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Adding stonehearth mods11/9/2022 ![]() Same goes for our top community translators/proofreaders on Crowdin. #ADDING STONEHEARTH MODS MOD#We want to also invite some of the mod makers to help us test the modding API, and let them prepare for the release. We can also start to invite a limited number of players to help us find the most obvious bugs. When the game feels close to finished, we can tweak the final details, like new simulation screens, tips and tricks, achievements, and so on. This step is also waiting on graphics, and we have also learned that UX improvements are not easy, so it will take a long time.Īt this point, most of the graphics are in place, and the game is fully playable. This is kind of a loop, where we implement additional things based on the feedback from the previous loop of playtesting. When I come back to the parallel of the train implementation, this is the phase where the trains are fully functional, but it's cumbersome to control them, so we need to improve the way rails are built, provide the trains overview, improve the schedule editing, etc. This polishing is mainly focused on basic balancing, the biggest UX issues, broad pacing improvements, etc. At this point, we do more playtesting, and we can start polishing the roughest edges. This is where we can actually have the semi-final list of requirements for the graphics department, which allows us to start making reasonable time estimates. This part should feel much better, as the content is more stable and the chance of removing things is lower. Big parts of the game are playable, and we are approaching a state where we can playtest from start to finish. This is where we are now in the expansion progress. A lot of bigger structural problems can be discovered at this point, which might require some wild removals, changes, or additions, required to make it all work together. Here we put all the sub systems together and try to connect them. Step 4 - Connecting systems into a prototype It's like implementing biter and spawner mechanics, but having just 1 type of biter, not connecting it to pollution, and having no sense of balancing with the player weapon systems. The goal of this part is to get the individual mechanics and their object definitions into place, but they are usually the minimum necessary to test it. In this phase, as things stop being as abstract, a lot of the most basic unexpected problems start to show. For the rail example, this would mean that we make mock objects for rails, trains, train stops and signals, so different people can start implementing the behaviour in parallel, and start making it interact as they go. This is the step where we start to make the actual game objects, even when they don't even do anything at that point. We knew that we wanted to control how the intersections work, and that it should act as the largest scale logistics option, but the details weren't laid out yet. This is comparable to when we were deciding to add trains to the game. We decided and planned the general topics of the expansion. Generally the fact that the team size has increased, and there are a lot of things in the engine that we already solved, should hopefully imply that the expansion takes way less time than the base game. Honestly, making the price (and thus the expected scope) a little bit more concrete in this way, motivates us not only to make enough, but also to not overshoot, so we wouldn't spend another 9 years doing it. This is why we plan to price it at $30.00, and put in enough content to make it well worth the price. The general goal is to make the expansion feel like as big an addition as the whole vanilla game. We still don't want to be specific about many things, not even the expansion name, but we can start by giving you some general idea about the scale of the project. Well it has been less than a year and it is not finished, so we kept our word on that :).īut while it might not be finished, there is a still a lot we have done so far. Hello, long time no talk, we've got some catching up to do.Īlmost 1 year ago ( FFF-365) we said "we don't think that will take less than a year to develop". ![]()
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