Hey Oracles!
How are you doing? Hope you are having fun with Astrea!
So... I wanted to take a minute to talk about Astrea post release development and why it's been a while that we don't send a new patch.
As I mentioned before we are only two programmers, where one is also working on XBox porting alongside some Astrea's features and the other one (myself) is also the lead game designer and producer of the game, which means that we have a lot to do and if one of us get sick, the development gets slower and guess what? I'm sick...
I've been overworking/crunching in Astrea for about 1 and half years now, working way more than 40hours per week (my notes says 65 hours per week average, with some weeks working 100 hours), skipping many weekends and holidays, trying to make Astrea as polished as possible and with as much content as possible. Maybe I could have slow things down before, I don't know, but I never felt that it was an option, the feeling was that I needed to give everything that I had to it. I guess I knew that it was a lot of work for the size of our team and the amount of time we had and I didn't see other option since I didn't want to make the scope smaller =P
But now this overwork is charging it's price. Since the release of the patch v1.0.197 that made the game much more stable my brain simply melted, I started feeling depressed and I've been struggling to even look at my work station since then. Honestly it was hard to even stay inside my house (I work from home). So I ended up working less than expected on the last weeks. I'm pretty sure I'm having a burnout right now, honestly...
Then this week I started to get a little bit better and decided to work normally and guess what? I started having a lot of pain in my back, I had to go to the emergency because of the pain. Now I can't sit or stand for too long or my back hurts a lot.
With all that said, I will need to slow things down and take care of my health (mental and physical). I'm not trying to make anyone pity of me or anything I'm just trying to be honest and open. I don't want anyone thinking that we abandoned the game or anything.
We will keep working on Astrea, we want to bring more content, more QoL, bug fixes and balancing, but in a slower pace.
I will take 1 week vacation now, will be back on November 27th. Other team members will be around in case you need help or have any questions.
And I will take another vacation at the end of the year (this time the whole team actually).
[h2]Astrea Post Release Development Update[/h2]
Now update about the development itself, these are our higher priorities.
[h3]Controller Support Improvements[/h3]
Inoue (the other programmer) has been working on XBox porting, but also he is improving the controller support.
The first thing he is working on and I think the most important one is the controller selection highlight, now there will be a highlight showing where the controller current selection is, here are three screenshots on how it is looking at the moment:
We also plan to make the input for leaving the shop, confirming rewards/shop items and skipping rewards easier/faster.
Also will add support for looking your hand when using Astral Calling, Void Seek, Bottled Aurora, etc.
Will try sending a new patch with the controller improvement in 2/3 weeks.
[h3]Daily Runs[/h3]
I started working on Daily Runs! The first draft of Game Design is done and now I started programming it, I got sick in the middle of the process of the programming the Daily Runs sadly. But when I get better I will get back to work on it and when it is ready I will send a patch into the beta branch to be playtested by players =D
[h3]Balancing and Bug Fixing[/h3]
This is a topic that I will keep working on it! There are some minor reworks (One or another action, effect, blessing) that I want to rework that were suggested by the community.
Examples of Balancing and Reworks:
- Change Stunned to let player Reroll only 1 die and then decrease Stunned by 1.
- Corrupted Moonie is too strong when compared to other Corrupted Oracles. I will nerf her.
- Moonite starter kit need to be stronger. I will buff it.
Reworks will pass through the beta branch as well. Probably I'm sending the reworks on next beta branch patch and before the Daily Run.
[h3]QoL: Damage Projection[/h3]
This is one of the most requested features and we will implement it eventually. Sadly it is not an easy task. So it will take a while, but it is one of our priorities. But we felt that improving the controllers and adding Daily Runs were more important, but after these topics we will tackle the Damage Projection.
Thanks for all your support and kind words. They are very heart warming and give us strength to keep working in the game.
May Astrea bless you 💙 ❤️
- Leonardo Castanho, community manager and lead dev of Astrea
