Am I the only person who hates the months that get closer and closer to the winter holidays?
Anyways, November is here, and so comes the first blog of the month.
Event
Not much to say here. I will be having Jay improve a couple other stats in the event to potentially allow alternate builds...nothing major.
The event's end date should be assumed to be Dec 1st, however it could be pushed a few days.
The next event will be a repeat of the old Santa Event, however i'll look at a couple simple changes to make it less of a hassle (less clicking for the snowballs).
Expedition System
I'm really going to have to push things to get the second phase of this feature out by the end of this month, but I do have a good 3 weeks to get moving on this for at least a beta testing version of it. Please don't ask for details as internal testing -> public testing can very quickly lead to major changes, and every time I release tidbits of information, it gets abused and twisted, so on those questions: PASS, lol. Wait for the public testing of the feature and you can judge and go from there.
The first phase (The rehaul to the 'expedition'/ harvester portion) has progressed a lot. The window layout and some art is missing currently as Isael is swamped with a lot of these assets, but this week should be public testing for sure. We are already undergoing internal testing with one person at a time before pushing for public testing.
We're also missing a couple important pieces to this, which includes some new game resources. The purpose of these resources is quite a toss-up, but we'll be testing some things this week before making anything in that regard final. In the meantime you will have access to test the new system in its current state, as mentioned, this week.
Some unorganized points of interest:
We will likely be changing our payment methods over to XSolla on iourpg.com by December, which will open up a LOT more payment options for users (still includes Paypal), supposedly even supporting subway cards.
Handling payment via Paypal only, and managing it on our end causes a bit of overhead, so this new option is probably one of the best out there for us.
Delegation of Work
Because a lot of the work for newer systems entails placement portions and asset materials, i'll be tackling new features independently for the most part, while having Jay handle an assortment of other items, that way things don't need to sit stagnant and become septic while new features are worked on.
Keep in mind I'm generally the only person who handles client-side work, so some things may need to be delayed in waiting for me to be able to jump on the client-side portions.
In any case, here's some things we have coming up along side the survey-chosen feature:
The art-house claims all the planet monsters & backgrounds, along with UI final touches will be done this month. That means we will work out the rest of the new monsters/backgrounds and work to present the game with a more consistent style & flexibility on devices.
This is a step we've been waiting for internally for a while in order to expand the game's horizons. We expect this will begin in December, parallel to the next voted feature.
I have a ton of new shots I could share, but since it's coming up, i'll save them for next week's blog, or simply provide them in-game.
Cheers,
Ray
Anyways, November is here, and so comes the first blog of the month.
Event
Not much to say here. I will be having Jay improve a couple other stats in the event to potentially allow alternate builds...nothing major.
The event's end date should be assumed to be Dec 1st, however it could be pushed a few days.
The next event will be a repeat of the old Santa Event, however i'll look at a couple simple changes to make it less of a hassle (less clicking for the snowballs).
Expedition System
I'm really going to have to push things to get the second phase of this feature out by the end of this month, but I do have a good 3 weeks to get moving on this for at least a beta testing version of it. Please don't ask for details as internal testing -> public testing can very quickly lead to major changes, and every time I release tidbits of information, it gets abused and twisted, so on those questions: PASS, lol. Wait for the public testing of the feature and you can judge and go from there.
The first phase (The rehaul to the 'expedition'/ harvester portion) has progressed a lot. The window layout and some art is missing currently as Isael is swamped with a lot of these assets, but this week should be public testing for sure. We are already undergoing internal testing with one person at a time before pushing for public testing.
We're also missing a couple important pieces to this, which includes some new game resources. The purpose of these resources is quite a toss-up, but we'll be testing some things this week before making anything in that regard final. In the meantime you will have access to test the new system in its current state, as mentioned, this week.
Some unorganized points of interest:
- You will be able to cancel/refund expeditions for fuel
- Gold can be used to upgrade the Fuel Station. Long-term players...expect to click a lot initially, as the cost starts pretty low to allow younger players this new investment as well. There will not be mass purchasing because it will not be an issue once you hit a formidable upgrade level.
- You will be able to select more currencies with this system, (likely including entirely new resources to the game)
- You can fast track expeditions by spending stored fuel (which generally is what will occur if you fall away from IOU for a while)
- Every ship is individual, and each ship has a: Hull, Sensor, Thusters, Fuel Injector, Extractor, and Drill)
- You can select between tier 1 and 9 currently, depending on the level of the drill on the selected ship for send-off
- You can inspect an existing expedition to see how much fuel has been used, and what can be refunded
- There will be a visual Min and Max amount of resources you can receive (not including bonus resources, or failed expedition)
- Expedition points will be refunded within a few seconds of logging in when the new system is published. The old system was completely gutted, but you will not lose your hard earned expedition points!
- The expedition trophy upgrade will reduce the delay on fuel recharges, instead of expedition times
We will likely be changing our payment methods over to XSolla on iourpg.com by December, which will open up a LOT more payment options for users (still includes Paypal), supposedly even supporting subway cards.
Handling payment via Paypal only, and managing it on our end causes a bit of overhead, so this new option is probably one of the best out there for us.
Delegation of Work
Because a lot of the work for newer systems entails placement portions and asset materials, i'll be tackling new features independently for the most part, while having Jay handle an assortment of other items, that way things don't need to sit stagnant and become septic while new features are worked on.
Keep in mind I'm generally the only person who handles client-side work, so some things may need to be delayed in waiting for me to be able to jump on the client-side portions.
In any case, here's some things we have coming up along side the survey-chosen feature:
- Bingo (Testing should be included with the new expedition system)
- Private Messages (This requires some UI changes, so there will only be work-around testing coming up in the next week on this)
- Server Optimizations (Reducing server processing even further to reduce server load, thus, server issues)
- Fishing Auto-Start after a disconnect (This does not include after a refresh yet - that's the task system)
- Bug fixes - Plenty on the Trello board, we'll be working to clean that up this month
The art-house claims all the planet monsters & backgrounds, along with UI final touches will be done this month. That means we will work out the rest of the new monsters/backgrounds and work to present the game with a more consistent style & flexibility on devices.
This is a step we've been waiting for internally for a while in order to expand the game's horizons. We expect this will begin in December, parallel to the next voted feature.
I have a ton of new shots I could share, but since it's coming up, i'll save them for next week's blog, or simply provide them in-game.
Cheers,
Ray