As development continues, EXODE would like to exchange a bit about current endeavors in 2325, but also in 2022.
This will then be some kind of informal post here!
Come up and join us!
Ok, I admit our blog article may lack a bit on the coffee, or on the talk, as it's "me" writing here! ;-)
While reading feel free to interpret, imagine, then react...
Stay tuned for the end of the article as there will be some questions there!
All these blogs are informal ; maybe this one is even a little bit more.
Devlindos is quite powered up these days so it's like taking a break while coding! ;)
EXODE going forward, but could use more speed!
I think the main concept of a game is to bring evasion, depth, challenge and all kinds of fun.
And I think EXODE fits that ambition:
And it has more than an epic spark to it!
So first objective: let's keep it epic and sparky!
Yet I admit development has been slower than I wanted in the past weeks.
We took three intern artists this year and kept one as employee. So until September we may have been dedicating some CPU to a "team experience". Or maybe it removed the little bit of "inspired clarity" because we have to be more practical in such situations, always called back to a different area to plan things. Even if I limited leadership tasks to the absolute necessity that's one additional task and you know our number of scenes also "expanded" as they always do, taking more CPU as Fixolindos.
But our last team member, Art_eto, is really effective and does not use a lot of team leadership or CPU to be working like an expert. And that's exactly the kind of profiles we need as a small team!
So EXODE has gained that!
A solid team member is an immense victory.
In the following months I hope to add more persons of the same quality when the funds will allow it.
So the aim continues to be:
Team (mainly front dev), content and gameplay.
Navigating through the next weeks: a lot of fun ahread!
And about content and gameplay the main target here is to reconciliate some of our roadmap by adding Evacuation Missions ; while keeping our focus on releasing and expanding the Colonization Loop.
When all that will be deployed we will have added a lot of fun here.
Evacuation missions aim at collection gameplay which can benefit to all players and give value to all kind of cards. And it's not a secret Colonization loop has been our aim for all the last months.
Because EXODE has a lot of ambitions to fulfill!
And let's share another art about it:
I don't know about you, but I absolutely love the Cyberpunk noir aspect of it!
It could even become one of my preferred atmosphere. What about you?
So what about the loop?
We'll make blog articles later about Evacuation Missions so let's share some words about our colonization loop. So what about it?
EXODE has:
- a playable Evacuation since its beginning, which stabilized on its 'version E' 4 months after,
- a playable Scanning 4 months later,
- but even if we added early Region maps and Landing,
- and tested some bits of colonial actions in Away Teams step 1 much later,
- and deployed an early Landscape,
- then added Team creation, Research interface in some kind of colonization UI,
... we are still lacking and working on the ultimate assembly of it, the "big prize", the colonization loop. Our first attempt at a final deployment was in end September.
Technically we have been aiming at "a few weeks to deploy it" for like all infinity because it always was an attainable release. EXODE works with "gameplay scenes", which helps a lot in determining what we want from each scene.
But every time we approached the milestone we realized there were too many issues with the format we aimed for. Or rather, that it opened better ways to do it.
We have issues in EVAC, in Scanning ( Evacuation still lacks balance and clarity, Scanning lacks a lot of elements and interactivity ) and they have stayed for a long time, and we know we can't remove the same things easily from an existing deployed game loop.
The entire team concept is a strength because you then send orders to "a team" instead of a character and your team can have some members sleeping, wounded, or in Away Teams and this won't be a big issue for the player. It's flexible. The team concept comes thanks to the Away Teams experience, where we have teams and roles but also builds as its own concept.
It needed its own UI and then because we exploited the idea in other areas it needed a better one.
A tentative build in early October focused on adding food policies in the starting loop but it was held hostage by QA because it needed some fixes.
Between fixing and adding design, there has been a battle often won with the "let's deepen the design" conclusion (because that's really what we must always do) so we did just that as quickly as possible.
We inserted the beta presale after preparing its packs and contents and are now coming out of our beta presale since just a few days. But we haven't stopped working on it.
During that time we expanded the number of possible team profiles. We also implemented a concept about team specialization. This quickly challenged our existing UI/UX so we refined it for more clarity.
After an initial draft shared in our channels we refined it again last weekend, ending up with our better version shared on Discord.
The impact of this change is now complete and this immensely expands our number of possible team presets and the areas where they can be used.
Also, an added design is that Research will now be able to unlock more team profiles to make sure we can make the initial listing comprehensive enough yet not overly complex.
But ok, let's get to the bottomline, the truth is:
we are still working on the colonization loop.
Because we definitely are.
But we are so much closer too.
It has food policies, team specialization, more team tasks, it already had research and habitat/sleeping. We would like to add it the interactive events we talked about so many times then it will have everything we feel we need. So we fix a few last bugs, refine our simulation, adjust values and package a release!
I know, I said that no later than September/October and then we refined our team profiles.
Right now, I mention we need to test our interactive events and this makes sense.
Interactive events were mentioned for Scanning too but we never paused to fix their last UI bugs (and it could be nice to do that, scanning needs it!).
Now, another good thing:
Every time we do something we actually expand our "UI Toolset" as we add everything to our own EXODE UI framework.
That is the reason why you see some kind of shared presentation across all of our colonization screens. To refine our team listings we implemented our new UI components, new "UI API" commands to trigger front actions.
Of course, all that would have been faster with a dedicated front developer... and we need one who would be very easy to manage too, a top quality member. Which leads to the next section!
... ok so what were the informal points about?
So many words, yet so many other things to say!
I promised I would detail the new team profiles in a blog post but I'll lack the space to do so. Because I haven't yet talked about some of the latest main events.
As you all know there were these "odd people" doing "odd things" in the crypto world, such as FTX using its own self-printed token as collateral in loans, or trading against its own users thanks to its sister company Almeda and then making a lot of money go "puff".
We did not touch FTX within a parsec.
But while someone named Bankman made all that, we ourselves were in the middle of our last presale days.
Because of the moving situation and complete cryptocrash some of our big accounts which aimed to take packs had to pause and did not place their order. In hindsight that's a good news to players with beta packs! Because it gives even more value to the discounted beta packs they acquired: thanks to it they will enjoy low distribution numbers!
Another effect of the cryptocrash is that even if we put mitigations in place the sales collected lost considerable value "for now" (we did not take "the hit" yet) especially as the sale was on its last days.
During crypto crashes it is our responsibility to protect value and we did exactly that. We put mitigations in place and used them. But the conditions did make it easy.
Since we have an employee now things are different than with me only. This has been weighting on my mind in the past week and for the coming weeks.
... what solutions are there?
HIVE has the capacity and drive to grind back its value.
In case it does not, we must think of solutions.
Thoughts such as below are only considerations for later such as January / February.
So a decision will be approached by the end of December.
Heading to more player growth and deploying beta "sooner" is one solution.
But alpha is really used for us for what alpha should be used for. A lot of game scenes need to increase their "welcoming potential" to reach beta status. This may move priority to other scenes than the game loop.
Even transactions, player support, market needs for bids etc will be increased before (or as soon as) we reach beta status.
Also, beta opens an idea about player growth which could be compatible with thinking about "player packs" that players could "try out" to get a feel of the game, for instance, and join or apply for a guild, meaning guild features may like to expand too. It's a social aspect and is good for new players.
(they can feel more welcome, receive advice, they can "fit in" better with the existing community and its great values)
Increasing virality is also important and one of our objectives before beta:
such as adding public profile pages (that you can share to others).
We even shared today an idea about defining a "public page for your colony", where you could add captain diaries, other content or media (even music you create) and players could browse your characters. This can be fun and also increase virality and commitment, as players can share it, and the value of all events happening later in the game loop.
Alone it may not do much but I believe this is compatible with the beta objective, meaning the focus would be placed on "player growth" and that kind of virality where 1 player brings 1+ players (which is an objective in beta) thanks to having things to share. However, as mentioned above, the game is not absolutely ready for that whereas it could need it as a priority.
Initiating a small usable gameplay segment (and making it accessible even in a F2P format) could also be another solution.
It could be a small playable content we could make for all blockchains (wax etc) and which could leverage funds if we target the largest communities. This way, there will be a player growth but one which won't require to finalize or transform a lot of scenes and won't move priorities but "overwrite" a month or two instead.
You know most other games don't have the large EXODE concept and start with an automatic battle, and this could be the idea. To convert users to the larger EXODE concept it would be best to be sci-fi and in the same world of course.
We have ideas there such as the concept of War Infinitum, a former prototype which featured the corporation and nation wars before 2325. Existing EXODE players would have playable decks generated right away with their faction power for instance. This one can be really huge.
Or a text-based cyberpunk roleplaying game in the world of 2325, with atmosphere and all that mystery; such as setting the context before the evacuation happens.
This one could open ways to be released as a standalone even on game stores, because it feels "niche" and original and it has appeal thanks to the cyberpunk theme. And why not later use the characters from that game as crew and passengers in EXODE.
Or setting up mini-contests as if it were a simulator in 2325, like a space soccer.
(I said space soccer, I did not say space shooter ;) )
Yet... imagine a Rekatron shooter-soccer team fighting a Syndicate one!
that's very thematic!
Ok, that one could have used some graphical humph and we'll lack time for a proper one ; so imagine a "simple version" of it. It's still quite thematic, and could allow to feature countless corporations.
The advantage of these segments (let's call that a minigame) is that they avoid hitting pack value and can even add a separate utility to existing packs or faction power. They can also convert players from one setup to the other - a F2P setup is possible there more easily and even highly encouraged to favor player growth and some conversion metrics to EXODE. Also, they basically raise funds on their own.
Of course, all three concepts are compatible, some could be pushed for later, some could be put inside an "idea box" and never come to life. And there could be plenty more ideas too.
Honestly, I drop all such ideas but I don't want to be judged for them: even if you would find them of poor quality or mentioned at a wrong time. I am not "pausing" to do that right now, I am only putting them on a blog. It's understandable that I have to weight what I should do to keep adding people even if the crypto crash limited funding.
Also, later we could ask Epic Games or other routes for funding (a kickstarter can bring players too) but I just think crypto has an image right now we would have had to defend (what with FTX doing all that bad stuff).
So it's best if it comes when EXODE is closer to being "release-ready", such as a purchase giving you a full game-ready account with an equipped starter, making crypto "invisible" to external players and not having to defend that angle this much.
I am thinking out loud and making you participate publicly ;) I am interested in advance in your reaction to these concepts. Is there one you like more, one you like less? it's not a decision by vote but I am interested in your opinions!
Also, please remember the two next items in our roadmap before we get back to discuss this:
- Colonization Loop!
- Evacuation Missions!
... and then we'll see if HIVE got back to its full strength!
Go HIVE!
As another note, on our discord we discussed rentals, and I hope the next EXODE wrap up (latest one has come out and is here! ) would discuss that idea!
Thank you everyone, thank you for what you have been doing!
EXODE can be accessed and played from its website at:
https://exode.io.
Don't forget also to join our discord!