Microcivilization News

Good Morning,

this week there is very little new features added to the game. First reason is that I have spent half the time being sick and second reason being all the time was bug-fixing only (booooring). There is however one piece of good news.


[h2]Beta-test phase is here[/h2]
I have a bad habit of sharing my release date estimates a bit earlier than I probably should (considering risks of solo-development). Nevertheless the Release has been announced for Q4 and the Q4 is now here. So I figured I should not pretend I haven't noticed.

I have pointed out all potential release windows in my last update - those are still valid and I have not yet chosen a specific one. Because the challenge now is getting enough feedback before committing to a particular release day.


[h2]Closed Beta[/h2]
A few days back a branch for closed beta testing has been released. But don't worry you didn't miss any invitation for sign-up. This activity is going on in stages.

First stage was a very tiny group of people (people I know personally), now slowly I am increasing the group to a larger size.

Anyone is welcome to ask for access (send an email to [email protected]). If you have already contributed some feedback in Community Hub or discord be sure to mention that. But please be patient - for various reasons I don't have nearly as much capacity to address everything in due time lately.

In case I fail to reach back to you don't worry. Closed beta will run most likely until the very pre-release stage so there's still a plenty of time. And also there's the Open Beta (of course it is).

[h2]Open Beta weekend October 14-15[/h2]
This is not the main announcement for the Open Beta (obviously since there are no confetti emojis around) but I like you all too much and just wanted to tell you now.

Official date for public beta test is scheduled to the weekend on October 14th (Saturday + Sunday).

You will be able to sign-up using the Steam Playtest feature right from the Store page as soon as I announce the signup open (there's still a few formalities to handle in Steamworks). The playtest will only take place during the weekend and you'll be able to provide feedback using a short survey and/or via discord/steam community (or really by any means you like - who am I to tell you how to reach me).

Be sure to watch this space for the signup announcement.

That is all for today,

Ondrej

Hi,

a small demo update has been released containing minor tweaks and fixes.

1. Damage to Crisis removes pre-existing stun. This means that stun caused by quick succession of stun-dealing attacks will no longer stack the stun duration.
   
2. Crisis speed multiplier (when multiple crises are in queue) now also applies to stun recovery of the crisis.
   
3. Hero sorting buttons added.
   
4. Popups no longer hang when navigating to main menu via Escape
   
5. Gold indicator added to Shop Menu
   
6. You now can receive a Lotus for all technologies in demo (score milestone reduced to 23 from 24)
   
7. You can no longer buy later ascensions before buying their preceding ascension.
   
8. Added warning dialog when pressing restart demo
   
9. Restarting game during Ascension will no longer let you interact with main-game buttons hidden by the ascension screen.
   

Have a nice weekend,

Ondrej

Good day to you all,

I am here again to share some news of my game.

[h2]The Game Is Finished[/h2]

Isnt that a great header? If only it was completely true. Fact is, all the 'minor' functional features have been done last week and so I can announce the mighty 'feature freeze' until launch now.

What does that mean? Can we release tomorrow?

No.

It means that all tricky, risky, difficult and sizeable pieces of code have been finished but nobody really knows how much of the game is OK.

For instance the Hero System has suffered some changes last week. Mainly the recipe system was changed (as was very often requested by you the players).

A few things were added and some have broken - can you spot the differences?

After much living-room pacing I have decided to introduce salvage currency (as you can see on the above screenshot) instead of using the Gold for hero 'selling' and crafting. The recipe system has also been made into a more deterministic crafting system and has a meta-progress (meaning you will have to unlock some recipes). Hero abilities have also been expanded - just a little bit.

The game was also optimized for speed. It turns out that the game's core (leaving graphics out) can now run at over 9000 times speed (on intel i7-6700HQ CPU). This means it can take 10 seconds to process an entire day's playtime. This leads to a lot faster offline time calculation when you come back from 2 weeks holiday.

With these and a number of other features done, there is an invisible pile of defects out there waiting to be found. So here comes the acceptance testing phase.


[h2]Circus of Defects coming to town[/h2]

Within next 'what-feels-like-eternity' weeks it is time to look at quality assurance. If I were a corporation I would now 'declare war on bugs' and go for 'the final push'.

That said the final push will still take a minimum of 8 weeks of 'no netflix today' before launch. (but that's an estimate not a commitment :) ). With some luck a beta branch will be stabilized within two weeks and will allow a little public sneak and peek of the game.


[h2]Stunlock Cheese Nerf coming this week[/h2]

As promised I've done a few demo tweaks and bug fixes. It's not tremedously big update - to be honest I still need demo stable for the upcoming NEXT fest so I'm afraid to cut very deep - but it should address some of the commonly reported issues. The update will be released at some point this week (I'll share a complete changelist at the time).


[h2]What happens to Demo after Launch?[/h2]

It seems that different game developers treat demo differently. Some keep the same demo up after launch. Some disable it forever to maximize sales. Some create a Prologue game version they manage separately. In the past days I have made a decision about my approach to the Demo after launch.

It will be a combined approach. Demo will be temporarily disabled shortly before launch - main reason is the demo being too different from main game would provide a misaligned player experience. There are hero features not in demo, there are UI changes that might be confusing etc. Before those two versions can be brought together to the same experience I don't want to have this discrepancy for people who decide to buy the game.

At some point after Early access launch I will do a major update of the demo with all the features from the main game (most of them locked obviously) and turn it back on. The purpose of the post-launch demo will therefore slightly change. Instead of providing a 'concentrated' teaser experience it will instead become the first part of the actual game and - provided you bought the game - let you seamlessly continue through. (I fell in love with this concept myself in Starcraft 2 demo and I believe it is the best approach.)

[h2]Early access Release Date[/h2]

Not much has changed since previous statements on release dates, but since a few people have asked, I'll briefly restate it here.

The official release is (as stated on Store page) Q4 this year - meaning between October and December.

I can already make this a little more accurate now - there are only two release opportunity windows (due to clashing steam festivals) which is mid November and early December.
While there is still the majority of testing in front of us and user feedback can change the situation I am staying optimistic. If everything goes with the same amount of unexpected problems as in the past year, both of those release windows are realistic.


[h2]Next weeks[/h2]

As said above, I'll be going through defects and balancing. There's also a few content things to be added like Crises and Unique Heroes. But overall there's no bigger objective than making a stable game.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading.

See you next time,

Ondrej

Hello,

this week Microcivilization celebrates 2 years since it's beginning. I was thinking it's fun to look back at my early days progress.

[h2]Day 1[/h2]

Deciding between Unity and Monogame I chose Monogame as a framework to build this game since I already made previous small projects in it and it always reminded me about the good old days of making games in Borland Pascal. A moving person sprite. Much wow.

(Notice the sprite is still the same as we have now. There was not a single pixel change in the Pop's animation until today)

[h2]Day 4[/h2]

Things grew in all directions. We have huts, 2d movement, UI and most importantly fonts. Fonts were the hardest to get working. Also this was the day I began to hate making UI in Monogame.
You can also see there was a hint of some backend logic about construction/agriculture.

[h2]Day 8[/h2]

This one about a week old - as shown in one previous update - it introduces the 'main button' concept. In this phase i still wanted to make the resources storage-based instead of the 'civilization-like' construction progress system we have now.

[h2]Day 22[/h2]

Three weeks in existence. The mighty Yin and Yang buton style arrived. Game still had storage of food and wood for free selection, but there was also initial concept of government switching as well as research tree. There were also first three slots for workshops. Initially there were supposed to be only three workshops for you to build out of several. The choice of which three you have was meant to be your build for the cycle.

In this phase I had no conception of crises, risks, combat or heroes.

[h2]Day 50[/h2]

Fancier tech tree that is actually a tree. More details on the UI making the overall shape of the screen to materialize.
In this phase the huge problem was to design the interface panel while having no idea what will be on that panel. Each week introduced a new feature with its own new UI element leading to complete reshuffle of the main screen layout, rethinking all decisions and often huge scope creep. I still had no idea how real pixel art is done.

But all this was still very very far away from the final game shape...

[h2]Everything Fun is done. Unfortunately[/h2]

I am pleased to announce that all major features of the game's first Tier are now done and 'only a huge heap' of minor features are left. That heap should hopefully be resolved within next two months time.

Last week I have finished the Scenario 1 for the first Ascension Tier (or Chapter) which will conclude the first meta-cycle of the game progression. Here's how the Tier 1 is currently designed:


In the first run, you will only have Neolithical technologies available. After ascending you will have the option to unlock Classical era technologies. So your second run you can build from Neolithical up to Classical.

This way meta progression will unlock Historical Eras one by one extending your tech tree for each future re-run (we could say these ascensions are the 'main story'). This will culminate with a Scenario (aka a Boss Fight) where you will need all the best heroes gathered so far. Scenario will have different difficulty levels, separate tech tree, separate rules. It's designed as a challenge to test if you're ready for the bigger game.

After this 'boss fight', you will progress into next Ascension Tier which will progress in a similar fashion except with new game concepts, better Hero drops, higher levels, new Lotus types, new Crises and a completely different Scenario in the end (more on Tiers another time).

The very rough estimate for Tier 1 is noted as 12 to 48 hours - keep in mind that this is just for illustration so you have a vague idea how big the first chapter is designed to be. The numbers were made by extrapolating recorded demo playtimes and combining with extra technologies and extra ascension runs so for majority of players reality might be much faster or much slower.

There are currently a few optional upgrades there including World Wonders blueprints which can affect playtimes significantly and this set of optional upgrades is going to grow in the future.

[h2]Demo vs Early access builds[/h2]

Within next few weeks I will take a short break from main game development and create a long deserved update of Demo. Mainly to address some balancing issues. My hopes are also to include some quality of life updates and bugfixes.

However my main focus now is to drive the main game branch into a stable pre-release stage and eliminate all risky gaps and defects. Next two weeks will be therefore aimed at various medium to small finalizations and a ton of boring stuff that is now necessary to complete (I don't look forward to it :) )

That's all for now. Have a nice day,

See you next time.

Ondrej

Good day to you all,

Only a few versions back it was impossible to leave this game idle for 10 minutes without collapsing into endless crisis streak. Since then a few new things were added to alleviate this issue a little and provide you with means to become a thriving and stable sticks-and-stone empire (at least a few minutes more).

In the last two weeks I have finished the cherry on the top of this game's core system - the Offline play - i.e. the game progressing even when you don't have it on.



[h2]Offline play[/h2]

Since Microcivilization is a bit full-fat in terms of dynamic features (read: things that can kill you in the minute you leave your hand off your mouse) the Offline play poses a bit of a challenge.

How can we leave our precious civilization without observation for the night? For the weekend? You need a way to balance your population, mitigate risks, to use abilities during crises and keep your civilization in a growing or at least stagnating state.

Now we have new heroes to handle all this. If you select your build properly, you can get a hero-government configuration that will make your microcivilization last centuries without a single click. But it's not free or easy to get. Also it might not be a favorite play style for everyone. For those reason the Offline play is an entirely optional feature.

[h2]Optional Fast Forward?[/h2]

What does that mean? Simply put, each time you would load a game, you can either continue where you left or after the time you were away. To make this choice you will have some limited information what the 'future' state is (i.e. how many crises occurred while you were away, how many people you have left, how many rewards you gained for defeating some of those crises). And then you choose which save variant you actually want to continue. So there is no penalty, just a potential gain if you left your civilization in good hands (hero-wise).

Technically we need to understand that the game does not actually play while off - there are no cloud servers or anything running online - all the calculations are done on the fly on your computer when you start the game.

This is why this build also was a relatively complicated one, requiring the game to run at a minimum 1000x speed. Otherwise you would wait for your overnight result for minutes. Since it still has some glitches I decided it's not going to be released to Demo yet.


[h2]New Better Autonomy Traits[/h2]

To make sense of any reasonable Offline gameplay, autonomy features from the Blue Hero Faction have to be grown into more matured system.

The existing version has proven to be very unintuitive and unclear. Also the traits supported were rather weak in comparison with other hero traits. So I decided to fix this.

Autonomy mode has been modified and simplified. 'Autonomous mode' will no longer be a separate upgradable toggle ability, but instead each individual autonomous feature will be separately togglable - pretty much like the current Leader ability. Specifically you have a toggle for Automatic clicking, a toggle for Auto-research and two new toggles - one for automatic combat and one for automatic construction. This will eliminate a level of complexity and make the autonomy toggle abilities work exactly like an already existing feature.

Auto-combat (besides triggering units in crisis) is using your barracks charges to boost unit damage right before use, times walls to the last second before receiving attack and 'heals' with granary charges if low on population. Auto-construction mainly keeps your vagabonds numbers in check and makes sure the civilization grows if low on space.

As soon as the whole system is polished and tested, I'll share more details about it.

[h2]Demo update is going to happen[/h2]

Since I was unable to update demo for new features lately for various reasons, I intend to reconcile this a little bit in the near future. There are a few small features that would be suitable for adding to Demo and I'm aiming to release those hopefully within next four weeks. I have to carefully time this between other activities - like the Steam Strategy fest next week - so please bear with me.

With another big spike of demo players this week I have gathered a number of very useful data from crash analytics. I am hoping I'll be able to resolve some of the incidents that about 1% of users have with running the game. Plan is to produce a patch this week.

[h2]Next build[/h2]

In the following two weeks, I am going build the first Ascension Scenario. This feature will be a special case of ascension run with special rules and a single goal (different per scenario). You will have to finish this scenario at least once at the end of each ascension tree tier in order to progress further on the prestige meta-game. More on next update.



With Early Access release plan crystallizing in my Excel sheet (yes I do use Excel and I love it) I think we might have a opportunity for a short public Beta test. I cannot promise anything at the moment - this depends on stabilizing the full version in a very short period of time, but the option is 'on the table' now. If this Beta test happens, it happens in October and I would announce a signup at least 3 weeks before.

This is all for this update. See you around in two weeks.

Have a nice day,

Ondrej