Been a few months now since the last report, but that does not mean things were not happening. As it is, things take time and there was the Beta release with it's own issues. This took some CPU cycles away from development but was a needed step to be ready for Beta release.
Right before the holiday season an update was made and a request for testing. Many of the players jumped in to see the new feature implementations. The main feature was "food" and all that is about feeding your crew and eventually a colony.
The testing was nicely directed by some instructions and specific questions to answer. This is different from some of the other testing, as it caused the testing to be more focused on the new features.
Here is a view of the additions made for cooking and food.
Some things have been discovered from previous away missions from colonization loop testing. As can be seen there are many foodish things to discover on my planet. Every other player has a list but it is NOT the same as my list. The detail of just the food / cooking area will keep many entertained for many hours.
As time has not been enabled to advance, I expect all current testers to have the same lack of information of what they have. This is part of the game I am going to enjoy, discovery.
Not sure about the comments of each fruit. These are screen shots of the current state. The feature addition was big, and food is important to a realistic simulation of crew life.
Also upgraded in this release was the team selection, which now includes cooking.
The team creation screen and information presented has been completely re-worked. I think it better than the last team creation view.
All in all the release was good and the instructions removed comments on existing / known issues that are to be worked on. The feedback was nicely controlled by a list of questions to answer once completing the testing instructions. The number of issues found was not a huge number, which shows that there was a good deal of testing before the release.
At the time of this writing, an interesting direction twist is taking place in development. Mini games and missions. This will enable some fun, quick game play with the cards currently owned. I think this will also help make parts of the game easier to test if they are "mini games". Once a game aspect is tested in mini game play, that function might be able to be "plugged" back into the main game. It would be highly tested as players would be doing missions every day. Just some thoughts on that.
Exode Devs have stated many new features will be released for testing over the next weeks.
I am looking forward to the new year.
Best