my abilities. Hope you like it.



As always, if you want to talk to me live, my discord server is open, but otherwise I hope you all have an absolutely marvellous day.

Kaizen Taranasus
Self-appointed head of development