Weekly Update 207 - Release of Version 0.8

Hi everyone,

Today, I am finally releasing version 0.8 to the stable branch, so I will walk you through some of the changes made since 0.7!

The first big change that comes to mind is about the maps and scouts. Having working maps and scouts in the game was a big goal even before the release of 0.7, and was originally my only goal for 0.8. Getting this right was going to be important for players to actually be able to understand what was going on with their settlements, as walking across the map can take quite a bit of time. The result of my efforts here were the strategy map, shown on various tables (Port and Scout’s hut) across your settlements, as well as the tactical map (shown in the book), which both allow selection and deployment of military units.

During the development of the maps, it also became apparent from player feedback (thank you very much), that most players did not want to play competitively. Most players wanted to play against AI, and a substantial percentage wanted to also play cooperatively. So I switched quite a bit of the development around, and focused on getting a coop working. Switching to co-op included creating a new game mode - artefact mode - which shifted away from economic competition between human players, and instead focused on human players fighting the AI controlled pirates militarily.

This switch also included creating a new island, which took me quite a while to create, and came with a substantial art upgrade over the old island. The new island is long and narrow, with both players starting on the same end, and fighting primarily against the pirates that are getting stronger the further along the island players progress. With the art upgrade also came performance upgrades as I was able to create the map with many of the lessons learnt from the previous PvP map in mind, and many of the FPS problems the game suffered from were reduced or removed.

Another big improvement was the addition of 6 new military units (including the scout), and the differentiation into melee and ranged units. With the co-op focus allowing me to slow down how quickly players progressed through the game, it became feasible to separate buildings into more distinct tiers, and each of the tiers got its own melee and ranged unit. This of course came with new buildings, so where 0.7 started with 26 buildings, there are now 42 buildings in the game, and that is ahead of the 0.9 update, which will focus more on base building.

Together with the new units (especially the ranged ones), I also introduced the new ammo-supply and healing mechanics, which are both meant to make supporting your armies a little more challenging, and make logistics and forward outposts more relevant.

Finally, I also revamped the tutorial island to bring it in line with the new map, and massively expanded on the tutorial to cover all of the new mechanics in detail. This included creating a quest system for the game (only used in the tutorial so far), and creating a 2 hour quest-line for the tutorial, broken into 6 individually selectable chapters, which I think help introduce new players to the game quite effectively.

Overall, I think that 0.8 is a huge update, which really takes Path to Prosperity much closer to the game I want it to be, and I thank all of you for sticking with it all this time!

Until next week!