Creative Mode Update
Two weeks ago, with Gamescom kicking off, we released the first update of our 0.2 update cycle. With it, we added the long awaited Creative Mode, in which you get to build the landscape of your dreams without the pressure of your Tile Stack running out, having to chase Quests or High Scores.
To aid you in getting the kinds of tiles you need, you can adjust the probability of the different GroupTypes spawning on a tile. Don't want any rails? no problem, just turn them off by setting their probability to 0!
Furthermore, to allow for maximum creativity, we have added a new Save Load System, allowing you to play multiple Creative
and Classic games at the same time. No longer will you have to backup, or abandon, your currently running Classic game with that Personal Best in order to start a fresh run. Lastly, we made a bunch of Performance Optimizations, which should make the game run better for everyone. Load times, especially for large maps, has been improved as well.
We have updated our Roadmap accordingly, and you can find it in the original road map news post here on Steam:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1455840/announcements/detail/2972920842745736375
Dev Q&A
During Gamescom, we have held a Developer Q&A. You can find it on Youtube:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We are also looking into adding it to our rotation of videos shown on the Store Page.
That said, all of us enjoyed the Q&A very much and we are interested in doing another one at some point, as well as semi-irregular streams that are just us hanging out, playing Dorfromantik, and potentially answering a couple questions, but there are no concrete plans yet.
Gamescom, Indie Arena Booth, and Contests
At Gamescom, we were part of the Indie Arena Booth, courtesy of Ubisoft Entrepreneurs, due to winning their Newcomer Award at Ubisoft Indie Camp. We enjoyed the Indie Arena Booth a lot, gave an interview on their stream and presented the Trailer for the new Creative Mode exclusively with IGN. We saw increases across all metrics, so we would like to thank all of you for supporting us!
We also ran two Contests - One was a good old "Highscore Chase", while the other promoted the Creative Mode. We also updated our Demo for the Event and had a limited availability window for it during Gamescom.
What's Next for Dorfromantik?
There is a lot coming up for Dorfromantik, most notably
starting in November, our brave Developers Luca, Sandro, Timo, and Zwi will be busy working on their Master Theses, and as such Development will slow down well into the new year but we will probably give you a reminder closer to them starting to shift away from development. We are working hard on Content for you guys, so there won't be a three or four month long gap without new content.
[h2]Upcoming Content[/h2]
We have a bunch of interesting things lined up. We are not yet done with Creative Mode, Performance, and there's still balancing to be looked at for the 0.2 cycle! We are currently testing a
Pipette Tool for Creative Mode, alongside a mechanism to lock your stack which effectively let's you clone the currently active tile.
What is not coming (for now anyways) is any form of a Tile Library or Toolkit to build/select the exact tile you need. It simply does not fit into our current scope leading up to November, we are still interested in exploring that, though!
More control over probabilities, and potentially additional sliders for as of yet unavailable probabilities and rates, will be coming to Creative Mode. We are also aware of UI/UX issues and aim to improve on those, especially the Main Menu and Game Mode selection. Also on the list, better feedback; Both visually, and via audio.
For the balancing issues, we plan on communicating the Perfect Placement mechanic better, as that is a core mechanic and we have not been giving it the love it needs as such. Timo is working hard on tools to help us visualize and understand progression in sessions better, tile frequencies, Stack Size compared to Score compared to placed Tiles, so we can start tweaking values, add potentially missing Tile Presets and more. A general discussion about Mechanics in Classic Mode is also happening internally, and how we can make things more interesting, scale better, and how we might be able to reuse a feature or two we implemented for Creative Mode and whether that would make sense to do.
Oh, and if we
somehow can manage, we would love to implement the Undo Button before Novembers shift to Uni work. Obviously, no promises here, but it would take a big weight off our shoulders.
[h2]Community Stuff[/h2]
Last, but not least - Community!
As mentioned above, we enjoyed our Q&A stream and would love to do more streaming in some form or another, though we need a bit of planning time how exactly we would do that.
Starting this week, we will also have a (bi-)weekly Creative Showcase Contest on both Steam and Discord. Every (other) week, we will present you with a theme and you get to build some beautiful landscapes and dioramas. The submission phase lasts for a week, from monday to monday, and starting on tuesdays the whole community will get to vote their winners.
Currently, we do not plan to have prizes beyond bragging rights, so it is all in good fun!
You can find more info in our Steam Discussions Creative Showcase subforum.We hope you did enjoy Gamescom as well, wishlisted some awesome upcoming games, and enjoyed our latest content update! We also like to thank you well in advance for sticking with us through what will be a very content-light time starting in November - We know that regular updates are important for everyone to not get burnt out or lose interest, and Dom will try his best to keep you entertained during that time!
So long, stay romantisch!
💛
Screenshots by Spiff & Tio via Discord
