Hi everybody! This is arguably the biggest update we’ve ever done. I know I said “no more huge updates” after the Dungeons Update, but.. here we are?

So let’s talk about what’s new!

Major new features

Custom Rules

Maybe it’s weird for me to be mentioning this as a ‘major new feature’ right up at the top of the list, but we’re extending the sandbox options to give players a lot more freedom to pick their own experience. In this build there are several custom rules you can apply to your games, and you can change your mind at any time without needing to start a new game!

Old saves automatically get custom rules set up to try to approximate the build they came from, so do check out the custom rules we set the first time you load into an old save, just to make sure that they’re set up the way you want them to be!

The Changelog

Central to the new progression system is this, the changelog. Near the top right corner of the screen, the Changelog shows the most major changes you’ve made to your game since your last release. This contains stuff like new monster types, new player classes, new regions to explore, and so on. Seeing how long this changelog is can give you a rough idea of how exciting your upcoming release is going to be for your current and future players.

To the left of the changelog, in the “configure” interface, you can choose a type for your next release, give it a custom name, and also see what types of changes your players are currently most excited for. Satisfy those “hot” desires, and you’ll get larger boosts to the number of new potential players that will hear about your announcement and perhaps buy your game as a result!

A notable change relative to previous builds: you no longer need “build points” to issue a release; instead, you can issue releases whenever you like, as long as you pay the marketing costs! But note that the advertising bonuses from issuing new releases of the same type don’t stack; you may want to wait for your existing advertising bonuses to expire before issuing another release!

New Releases

When you issue a new release, you can write release notes for it, or else use our pre-generated ones. Either way, these records help document your game’s development over time!

I have, on occasion, been accused of being too meta in this game. But I would like to point out that right this second, I am writing release notes for my game about letting my players write release notes inside my game for their game which is also inside my game, and I’m totally fine. Totally fine. Why, I’m positively normal over here.

Technology Development

Your developers can now do more than merely fix bugs; you can now assign them to develop new technologies! Technologies are no longer locked behind new releases; now you can develop technologies any time you want, just by assigning your developers to work on it.

Additionally, all technologies are now fully documented and working! It’s not like the bad old days where like half of the technology options were work-in-progress placeholders; they’re [b]all[/b] functional, now!

Unlockable Art Packs

Also in the new “technology development” category is unlockable art packs. Instead of giving a new player all of the game’s art assets. We definitely found that we were beginning to have so many different art pieces that it was becoming overwhelming for new players, and it could be difficult to sort through and find the things you wanted; now you start with far fewer art pieces available initially, and you can grow your collection in whatever order you like!

Don’t want to have to unlock art packs? There’s a custom rule available that will disable this whole system and just give you everything from the start, just like how it worked before![/quote]

Character Type Slots

We used to hand out extra class/monster/npc slots based on your subscriber count. That worked, but often resulted in you having heaps of unused “player class” slots when what you really wanted was extra monster types, or vice versa.

Now, you can instead pick exactly what slots you want to unlock, and do it whenever you want, all via the same new system we’re using for developing technologies. Even better, like with technologies, your newly created character types will generate excitement and hype for a new version announcement which includes them!

Note that you get credit for new character types only when players can experience those character types. So for example, if you add and design a new monster type, you won’t get credit for it in the Changelog until you’ve placed it somewhere in the world so that your players can fight it![/quote]

Down For Maintenance

There’s now a tool on the HUD for taking your game down for maintenance, or to roll out an update. Related to this, you can now set up regular scheduled server downtime where the game will automatically take [i]itself[/i] down for maintenance without any interaction from you!

Your players always prefer it if you give them warning before taking the servers offline (single-click to give a 1-ingame-hour warning, double-click to take them offline immediately), and they especially prefer if servers go down on a predictable schedule instead of just randomly whenever is convenient for you! Why don’t those selfish players ever think about your needs? :D

Developer Policy

We now have a much more robust and detailed bug system, with bugs ranging from Type A crashes to Type C minor annoyances, along with technologies that can be developed to help with different classes of bugs. Additionally, you can specify development policies for how your developers prioritise or deal with bugs, or you can manage the bug-list manually, sending developers to fix specific bugs one by one instead of via a standardized policy.

Fundamentally, it’s faster to fix bugs if the servers are offline or in maintenance mode. The downside is obviously that if the servers are down, your players will be offline and not spending money on your micro-transactions, and possibly becoming annoyed if they’re unable to login!

Above you can see a developer fixing a broken Feudal-themed graveyard. Unfortunately, that graveyard is non-functional as long as the developer is working on it, which will result in players becoming stuck if they die in-game and there’s nowhere else for them to respawn![/quote]

Game Master Policy

Game Masters can now optionally be given the responsibility to investigate players who are reported of cheating, or of toxic behavior in chat. You can now set policies for when to warn the players and when (or if!) to ban them. Additionally, there are new technologies you can develop which give your Game Masters the ability to check game logs, instead of needing to witness a transgression first-hand!

Here, the player “Pyropower” has been accused of chat violations, and this Game Master is monitoring to make sure it doesn’t happen again![/quote]

Logos

It’s now possible to generate a custom logo for your game! This is still a little bit early days and there aren’t yet as many presets to choose from as I want there to be, but it’s so far ahead of where we were before - I’m very happy with it! If you’re creating a new game, you’ll design your logo as part of the New Game UI flow. If you’re loading an old game, you can create a logo from the Game window, available from the “Design” menu or by clicking on your game’s name in the top left corner of the screen.

And that’s just the start…

There’s a bunch of other exciting stuff in this update as well! To just quickly pick out some of the bigger highlights:

• Game map preview! When starting a new game, the game now lets you preview the new game’s map before you start. It also now shows and lets you modify the map seed, so you can share the seed with other players if you’d like to each begin from an identical starting map.

• Advertising details! There is now information in the HUD about every advertising effect that’s giving you extra subscribers right now, including details about how many people have seen the advertising and how many converted into subscribers.

• Integration with Steam Timeline! We now note certain events and clips for Steam’s Timeline system, and also have some basic integration with their Game Phase system, to make it easier to find gameplay clips, if you’re using it!

• AI running out of time! Your subscribers now consider how much play time they have left when choosing what they want to do; they’re much less likely to start a long task if they don’t have much time before they have to log out for the day!

• Improved distance culling! Better handling of very small objects when viewed from very far away! This probably isn’t actually any faster, but it does make the map look much nicer when viewed from high up!

• Release celebration! My producer wanted me to say something here about the celebration sequence that happens when you release a regular or major update to your game. But honestly, I think that’s better left as a surprise, so maybe I just won’t say anything and you’ll never see it coming!

• Configure view options! Do you hate those ‘+XP’ notifications whenever a player kills a monster? We got you - at the top right corner of the screen there’s now a little gearbox button that opens a window where you can make view configuration changes to show or hide whichever notifications you want!

All of the above plus lots and lots of bug fixes and more than a few performance improvements and probably a whole bunch of other stuff that’s slipping my mind right now. Oh, and this new update is still fully compatible with all your old saves. So feel free to keep playing in those if you like!

Thanks so much for your patience with this one, everyone; as you may have read in previous announcements, we ended up in a very different place re: progression than I’d expected when we started, but I’m so very happy with where we’ve wound up and I definitely feel like the extra investment of time and design effort has brought us a much better result!

As always, if you encounter any problems, please use the in-game bug reporting system to let us know, and let the game submit crash reports if you encounter any of those; I promise that they really help me out even if they look like repeats!

And additionally, you’re always very welcome to come chat with us over on Discord, to keep up to date on development! (Nearly all my game commits get posted to a public channel there and the continuous integration server mocks me whenever I mess something up - it’s a good time! :D )

Next time, we’ll be talking some more about character customization. I’m really looking forward to that one; it’s going to be fun!