It's been a while since we last touched base! While we've had our heads down working on the next Major Update, we thought it was important to check in and let you all know how things are progressing.
That's right, 0.7 - Shared Workload is on the way! Somebody asked if it had fell out of the transport tube on its way to the server, but rest assured, through computational bugs and biological bugs (just a bit of sickness between the both of us), we are persevering, and the next update is taking shape! Let's dive in!
There was a good reason Multiplayer had yet to be implemented - it is a tremendous amount of work; nearly every part of the code has required some change and lots of new code has been added to support it. Fortunately, we have the multiplayer experience and code from Crea, allowing us to speed up development and (hopefully) get it right the first time! For those interested in looking under the hood, we are using the Steam API netcode as well as the open-sourced library GameNetworkingSockets. It took some effort to get both of these to play nicely together in the game's codebase, but everything thus far running great. By using GameNetworkingSockets we are also making room to future proof the game for potential ports! Neat!
With Multiplayer, comes the very necessary deployment of character cosmetics. While the tech has been in place on the backend for a while (and some sneaky folks in our community were able to play as Chicken Otto), being able to tell each other apart is going to be important, so without delaying any further, we're rolling out the character cosmetics! Changeable at the Mainframe, you'll be able to select unlockable skins and colorways to best express your Golem-self and make sure you are not confused with any other little robots running around.
0.7 doesn't stop there; we're also working hard on completely overhauling the onboarding experience for new players! We know there's a lot of people who are waiting for Multiplayer, so it's important for us to make sure the game is as accommodating as possible for new players. This involves a revamped Tutorial that covers the missing pieces that have been neglected as new content has been added, as well as a cleaner progression that is better separated from the game's story beats - all of which will be tracked through a new quest system. Not only this, but we are also introducing The Guide - a reference tool that breaks down and explains of some of the games more complicated systems and offers little refreshers to areas that could use it. We think all of this is going to be a great step up in helping shepherd and inform new players while also offering those deeper details for anything that isn't clear off the bat. Right now, we are finalizing on what NOT to include with The Guide as we are running into the area of over-explaining things, but we'll keep an eye once it's out in the wild for any additions and alterations that need to be made. Player feedback will be very important in guiding this one!
Early in AutoForge's development, the design of the game was to mix factory building with exploration; the decision to even have AutoForge be in a side-scrolling perspective was made to better facilitate this exploration. Over time, factory building has completely overtaken exploration, and it is now something many players simply tolerate as a means to further progression - that's no good! We want exploration to be something that is exciting to do, which is why we have decided to take a step back and re-evaluate how players interact with the world. While we have added new biomes, flora and fauna, we haven't engaged with what makes the world interesting, and have boiled it down to two main issues; resistances that push back on players and incentives that draw players in. We are not quite ready to share our plans for these yet as we're still in the prototyping stage, but we wanted to start communicating about this as early as possible (there may be some controversial adjustments...). What do you think would make the exploration of AutoForge more interesting?
We offer our apologies for the long wait between Dev Updates and if the lull in comms has been of concern! Developing Multiplayer has been an especially big challenge to overcome and up until recently there has not been a lot to share other than "this is hard!". Now that we are over the hump and have a better idea of how things are shaking out, we will continue to share the details on how things are coming together as well as keep you updated on testing and other fun surprises! With all of this in mind, to finish all the new additions for 0.7 we're planning, as well as thoroughly test to make sure that Multiplayer is as stable as we can make it before we release, we're going to aim to deliver Shared Workload between Jan-Feb in the New Year.
Our Roadmap has needed updating for a while so here's also a quick visual refresh, following 0.6 and what is planned for 0.7!
That's all for now! There's going to be much more to share as we get closer to testing (and launching) the update, as well some other non-development news and housekeeping we would like to update everybody on! As always thank you for all your feedback, bug reports and kind words that keep fueling us on our path to 1.0! Let's go, Golems!
Jasson & James