We have been working on this for some time already.
It is time now to reveal a lot more information about our next update!
So what has delayed us so far?
What did this delay allow?
And how better is the game coming thanks to this ?
And most importantly, why is it better for all of our pilots?
... let's read and find out!
STARTING COLONIZATION
The first important element is that this update will go from our planetary landscape release and add some much needed features to our new user interface.
Next update will not bring any new game scene but is even important for utility as it is a first step into player-made production!
First of all it aims at starting the colonization loop.
While we could argue some of it was tested during the Away Teams Challenge, this setup was testing mission reports, away teams, away team roles, and a collection of items and stats and still leaving a large number of things out.
This update will bring some of them in testing and this will include:
- food and resting
- colony events
- new research concepts
- new team concepts
All of that could have been addressed in an upgrade similar to what we did to your Game Inspector. But we did refine the new layers, as you'll see below. Also this will include other items which are part of our new front interface such as:
- a new line and style of menus
- a new way to package, simplify and nest together information about citizen, teams and assignments
An improvement
We are giving access to "more content" but we wanted to challenge ourselves with an important question:
Is EXODE overly complex? Why does it give such an impression of being overwhelmed with information, and what can be done about it?
And of course, we have a strong responsibility here with our game interface.
Front design will receive more manpower during beta, we know about it. But as we are getting into the last most important parts of alpha, we needed to try to make it different.
So we really see the next update as an "improvement" into how we want to handle information in EXODE.
Actually, you are getting access to countless more information here!
So you'll definitely continue to feel overwhelmed.
But if we can go further, it is all thanks to refining our information containers and presentation.
An expansion
The planned features are part of core features that players have been awaiting for some time.
This new WIP screen from the game client (not a mockup) shows how we want to give a better overview but also give you control on a number of new sections:
Something you may notice is the new Skills filter and Roles filter. They will be used to show the top skills and top roles for someone you inspect.
Personality will share known information about this character.
Actions will give individual orders. This should be something rare as your main routine should be to organize teams and give them orders.
As you can see, there will be an individual "action log". And yes, we'll also add little "something new here!" notification icons.
The unexpected button here is the one about Rewards.
We would like to share useful valuation information here, by piling here data about the current Legacy Rewards unlocked or contributed by this card. It could be reputation points, experience points, drop tables unlocked, etc, and even progression toward the next Reward objective.
For now, please understand we set up the "containers" for this information.
We can't make the Legacy Reward our priority right now, but having this now will make it a lot easier for the next steps!
So what is this update about?
To get back to the core features of this update, you'll be able to...
1. Create your teams
2. Assign a team leader
3. Browse citizen information
4. Browse technology data
5. Pick a research and assign a team to it
Colony loop will be active at slow speed.
you'll get some colony events from time to time.
This means people won't eat food fast enough to be lacking and you won't notice any consequence at this rate. This is because you'll start getting food supplies again on the update after this one, unlocking the new away teams interface.
When?
We have made numerous mistakes when trying to pinpoint a time for that release. Most of the times this was because we had an illness just a couple days before a planned ETA.
But then every time it became obvious that we created room for something new, and that there was something else to put in here which will contribute hugely to valuation and utility.
This does not mean this update will be anything perfect, it will still be alpha and it will still have issues. But it will go further than planned initially, and this is a good thing.
Right now we aim at a release for this Sunday, but please note we have constantly pushed our ETA on this one, and every time this allowed to add an entire new angle which would have been otherwise nearly impossible to consider once colonization is "fully active".
What delayed it?
As we refined the user interface we also unlocked "more EXODE power" and we immediately found how to "connect" this new information freedom with something EXODE.
Usually it was something set aside and lacking attention and priority but which could become a core part of EXODE value. For instance, we understood making teams was ok, but as players would like to optimize output they would have had to change teams for a current task.
And this was not okay. We would like to encourage players to create and keep teams, because building a connection to your team and an identity to it is fun and important. It is part of uniqueness and part of our manifesto.
So we also added new concepts such as team experience.
We also explained on our Discord how a team can build up "domain experience" (working in Starships technologies will give them experience in the Starship domain) and that Team Synergy will also appear and be related to personalities of team members.
To be honest with you all, there still is one idea to connect to make sure players won't have to micromanage changes in their teams, and we'll find it and add it.
We also decided as seen on the screen above to give some room to how a character behaves individually, with an access to a character action log and achievements log, but also to "valuation" by anticipating some progression and information exposure to how you unlock legacy rewards.
But most of the work is actually streamlining access to information.
And yes, this always costs us some time, not so much to go back to the drawing board but to create some room, anticipate some micro which would go against the vision, and then find a perfect item to fit into this place.
In addition, we understand now that our first idea was not mature enough for the kind of rich concepts which came after. We are very glad to have reworked it differently, and while having two illness times in June it was greatly beneficial to us that the community did adapt to this.
If we would have rushed a release we would have been taken in maintenance and our creative process would be locked into a 'current' format.
This is a bit like what we have in Evacuation: Evacuation could have been made in a dozen possible ways but we won't reinvent it for beta, we'll correct things, fix and improve presentation, but will also mostly stick to current format.
This is a normal event in game development. In the case of colonization, we are then glad we tested some features in 'a rather undefined format' (such as the Game Inspector) as it can allow us to create a first presentation at the same time as we 'expand' its content.
Otherwise, our colonization format would have been the Game Inspector or something like it. Here, it is something more refined, and as we immediately notice, it allows new ideas and refined concepts too.
So the bottomline is that unlocking "space and freedom for information" will always connect to something interesting in EXODE! We have infinite power and infinite valuation layers to connect!
While we are confident we are holding things by the good end we do understand too this is very far from perfect: we also want you all to enjoy more EXODE content sooner, to enjoy it better, and we definitely know we should have been able to do the same things but much faster.
We accepted this flaw as one of the "demerits" of being the EXODE indie.
But hey. We think people will notice some merits too.
This little gem is getting some polish, pilots! :)
And I did not even get to the treasures our artists are also making for beta... :)
More information about EXODE can also be found on our Discord, or multiple posts such as this one about our epic characters, or this trailer made by a fan, or this review or this one .
Also running a witness node:
You can help if you think we deserve more game witnesses and EXODE is one you like!
Thank you pilots, see you soon in eXode!
