03-19-2017, 03:27 AM
Hey Folks.
Obviously I haven't kept up with the dev blogs on the forum, but what I'll be looking to do is minimize the blogs to one big one each month and probably leave it at that unless I have additional details I'd like to share ahead.
Starting with the less exciting stuff....
Back-End
We have been working on a lot of back-end changes for the game in preparations for the long term...after the two completely separate outages (The major North East American Amazon Outrage, and the more localized outage of the authentication for IOU on the backend service we use for the database), we've been working on improving back-end reliability, more powerful servers, reducing server costs, and cleaning up some long-term bugs/issues that we've been plagued with for quite a while.
Personal
Been a bit busier than usual lately...spring break, damaging weather, and we've run into some silly portal issues that have been incredibly detrimental to the pace of my goals, but things haven't really slowed down too much.
Aside from this, I've taken a slightly more backseat position within discord and ticket-handling so I can keep busy at maintaining the development until chaotic luck tapers down.
Development
Upgrade Map
I feel like this survey item has been fulfilled. There's a lot of cleanup with the upgrade map itself we want to get to, but that just isn't a priority right now.
I would personally like to optimize the node window, and then carry that cleanup/simplification on the entire map at some point instead of having some sporadically distributed map like we originally came up with, as it only confuses and stresses players out.
Fishing
I'd call this nearly fulfilled except we haven't added the minor improvement feature to fishing yet. Once I have time to jump on this and fulfill it, we'll get a new survey out. Maybe 2-3 weeks before I can toss focus on this.
Challenges
I have been seeing a growth of mentions on lack of new challenges. Right now Isael is doing some side work on old challenge art rehauls...however we actually already have at least a couple challenges prepared for release. The issue is that the challenge system as-is, is bland and needs an expansion upon new features this year.
Once we can expand upon challenges in a more significant way, I still feel challenges will become the biggest piece of the game.
Pets
We are working out some final tier pets, but also looking at expanding the pet visual selection. Selecting what your pet looks like is something people have bugged about since beta, and that will come eventually. It's an incredibly low priority, so the work on this is very very low key at the moment - call it preparations.
Party Instabilities
These obviously aren't perfect yet, but I feel like we did clean up a lot of the issues and stability has improved a lot over the last patch(es). Once party management comes in, I think we can improve consistency and control a lot more.
Mailbox
Okay, so you might be thinking "what the heck do we need that for?".
While I anticipate players being able to send mail messages to each-other, we also could use this system cleanly for sending rewards for several systems, instead of spamming people at midnight. If we are to add more event-systems then this is needed.
It's for the most part ready on the back-end but requires all the UI / client-side functionality. Figured I'd mention it is all.
Chat
This is feeling so half-done it's not funny. There's annoying bugs like the scrollbar, and then there's the issue of not having a friends/ignore list.
It's in mind, just not exactly in the works yet.
Guilds
The one we're all waiting for at this point.
We probably spent far too much time on the guild buildings portion, but I feel like it'll be the centerpiece to guilds anyhow.
![[Image: guildwindownew.png]](http://iourpg.com/ss/guildwindownew.png)
We've made room for plenty of expansion for new buildings. I've also added a minor parallax scrolling effect with several of the different layers for a little pizzazz.
Now it's time for all the functionality...
Some things in the works:
That's all for now. Keep posted on Discord's #announcement channel, as sometimes things are posted there that are not included in the forum or elsewhere.
Cheers,
Ray
Obviously I haven't kept up with the dev blogs on the forum, but what I'll be looking to do is minimize the blogs to one big one each month and probably leave it at that unless I have additional details I'd like to share ahead.
Starting with the less exciting stuff....
Back-End
We have been working on a lot of back-end changes for the game in preparations for the long term...after the two completely separate outages (The major North East American Amazon Outrage, and the more localized outage of the authentication for IOU on the backend service we use for the database), we've been working on improving back-end reliability, more powerful servers, reducing server costs, and cleaning up some long-term bugs/issues that we've been plagued with for quite a while.
Personal
Been a bit busier than usual lately...spring break, damaging weather, and we've run into some silly portal issues that have been incredibly detrimental to the pace of my goals, but things haven't really slowed down too much.
Aside from this, I've taken a slightly more backseat position within discord and ticket-handling so I can keep busy at maintaining the development until chaotic luck tapers down.
Development
Upgrade Map
I feel like this survey item has been fulfilled. There's a lot of cleanup with the upgrade map itself we want to get to, but that just isn't a priority right now.
I would personally like to optimize the node window, and then carry that cleanup/simplification on the entire map at some point instead of having some sporadically distributed map like we originally came up with, as it only confuses and stresses players out.
Fishing
I'd call this nearly fulfilled except we haven't added the minor improvement feature to fishing yet. Once I have time to jump on this and fulfill it, we'll get a new survey out. Maybe 2-3 weeks before I can toss focus on this.
Challenges
I have been seeing a growth of mentions on lack of new challenges. Right now Isael is doing some side work on old challenge art rehauls...however we actually already have at least a couple challenges prepared for release. The issue is that the challenge system as-is, is bland and needs an expansion upon new features this year.
Once we can expand upon challenges in a more significant way, I still feel challenges will become the biggest piece of the game.
Pets
We are working out some final tier pets, but also looking at expanding the pet visual selection. Selecting what your pet looks like is something people have bugged about since beta, and that will come eventually. It's an incredibly low priority, so the work on this is very very low key at the moment - call it preparations.
Party Instabilities
These obviously aren't perfect yet, but I feel like we did clean up a lot of the issues and stability has improved a lot over the last patch(es). Once party management comes in, I think we can improve consistency and control a lot more.
Mailbox
Okay, so you might be thinking "what the heck do we need that for?".
While I anticipate players being able to send mail messages to each-other, we also could use this system cleanly for sending rewards for several systems, instead of spamming people at midnight. If we are to add more event-systems then this is needed.
It's for the most part ready on the back-end but requires all the UI / client-side functionality. Figured I'd mention it is all.
Chat
This is feeling so half-done it's not funny. There's annoying bugs like the scrollbar, and then there's the issue of not having a friends/ignore list.
It's in mind, just not exactly in the works yet.
Guilds
The one we're all waiting for at this point.
We probably spent far too much time on the guild buildings portion, but I feel like it'll be the centerpiece to guilds anyhow.
We've made room for plenty of expansion for new buildings. I've also added a minor parallax scrolling effect with several of the different layers for a little pizzazz.
Now it's time for all the functionality...
Some things in the works:
- New Building status & investment UI (Cleaner)
- Cleaner Member Listing & details
- Investment log and full member investment tracking on a per-building-basis
- Guild Building Bonus rehaul
- Personal Guild upgrades rehaul
- Guild search filtering improvements
- Guild slot restriction settings (Open guild only to players who have <x>)
- Member inactivity reports
- A new building on release
- Preparation for Guild Beasts system
That's all for now. Keep posted on Discord's #announcement channel, as sometimes things are posted there that are not included in the forum or elsewhere.
Cheers,
Ray