These last weeks i have continued testing the game with 2 other players and proceeded to re-balance a lot of different settings in the game, which is always good to do.
Treaties are now effective, and you can send treaty proposals to other players as well as text messages, send counter offers ect… Rights of passage are also effective and you can’t enter other’s regions without it.
I’ve also fixed a good number of memory leak issues and one major networking issue that showed up during the tests.
But most importantly i’m writting this news to inform you guys that there’s now only 5 things left to do before ‘finishing’ Ymir.
Once these tasks are done, i will initiate the releasing process : closed beta testing and then Early access release on steam.
So that’s it, the finish line is now on sight! I hope to finish these within 6 months (there’s often unpredictable side tasks to do).
- – complete all graphical contents of the game : buildings, resources, units… (in progress, more than 20 new buildings planned of production, entertainment, services, administrative…)
- – implement service buildings ( ‘services’ are a type of resource that is not material and cannot be stored, distributed directly to the population. ex: doctor, entertainments, education… )
- – implement technologies
- – implement trade routes & trade offers
- – NPC ‘free cities’ and barbarian camps with wave raiding system
* free cities will be very basic , just world regions that import and export random resources to make trade routes
* barbarian camps will launch raids of growing intensity in a ‘tower defense’ fashion to add military challenge to players ( on top of their own conflicts ). This is mainly for games in ‘solo’ or in local multiplayer to add challenge but also so that players can practice their defenses and military before real conflicts, considering war with players will be much rarer and more serious.
There is also a 6th ‘secret’ task that i will maybe do before release, but i’m not sure if i’ll have time. It will be done after release if can’t.
Currently i’m working on finishing all the graphical assets once and for all for the planned release version.
I’ve already redesigned all the houses to be more ‘Celtic’ and era specific, with more details and colors to make them more interesting.
I’ve also added a new category of houses that only shows up in the ‘classical’ era: the town apartment that has a shelter capacity of 2 or more households (instead of 1 for all other houses).
I’m also adding a bunch of new cosmetic assets: parks, new road types, decorative fences… They’re unlikely to have any effect on the planned release version, but eventually cosmetic infrastructures will affect the life-quality provided by all the houses nearby.
Like Oink, I don’t want to waste your time.
And I absolutely agree than invading neutral ai-states is a minor thing and as such should be placed at the end of the backlog. Still, it don’t prevent me to ask if it’s could happens in some future time (I have my answer, no need to repeat yourself 🙂 )
Good courage to complete the to-do list and for thought decisions like the balancing of the barbarian camps. Don’t worry too much, you can still adjust it when you’ll get opinions from players.
And evidently, I hope to be able to get in the closed beta. 😛
Nice to get an approximate idea for the release date.
As usual, plenty of questions are popping in my mind about all the game mechanics, but I prefer to keep some mystery. And I don’t want to waste your time.
The new houses look lovely, more colorful and each one more distinct to each other. I’m looking forward to see all the new buildings you are adding.
Good luck Ronchon! I guess you are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I do not know how i’m going to deal with the free cities.
It rises quite a lot of problems so you should expect something pretty basic for now.
I only need them so that there is a background of cities to buy/sell resources to. For now its going to be their only use. Its quite possible they will only be regions on the worldmap that you can’t visit/invade like normal regions because i won’t have time to do that for now.
The hype train can be slowed down, but it can’t be stopped.
Great news to hear, I wish you the better, Ronchon.
The new houses are rather nice. The old ones weren’t bad either and personally I would like the possibility to build both. But the “celtic” ones seems lighter, with these colors and the lack of stone. Which is something I like a lot.
I never heard about Free cities, so it’s an interesting information. Would it be possible to conquer these cities, even if difficult to hold ?
And yay for Trade roads. Been unable to automate exchange between cities was a lack in the game, so it’s correction is really good. It’s “just” quality of life, but a important one.
Hey,
its really, REALLY, great to hear, that the game is on its way to a closed beta.
Since few months i visited the side daily, to check for any kind of news and now this. I really dont want to enter the Hype train, but after couple of months of waiting and hoping for news i´m glad to hear, that everything works quite fine!
Cant wait to check out the game. But till that day, i wish you all the best!