DevLog vol.2 Thank you all for playing demo! Here's what we are doing now
Hello, every Daxia and Nvxia, our dear players! Steam Next Fest had come to an end. During the festival, "The Matchless Kungfu" released its first open demo, which garnered unexpected attention and feedback. We are extremely surprised and delighted by this.
In fact, The Matchless Kungfu has conducted 3 closed beta tests in the past six months. This public demo can get a good evaluation, largely thanks to the players who have participated in these 3 closed betas. It is because of their enthusiastic sharing of their gaming experience, complaints about the unreasonable spots in the game, and the confusing things in the novice stage, that we have always had a relatively clear answer on how to improve the game.
However, as an open world non-typical martial arts RPG game that emphasizes high degree of freedom and high interactivity, blosed beta tests with around 200 players in each round cannot fully reflect the strange situations that players can encounter in their own games. Fortunately, during the past Steam Next Fest, we met the most enthusiastic players and friends. Not only were you willing to help novice players find various ways to solve the problems encountered in the demo in the community, but also contributed more than 600 bug reports worldwide, and discussions in steam forum.
While we are honored and excited, we also hope that players also had fun time during the fest. After all, it is our greatest wish to make a fun game!
After the Steam Next Fest 2023, the developer team took a short break, and has now returned to the development work of The Matchless Kungfu. Due to the unexpected number of downloads during the event, it took a lot of effort for us to collect and review everyone's voice on various platforms. Many problems could not be fixed in time during the open period of the demo. We apologize for those issues.
At present, we have re-digested and sorted out the suggestions and bug feedback, and arranged them on the development schedule.
For us, receiving these bug reports and suggestions is the most beneficial thing, while seeing the strange/awkward situation that some players have met during gameplay is the happiest thing in our busy work.
We were amazed every day by the complexity of the causes of bugs reported by players, and the variety of how players wanted to play the game.
We will continue to add content to the game in the next phase of developement. Since the follow-up To Do List is a bit long, here we will first preview a few content that players are generally concerned about:
● The generation of the mini world will be improved, the types of land masses will be more diverse, and the number of sects and forces will increase according to the increase of landscale.
● A Sandbox Mode that was not available in the demo: Players can set the environment bias of the mini world and directly generate a mini world that already has settled land masses. For example: if the player chooses a snowy environment, then 60% of the area of this mini world will be a continuous snowy environment, and special land masses will appear due to other mechanisms; in this mode, what the player experiences is a relatively completed big world and unique challenges.
● New special land resources: such as decorations, monsters, martial arts, inner kungfu, treasures, enlightenment stones, etc.
● More sects: Beggar Gang, Shaolin, Wudang and other sects will be added in subsequent versions. In addition, sect buildings will be more diverse, and there will be other land masses connecting between sects as intervals.
● More identities: We will provide players with more identities, such as lumberjack, fisherman, miner, farmer, etc. These identities will bring more adventures...
● In response to the fact that [NPC behavior] was not smart enough or even self-contradictory, we will quickly improve the basic rules of NPC behavior according to various problems encountered by players during the Steam Next Fest, and increase the trigger preconditions of adventures. As long as enough situations are considered and rules written clearly, NPCs will become smarter and behave more reasonably.
As we listed in the "Development Plan" in the main menu of the demo version, The Matchless Kungfu will be released on the Steam in the form of Early Access. The reason for EA release is because we know that games like this need to meet players as soon as possible on the premise of a certain degree of integrity and gameplay, and gradually improve and progress. This is also the ideal release form that many indie game studios is using.
Our goal is to make the Early Access launch version greatly improved compared with the demo version, with more abundant and reasonable content, and more surprises and challenges in the later stage of gamplay.
The Matchless Kungfu is a non-linear, highly interactive open world game. And after the game’s Early Access release, we will continue to add new content. This leads to more and more possible situations/conditions a player may meet during gameplay, and the demand for testing is growing huge.
For such games, ordinary QA teams and processes cannot expect all act that may be done by the players. So we will start a long-term test branch after the EA version is released. This method of branch testing has been proved to work fine by many strategy game predecessors. Players who are willing to experience new systems, new functions, and new bugs that have not yet been implemented in the main version can directly enter the test branch and complain about new content 😊. When the content is stable, we will update to the main version.
During the past Steam Next Fest 2023 in June, we got some attention from influencers very unexpectedly, which gave us the opportunity to appear in front of the public together with the names of many excellent works. While we were surprised and moved, we were also apprehensive.
We have always positioned ourselves as a indie game that everyone will play differently. In fact, many old games that have been developed for many years, or games that have been released soon, or even new games that will appear in the future, are designed and pursued towards this goal.
The DEMO version was to verify the core mechanism and the optimization scheme summarized in the previous internal test, and there are still many deficiencies in the content. Although there are players at home and abroad who want us to release right after the fest, but in order to live up to the support of players, and to make the EA version more interesting than the demo version, we still hope to calm down to develop and optimize the content for now, and plan to release it someday in Q3 of this year.
Whether it is before the game's release or after the release in the future, we hope or implore players to help us maintain a friendly and peaceful discussion atmosphere. For any news about The Matchless Kungfu and our own thoughts and situations, please refer to the posts published by our official social accounts.
Thanks again for your support and help!
from Huanmos Game and bilibili
In fact, The Matchless Kungfu has conducted 3 closed beta tests in the past six months. This public demo can get a good evaluation, largely thanks to the players who have participated in these 3 closed betas. It is because of their enthusiastic sharing of their gaming experience, complaints about the unreasonable spots in the game, and the confusing things in the novice stage, that we have always had a relatively clear answer on how to improve the game.
However, as an open world non-typical martial arts RPG game that emphasizes high degree of freedom and high interactivity, blosed beta tests with around 200 players in each round cannot fully reflect the strange situations that players can encounter in their own games. Fortunately, during the past Steam Next Fest, we met the most enthusiastic players and friends. Not only were you willing to help novice players find various ways to solve the problems encountered in the demo in the community, but also contributed more than 600 bug reports worldwide, and discussions in steam forum.
While we are honored and excited, we also hope that players also had fun time during the fest. After all, it is our greatest wish to make a fun game!
What are we doing now and after?
After the Steam Next Fest 2023, the developer team took a short break, and has now returned to the development work of The Matchless Kungfu. Due to the unexpected number of downloads during the event, it took a lot of effort for us to collect and review everyone's voice on various platforms. Many problems could not be fixed in time during the open period of the demo. We apologize for those issues.
At present, we have re-digested and sorted out the suggestions and bug feedback, and arranged them on the development schedule.
For us, receiving these bug reports and suggestions is the most beneficial thing, while seeing the strange/awkward situation that some players have met during gameplay is the happiest thing in our busy work.
We were amazed every day by the complexity of the causes of bugs reported by players, and the variety of how players wanted to play the game.
We will continue to add content to the game in the next phase of developement. Since the follow-up To Do List is a bit long, here we will first preview a few content that players are generally concerned about:
● The generation of the mini world will be improved, the types of land masses will be more diverse, and the number of sects and forces will increase according to the increase of landscale.
● A Sandbox Mode that was not available in the demo: Players can set the environment bias of the mini world and directly generate a mini world that already has settled land masses. For example: if the player chooses a snowy environment, then 60% of the area of this mini world will be a continuous snowy environment, and special land masses will appear due to other mechanisms; in this mode, what the player experiences is a relatively completed big world and unique challenges.
● New special land resources: such as decorations, monsters, martial arts, inner kungfu, treasures, enlightenment stones, etc.
● More sects: Beggar Gang, Shaolin, Wudang and other sects will be added in subsequent versions. In addition, sect buildings will be more diverse, and there will be other land masses connecting between sects as intervals.
● More identities: We will provide players with more identities, such as lumberjack, fisherman, miner, farmer, etc. These identities will bring more adventures...
● In response to the fact that [NPC behavior] was not smart enough or even self-contradictory, we will quickly improve the basic rules of NPC behavior according to various problems encountered by players during the Steam Next Fest, and increase the trigger preconditions of adventures. As long as enough situations are considered and rules written clearly, NPCs will become smarter and behave more reasonably.
What we wish to tell the players…
- Test Branch that will be accessible after game release.
As we listed in the "Development Plan" in the main menu of the demo version, The Matchless Kungfu will be released on the Steam in the form of Early Access. The reason for EA release is because we know that games like this need to meet players as soon as possible on the premise of a certain degree of integrity and gameplay, and gradually improve and progress. This is also the ideal release form that many indie game studios is using.
Our goal is to make the Early Access launch version greatly improved compared with the demo version, with more abundant and reasonable content, and more surprises and challenges in the later stage of gamplay.
The Matchless Kungfu is a non-linear, highly interactive open world game. And after the game’s Early Access release, we will continue to add new content. This leads to more and more possible situations/conditions a player may meet during gameplay, and the demand for testing is growing huge.
For such games, ordinary QA teams and processes cannot expect all act that may be done by the players. So we will start a long-term test branch after the EA version is released. This method of branch testing has been proved to work fine by many strategy game predecessors. Players who are willing to experience new systems, new functions, and new bugs that have not yet been implemented in the main version can directly enter the test branch and complain about new content 😊. When the content is stable, we will update to the main version.
- A peaceful and enjoyable community
During the past Steam Next Fest 2023 in June, we got some attention from influencers very unexpectedly, which gave us the opportunity to appear in front of the public together with the names of many excellent works. While we were surprised and moved, we were also apprehensive.
We have always positioned ourselves as a indie game that everyone will play differently. In fact, many old games that have been developed for many years, or games that have been released soon, or even new games that will appear in the future, are designed and pursued towards this goal.
The DEMO version was to verify the core mechanism and the optimization scheme summarized in the previous internal test, and there are still many deficiencies in the content. Although there are players at home and abroad who want us to release right after the fest, but in order to live up to the support of players, and to make the EA version more interesting than the demo version, we still hope to calm down to develop and optimize the content for now, and plan to release it someday in Q3 of this year.
Whether it is before the game's release or after the release in the future, we hope or implore players to help us maintain a friendly and peaceful discussion atmosphere. For any news about The Matchless Kungfu and our own thoughts and situations, please refer to the posts published by our official social accounts.
Thanks again for your support and help!
from Huanmos Game and bilibili