Hello pilots!
After releasing nearly 80 additional card models late December, we have been working on gameplay!
Our next major update in the works adds "food crafting", "selecting dishes" for your citizens and also the consumption of food. But it does not stop here!
On a more crypto-value aspect it also has:
Our Colony Market,
and also scoring "practical experience" and leveling up team and food knowledge!
So we'll share several articles about this.
The work on this has been fantastic and exhilirating in ideas + evolutions of design for EXODE, so it is with pleasure that I come forward to you even if it's a work in progress.
It should be "close to its release" in late February, in little more than one week from now.
So what about this designing aventure, and how does it fit into EXODE?
Let's start with the BIG picture!
Let's begin with the big things:
EXODE is a game that has an onboarding which needs improvements.
We updated it last months with actions taking place before your first game, but EXODE still needs to be better explained before you "jump in"!
Every time a new player came into EXODE, they stop at the number of shop options, card volume and the galactic scope it has! and that's even before evacuating.
2325 is a world brimming with life and content with over 500 hundred card models (counting elites), and a game sequence that starts with placing your first order and playing the first scenes.
We want our next work to be very maintainable and to easily expand. But we definitely have to address our onboarding issue!
As soon as this update is ended, my next step will be a full explanatory video to host on our website (half of it was completed in October).
And as soon as this video is complete, I will initiate distribution along with a special event.
A synchronized marketplace update will then support our continuous distribution and visibility before I get back again on gameplay.
And the second wave of gameplay features will focus then on EXODE Factions, the game mode which uses your entire collection and which has a short demo.
The project and the EXODE community deserve the shining moments that this will bring!
Improving design and presentation
The last weeks have been a game design and programmation campaign of six weeks so far, one which tests and scales and refines our 5th generation of colonization content.
As you know, using steamlined code we now have a "data approach" to colonization:
But our food interface uses big buttons, and varied tooltips.
We have then worked on adding concepts and presenting them better:
We added the concept of Design Points ; your cooking team will add it to your pool every colonization day.
Design Points can be used right away during your active time, giving you a new direct action system instead of indirect colonization.
We added badges to show your incoming consumption of resources. (food items are used when you prepare them)
We defined that food will have its own "buff properties".
During January we also added Energy and Water.
You can click on ACTIVATE HEATING and add 10 points to your skill output, but also consume 1 point of energy!
We also added slots for up to three equippable TOOLS and the WORKPLACE location ; though you won't use them in the next update.
And more... a lot more!
Every day brought new refinements and a new "twist" on the system.
And sometimes, once a week had passed something that bothered me for a while eventually got its own Eureka moment and it's own new version as well!
To do that we also tested some new interface options: such as table interactions, toasts, offcanvas, and played with the new sizes and main colors.
- So we opened a right bar, and designed radar charts for it.
- We upgraded food information with more charts and a new "5 point" system.
This meant that data changed from this old version of two months ago...
Into this:
... with the former information still accessible too.
And that's so much better!
This showed capacity to introduce and compare 14 attributes all at once.
We will use this approach also for citizen skills in our next developments.
Then we designed further.
- We added the "5 points" food size system as a new mechanic. "Size" becoming a main element to compose your menu and also propose a dish.
- We reworked several times how to TRANSFORM an ingredient, setting aside some design steps and changing the initial menu (see below).
- We added PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE to be gained while working.
- This experience can be gained differently for food items, teams and team members, and used in later features (LEVEL UP slots where you pick specific attributes).
A very good example of how interface evolved is the variety of actions proposed and the steps to simplify them.
For instance, TRANSFORMING an ingredient was initially one of the major actions allowed and it had a cost in design points. You picked the action then picked the ingredient then picked the shape, and then the quantity.
Now it's simplified as you can directly target the "Transform button" of an ingredient, directly on its table, and you can "shop" your modifications in a simpler table.
We also introduced a new presentation for it, but it'ss not final enough... so I won't show it to you "just yet"!
It's still possible some elements will "make the cut" even if it could evolve into better versions. It's time!
In the initial design we determined that you could:
- prepare food items for cooking
- design your own ingredients
- transform them (peel them, make a sauce of them, etc)
- combine them into a dish
- and make your full cantina menu with it
Then we simplified it. Now you can:
- prepare food items for cooking
- combine them immediately into a cantina menu, using the 5 point size system!
You can still technically TRANSFORM an ingredient but as an optional action on the prepared food you want for it. This is more direct and better!
We iterated steps expanding content, and steps simplifying its presentation.
But this still lacked some game atmosphere!
To address the game atmosphere, we have also explored 100 000s of sounds (using proper tools for that) and also designed our own.
We have also developed a special "action feedback system" showing the results of your action.
A new idea today will also be some kind of its own revolutionary take, but we'll surprise you with it when it's ready, and if it does come ready in time.
I started this after a developer rush in end December; although I initially thought I was going not fast enough, most certainly because of the number of previous rushes, I am very glad to have "given it time"!
Because now, this matures into something far more acceptable and an important milestone.
It has more identity to it and more interesting ways to be used in other crafting areas.
MARKET coming too!
... but we do have to catch up in speed because we also want to deliver a market with all this!
Work on the colony market leaves us quite confident on this part: this is because we use the same robust back-end (a self-made one) that has been used on our regular market.
But Devlindos still has to show up his best self soon to complete everything by end February!
Colony market will be used to test first exchange of items with some kind of "relaxed tokenomics" using free currency.
We hope you appreciated this little article!
Unfortunately we had to keep it "rather short" (ahem) and lacking some early prototypes, as we get back to code!
EXODE is a science fiction game currently played on HIVE.
It can be played by just taking any of the 10 USD beta starters!
Feel free to try it here, or to join our Discord if you have any question
