Devlog: general news, 1.0 status, and next updates
Hi there!
After those first few hectic weeks, I think it would be a good time to take a breather with an article summarizing how everything went, my future plans, and so on and so forth. We didn't have a proper devlog in months, after all.
I first want to welcome all the new players! I know the initial 1.0 release was a bit rough (especially in story mode), and I'm very sorry about that. Still, most of the major bugs got fixed quickly thanks to everyone's prompt and detailed feedback.
[h2]1.0 Release Status[/h2]
All things considered, 1.0 was a relatively solid release. It had 3 major "Day 1" bugs which tripped people over in a way I'd rather have avoided. All were literal typos in the code base. It's not bad code, it was just a case of coding fatigue after the last few months. They were all caught and quickly dispatched.
It doesn't mean that 1.0 ain't without faults. We wouldn't be at the 4th hot-patch otherwise, but considering it was the largest content update I published in quite a while (if ever), well, it's not all that bad. Act 1 and 2 in story mode could probably have been a tad nicer to newcomers, and many issues could have been avoided with a couple more weeks of testing. But overall, and given the circumstances, it was fine.
I'll get to the commercial side of things later, for those who care about it. But, let's move to more important topics first.
[h2]Game Content[/h2]
ATC has a plenty of content to go around, and I'm pretty sure that some sub-systems are still unknown to most new players (did you know that you can breed your cattle/pets for specific traits? traits are inheritable). Still, many of the active community members burnt through content a LOT faster than I could have ever imagined.
It's a double edged sword. Watching people unlock exoskeleton production, rocking those armors even in story mode barely a week after release was awesome. It's also a tad scary from my perspective. It's forcing my hand into focusing the next big content update into adding more late game quests and world map content. Which, don't get me wrong, I'll be more than happy to provide. It's just that, now, I have a much better understanding of what MMO developers have to go through :D
[h2]1.0.1 Update[/h2]
So, this will be the next update and it should arrive in a few days to a week, depending on reports. This is nothing major, obviously.
it'll include a reworked job manager in the faction menu. This one should be a lot more functional than the previous iteration. As usual, like ALL job management features, this is purely optional. If you build a base correctly, with input/output depots next to your crafting stations and rooms placed in an effective fashion, you can definitely do without.
The much more crucial job priority menu is also being reworked to include a list of all jobs being queued, updated in real time. As such, you'll be able to see how changing the priority of a particular task is going to influence the queue.
After discussing it with people on the forums, and noticing a trend in the save-games I received, each chapter in story mode will get a soft population cap. As much as it's fascinating to see someone make a base with 200+ survivors before the end of the first act, it's going to ruin their experience and the overall balance in the following chapters. Limits will still be fairly generous.
Scenarios and sandbox mode, obviously, will stay untouched in that regard.
It'll also include a bunch of QoL requests from the community (automatically getting traders from friendly factions for instance) and balance changes.
[h2]Mods[/h2]
I'm going through a process of manually validating already published mods. Mods that I know to be compatible with 1.0 are tagged as "1.0 (Verified)". This doesn't mean that said mod doesn't have internal bugs, it just means that it's not overwriting 1.0 files with outdated versions.
Mods without this tag may still be compatible with 1.0, it's just that I haven't tested them yet.
Mods tagged as "Deprecated" are, either plain incompatible with 1.0, or are downgrading vanilla features back to the stone age. Don't use deprecated mods.
And to new potential modders, I'll be more than happy to answer any question you have, and help you go through your first release. The best place for that is on the discord channel.
[h2]Burnt Out[/h2]
People who've followed me for a while (or those who read my posts in general), already know this. After several months of crunch time to get 1.0 out of the door while dealing with family related issues in parallel, I am completely burnt out.
If I was going to count, 90% of the bugs I fixed post 1.0 are due to typos and rogue lines of code left behind after a bad copy/paste. While bugs are bound to happen in every new major releases, there's normally a proper reason for most of them to exist beside pure exhaustion.
So, I give myself another month (until the end of October) to deal with the remaining obvious bugs, deal with the 1.0.1 update and possible follow-up patches. After that, I'll take one to two months off. I'll still be around on the forums and discord most of the time, but I won't process requests or bug reports unless I deem them absolutely critical.
I am fully aware that newcomers might see this as a bad sign. Stories about game developers going on "vacations" just after release and not coming back are all too common. But after over 6 years running this company, not even mentioning my modding days, and sustaining my first game way after it's was viable to do so, I hope I earned at least enough credits to be trusted on that front. Heck, if you don't believe me, feel free to ask what other people think on the forum ;)
[h2]Then what?[/h2]
When I said that 1.0 wasn't the end of the road, I wasn't lying. Next step is 1.1, and then 1.2, and so on and so forth until 2.0 (hopefully).
There are a few areas I'd like to explore. And that's entirely parallel to the whole "make procedural generation, UI, and AI better", those go without saying.
First one is regarding the late game and map exploration content. If I learned something from writing story mode, it's how powerful the quest system can be. I'd love to add a series of well hidden bunkers. Some might unlock a high-tech gadget, some might unleash a plague or a new faction, others would just deliver a bit of lore. All tied to chains of events and text-based quests.
Secondly, I dislike the current mercenary system used to defend your outposts. The overall concept ain't bad per say. It's just way too basic at the moment. An ideal system would replace that "buy button" by a list of mercenaries, the more factions you're friendly with, the more different layouts. And you'd be able to pick mercenaries with specific loadouts, said loadout would impact on the buying price.
I'd also like to work with the faction archetype system. If you played the game beyond story mode, you already know how radically different it is to plays mutants compared to those puny humans. It's an area I'd love to develop more. It's also a very good candidate for DLC content later down the line as faction archetypes can come with their own custom quest-line.
There's also the base building aspect. I could (and should) add a bunch of decorations, furniture, and additional buildings. While it's true that we have pretty much all that's really required, there's very little decorative and mood related fluff for people to make pretty looking bases. And one shouldn't underestimate the appeal of a good screenshot.
Overall, and that's a running thing with ATC, the game's code-base has a ton of fairly intricate systems, but I barely scratched the surface of what they can do, and I'd love to spend some time digging deeper.
At least that's for my immediate thoughts. I'm not longer duty bound to a massive list of promises I made years ago. Last thing I want to do right now, is to bound myself to another list instead of going with what I actually want to work on. When I have a proper plan for 1.1, you'll know.
In any case, there are a ton of things to look forward to and I hope you'll stick around :)
[h2]So, how the release went?[/h2]
Overall, it went well enough. ATC is not in any danger of being dropped due to a lack of money or interest anytime soon. And, like with my previous game, I'll publish a proper post-mortem when I feel the time is right. Now is way too early to do so. I can share a couple things, though.
Sales for this first crucial month are half of my "noice!" estimate but are way above my "sad face" estimate. It's comparable to my first game's release, and it'll likely beat it over the next month. It is sorta surprising to me because, contrary to that first game, ATC has been selling copies for 4 years (and at a much cheaper price) before 1.0 was released. So, hey. Not bad :)
Public feedback has been great. I was certain the reviews would get a nose dive into mixed territory due to being shown to a much more "general" audience, but overall, even if the score took a slight hit, we're still at a very positive rating at the moment of this writing. And after my first game's bugfest, you have no idea how happy I am about this.
The one thing I'm actually surprised by are the wish-lists. In 3 weeks I nearly doubled my pre-1.0 amount. I expected the number to fall, not to grow. I assume it has something to do with the fact that I refused to go below $10 on release. No regrets there, and it basically means that I have a security cushion of potential sales if things get rough financially in the future.
ATC got pretty much no coverage in any major publication despite trying to ping them. It's not a surprise in the slightest, and a few yt/twitch channels covered me anyway. I'm not going to complain about it, I did the bare minimum when it come to advertisement.
--
Well, I guess that's all for now.
1.0.1 coming soon, with the final batch of bug fixes accompanied by a few new features :)
Cheers!
After those first few hectic weeks, I think it would be a good time to take a breather with an article summarizing how everything went, my future plans, and so on and so forth. We didn't have a proper devlog in months, after all.
I first want to welcome all the new players! I know the initial 1.0 release was a bit rough (especially in story mode), and I'm very sorry about that. Still, most of the major bugs got fixed quickly thanks to everyone's prompt and detailed feedback.
[h2]1.0 Release Status[/h2]
All things considered, 1.0 was a relatively solid release. It had 3 major "Day 1" bugs which tripped people over in a way I'd rather have avoided. All were literal typos in the code base. It's not bad code, it was just a case of coding fatigue after the last few months. They were all caught and quickly dispatched.
It doesn't mean that 1.0 ain't without faults. We wouldn't be at the 4th hot-patch otherwise, but considering it was the largest content update I published in quite a while (if ever), well, it's not all that bad. Act 1 and 2 in story mode could probably have been a tad nicer to newcomers, and many issues could have been avoided with a couple more weeks of testing. But overall, and given the circumstances, it was fine.
I'll get to the commercial side of things later, for those who care about it. But, let's move to more important topics first.
[h2]Game Content[/h2]
ATC has a plenty of content to go around, and I'm pretty sure that some sub-systems are still unknown to most new players (did you know that you can breed your cattle/pets for specific traits? traits are inheritable). Still, many of the active community members burnt through content a LOT faster than I could have ever imagined.
It's a double edged sword. Watching people unlock exoskeleton production, rocking those armors even in story mode barely a week after release was awesome. It's also a tad scary from my perspective. It's forcing my hand into focusing the next big content update into adding more late game quests and world map content. Which, don't get me wrong, I'll be more than happy to provide. It's just that, now, I have a much better understanding of what MMO developers have to go through :D
[h2]1.0.1 Update[/h2]
So, this will be the next update and it should arrive in a few days to a week, depending on reports. This is nothing major, obviously.
it'll include a reworked job manager in the faction menu. This one should be a lot more functional than the previous iteration. As usual, like ALL job management features, this is purely optional. If you build a base correctly, with input/output depots next to your crafting stations and rooms placed in an effective fashion, you can definitely do without.
The much more crucial job priority menu is also being reworked to include a list of all jobs being queued, updated in real time. As such, you'll be able to see how changing the priority of a particular task is going to influence the queue.
After discussing it with people on the forums, and noticing a trend in the save-games I received, each chapter in story mode will get a soft population cap. As much as it's fascinating to see someone make a base with 200+ survivors before the end of the first act, it's going to ruin their experience and the overall balance in the following chapters. Limits will still be fairly generous.
Scenarios and sandbox mode, obviously, will stay untouched in that regard.
It'll also include a bunch of QoL requests from the community (automatically getting traders from friendly factions for instance) and balance changes.
[h2]Mods[/h2]
I'm going through a process of manually validating already published mods. Mods that I know to be compatible with 1.0 are tagged as "1.0 (Verified)". This doesn't mean that said mod doesn't have internal bugs, it just means that it's not overwriting 1.0 files with outdated versions.
Mods without this tag may still be compatible with 1.0, it's just that I haven't tested them yet.
Mods tagged as "Deprecated" are, either plain incompatible with 1.0, or are downgrading vanilla features back to the stone age. Don't use deprecated mods.
And to new potential modders, I'll be more than happy to answer any question you have, and help you go through your first release. The best place for that is on the discord channel.
[h2]Burnt Out[/h2]
People who've followed me for a while (or those who read my posts in general), already know this. After several months of crunch time to get 1.0 out of the door while dealing with family related issues in parallel, I am completely burnt out.
If I was going to count, 90% of the bugs I fixed post 1.0 are due to typos and rogue lines of code left behind after a bad copy/paste. While bugs are bound to happen in every new major releases, there's normally a proper reason for most of them to exist beside pure exhaustion.
So, I give myself another month (until the end of October) to deal with the remaining obvious bugs, deal with the 1.0.1 update and possible follow-up patches. After that, I'll take one to two months off. I'll still be around on the forums and discord most of the time, but I won't process requests or bug reports unless I deem them absolutely critical.
I am fully aware that newcomers might see this as a bad sign. Stories about game developers going on "vacations" just after release and not coming back are all too common. But after over 6 years running this company, not even mentioning my modding days, and sustaining my first game way after it's was viable to do so, I hope I earned at least enough credits to be trusted on that front. Heck, if you don't believe me, feel free to ask what other people think on the forum ;)
[h2]Then what?[/h2]
When I said that 1.0 wasn't the end of the road, I wasn't lying. Next step is 1.1, and then 1.2, and so on and so forth until 2.0 (hopefully).
There are a few areas I'd like to explore. And that's entirely parallel to the whole "make procedural generation, UI, and AI better", those go without saying.
First one is regarding the late game and map exploration content. If I learned something from writing story mode, it's how powerful the quest system can be. I'd love to add a series of well hidden bunkers. Some might unlock a high-tech gadget, some might unleash a plague or a new faction, others would just deliver a bit of lore. All tied to chains of events and text-based quests.
Secondly, I dislike the current mercenary system used to defend your outposts. The overall concept ain't bad per say. It's just way too basic at the moment. An ideal system would replace that "buy button" by a list of mercenaries, the more factions you're friendly with, the more different layouts. And you'd be able to pick mercenaries with specific loadouts, said loadout would impact on the buying price.
I'd also like to work with the faction archetype system. If you played the game beyond story mode, you already know how radically different it is to plays mutants compared to those puny humans. It's an area I'd love to develop more. It's also a very good candidate for DLC content later down the line as faction archetypes can come with their own custom quest-line.
There's also the base building aspect. I could (and should) add a bunch of decorations, furniture, and additional buildings. While it's true that we have pretty much all that's really required, there's very little decorative and mood related fluff for people to make pretty looking bases. And one shouldn't underestimate the appeal of a good screenshot.
Overall, and that's a running thing with ATC, the game's code-base has a ton of fairly intricate systems, but I barely scratched the surface of what they can do, and I'd love to spend some time digging deeper.
At least that's for my immediate thoughts. I'm not longer duty bound to a massive list of promises I made years ago. Last thing I want to do right now, is to bound myself to another list instead of going with what I actually want to work on. When I have a proper plan for 1.1, you'll know.
In any case, there are a ton of things to look forward to and I hope you'll stick around :)
[h2]So, how the release went?[/h2]
Overall, it went well enough. ATC is not in any danger of being dropped due to a lack of money or interest anytime soon. And, like with my previous game, I'll publish a proper post-mortem when I feel the time is right. Now is way too early to do so. I can share a couple things, though.
Sales for this first crucial month are half of my "noice!" estimate but are way above my "sad face" estimate. It's comparable to my first game's release, and it'll likely beat it over the next month. It is sorta surprising to me because, contrary to that first game, ATC has been selling copies for 4 years (and at a much cheaper price) before 1.0 was released. So, hey. Not bad :)
Public feedback has been great. I was certain the reviews would get a nose dive into mixed territory due to being shown to a much more "general" audience, but overall, even if the score took a slight hit, we're still at a very positive rating at the moment of this writing. And after my first game's bugfest, you have no idea how happy I am about this.
The one thing I'm actually surprised by are the wish-lists. In 3 weeks I nearly doubled my pre-1.0 amount. I expected the number to fall, not to grow. I assume it has something to do with the fact that I refused to go below $10 on release. No regrets there, and it basically means that I have a security cushion of potential sales if things get rough financially in the future.
ATC got pretty much no coverage in any major publication despite trying to ping them. It's not a surprise in the slightest, and a few yt/twitch channels covered me anyway. I'm not going to complain about it, I did the bare minimum when it come to advertisement.
--
Well, I guess that's all for now.
1.0.1 coming soon, with the final batch of bug fixes accompanied by a few new features :)
Cheers!