Micro-log Monday #7
Hello,
let's take a look at the news from the past two weeks.
[h2]Demo patches[/h2]
Due to crazy traffic during past two weeks I have started to pick up a number of crash issues. A few of those have received their fix already and many changes were added to collect the issues more accurately now as well.
There are still issues to be addressed - you can expect another patch coming out in the late half of this week. Most of the crashes are very special corner cases when you stress the game features to extremes (I think statistically about 2% players were affected by a game crash) but occasionally there's a UI glitch as well.
There seems a few players not able to start the game due to GPU incompatibility. I will see what can be done about that as well.
Other than this, the Demo has not received any feature update and I do not plan to do feature updates until I am happy with the day-to-day stability.
[h2]Full Game development - Ascension Tree[/h2]
While a lot of work was spent on the demo support, we also now have an almost-complete ascension tree for Early access. That includes six Eras, a few World Wonders and various clustered minor upgrades (for resources mostly). The tree is now also broken down to Tiers separated by Scenarios.
Early access is going to have two Ascension Tiers (so the screenshot only covers half of the tree). On the Tier2 your game will progress to higher levels and unlock new game features, making your progress slightly more difficult.
The technology tree will also mutate slightly with each new Tier and so will the Crises encountered. You can obviously expect new Heroes drop on each higher Tier.
[h2]Next steps[/h2]
While the tree is currently still missing about 20% content and is also completely unbalanced, the next steps will not be to finish it. Instead I will focus on the only major feature missing to get ready for Early Access.
[h2]Idle Offline play[/h2]
So we know how this works in the good old Cookie Clicker right. You turn off your game, come back after 4 days and the game magically gives your whatever cookies you would have gained if you left the game open (or something like that).
This game was intended to be the same thing. In fact it was originally meant to be called Idle Civilization. Being able to leave your people to do what they seem is best was to be one of the main hooks of the game.
However Microcivilization is also a strategy game. There are multiple mechanisms like combat, research, crises or production that need to be configured to work reasonably without player input. And the Player needs to have the means to do that. You also don't want to end up with a post-apocalyptic world every time you leave for the weekend. There need to be mechanisms to stabilize your civilization.
We have a few simplified features in Demo that hint how that's going to work. But majority of this still needs to be implemented and heavily tested and balanced.
That's about all I can share about it at the moment, for more details stay tuned for the next update in two weeks.
See you,
Ondrej
let's take a look at the news from the past two weeks.
[h2]Demo patches[/h2]
Due to crazy traffic during past two weeks I have started to pick up a number of crash issues. A few of those have received their fix already and many changes were added to collect the issues more accurately now as well.
There are still issues to be addressed - you can expect another patch coming out in the late half of this week. Most of the crashes are very special corner cases when you stress the game features to extremes (I think statistically about 2% players were affected by a game crash) but occasionally there's a UI glitch as well.
There seems a few players not able to start the game due to GPU incompatibility. I will see what can be done about that as well.
Other than this, the Demo has not received any feature update and I do not plan to do feature updates until I am happy with the day-to-day stability.
[h2]Full Game development - Ascension Tree[/h2]
While a lot of work was spent on the demo support, we also now have an almost-complete ascension tree for Early access. That includes six Eras, a few World Wonders and various clustered minor upgrades (for resources mostly). The tree is now also broken down to Tiers separated by Scenarios.
Early access is going to have two Ascension Tiers (so the screenshot only covers half of the tree). On the Tier2 your game will progress to higher levels and unlock new game features, making your progress slightly more difficult.
The technology tree will also mutate slightly with each new Tier and so will the Crises encountered. You can obviously expect new Heroes drop on each higher Tier.
[h2]Next steps[/h2]
While the tree is currently still missing about 20% content and is also completely unbalanced, the next steps will not be to finish it. Instead I will focus on the only major feature missing to get ready for Early Access.
[h2]Idle Offline play[/h2]
So we know how this works in the good old Cookie Clicker right. You turn off your game, come back after 4 days and the game magically gives your whatever cookies you would have gained if you left the game open (or something like that).
This game was intended to be the same thing. In fact it was originally meant to be called Idle Civilization. Being able to leave your people to do what they seem is best was to be one of the main hooks of the game.
However Microcivilization is also a strategy game. There are multiple mechanisms like combat, research, crises or production that need to be configured to work reasonably without player input. And the Player needs to have the means to do that. You also don't want to end up with a post-apocalyptic world every time you leave for the weekend. There need to be mechanisms to stabilize your civilization.
We have a few simplified features in Demo that hint how that's going to work. But majority of this still needs to be implemented and heavily tested and balanced.
That's about all I can share about it at the moment, for more details stay tuned for the next update in two weeks.
See you,
Ondrej