Welcome to this month's edition of what Kev didn't get done! It's been a short month, what with finishing Oasis late, so the list of additions is pretty short. However, it has been an interesting month so let's get going. Of course if you haven't already,

Play Tales of Yore

(and support on Patreon if you like)

The Oasis Aftermath

The first thing that happened after I finally got the Oasis Update done was that I pretty much collapsed in a heap and slept for a full day. It was a real slog getting it over the line, but it was totally worth it. The feedback I've received has been extraordinary and watching people play through it was absolutely delightful. I think the first player declared they'd done everything after about 2 and half weeks. Not bad really given that these players are on the game for 8+ hours a day when they're really pushing through the content.

However, there was of course the massive slew of bugs that come with every update.... or was there? Well no, actually there were a smattering of bugs but nothing like I'd expected. I'm not sure if its because I'm getting more experience, or the core engine is getting more hardened, or simply dumb luck - but the bug count was very small for such a big update. There were certainly some oversights on my part and of course the traditional 1000 typos and bad grammar, but all in all a very successful release.

Don't Mug Yourself (or Do)

A fantastic thing happened this month - player mugs started arriving. I added a feature to the website (I talked about it before) where a player can enter their player name and the site generates them a mug with their character on. Using a print on demand service postage is calculated for wherever they are in the world and, assuming the player agrees to pay, a mug is printed and sent out. This month the first few started arriving.

This is exciting for a few reasons. First, it's just generally awesome to see someone receive something like this. It's very motivating to know that theres a mug sat in someone's cupboard at some random location because of something you created. 

Secondly is good to know that the print quality is repeatably good (Inkthreadable for the win!). 

Finally is excellent to exercise the end to end process, it works! People ordered mugs with their player on and they got them!

A Questing We Shall Go

One thing thats bothered me for a while is how easily people get lost in quests. It's not because the quests are tricky or convoluted, they're simple not. Most of the quests take a pretty similar format with a big chunk of creative text around them. So why were people getting lost? Well it seems to me that people don't use notepads any more. Part of playing old RPGs and MMORPGs was always writing down what you'd found out so you could refer to your notes later. It seems no one does that any more so they were simply forgetting what they were asked to find, or how many they were asked to kill etc.

To remedy this I wanted to add a way of seeing what the last step in the quest told you to do. Of course I didn't want to have to code this manually especially as there are already an awful lot of quests already in place. Static analysis again saved the day. 

At start up the game client and server both process the quest files they have access to. They determine the relationship between particular script variable states and the page from which they originate. So for any given quest state the game knows how it got there - so it can display the last page of dialogue. It's really made it much easier to follow along with the quests. 

Worshipping My Supporters

Since the start of Oasis I've had an outstanding task, Patreon supporters of "Deity" tier have the perk that they can have a shrine dedicated to a fictional god they create, along with a simple quest for the priest of that god. It's been an age since people signed up and it's felt terribly bad to not have delivered their perk. First thing after Oasis, I implemented Shrines...

Patreons get to describe their god (one is a cat for instance) and give some background for the place. I then create a shrine and place it in the world - generally hidden in a corner or random location in the world. Shrine quests award a bonus stat point that ALL players can spend to improve their character. In this way every time a Deity pledges and creates a shrine they benefit the whole player base. 

It's kinda neat and I think I'll add some more things of that style soon.

Newbies

This month I was advised to start drilling into the statistics of the game, that is where people go, how long they play etc - more on this below. However a key one was that while I have a tonne of sign ups, a hell of a lot of them don't play very long. This seems to mean that the newbie experience wasn't working out. I did some digging and found a couple of things

1. There were some bugs that made early monsters too hard.
2. There wasn't enough newbie content, people were being pushed out into the harsh Yore world too early
3. Many players joined, asked "how do I play" and unless one of the friendly people was around to answer them - gave up and left.

Point 1 was easily solved, fix the bug. The bandits not longer get AC +3 due to the costume they're wearing. Doh! 

Point 2 was equally pretty quick to solve, adding a new area to the south of Aria Graveyard with an addition dungeon and boss - the Ettin King! 

Point 3 however took a bit more, the game needed a tutorial - but not one that drives people away because it takes too long - how do I weave this in to the introduction? Enter Yoric's House...

On starting the game the players are introduced Yoric the Bard (they already were). He now invites them round to his house to show them how to play the game. Having read a book, opened a chest, got an axe, chopped a tree and killed a zombie, the player can continue on into the newbie areas of the world. It's very early days but response looks promising with more newbies appearing to stick around than ever before.

Painful Statistics

And finally... some not so good news. Looking at the statistics for the game so far it's clear theres a point about 6-8 hours of content in where people get stuck and its "too hard". This might be partially because of the general "I'm bored of this game, I'll find another" syndrome but it also certainly seems to be theres some issues with the difficulty scaling. I need to look at this next but it's a difficult line to walk. 

I don't want to build just another casual RPG where everything is given to you and players are basically treading water - I want it to be a challenge, I want the player to care whether they live or die, I want it to feel like an achievement to have got somewhere in the game. The question is do I want that more than I want lots of players? 

I think right now, the answer is yes, I want my game to be my game. That doesn't excuse me from taking a hard look at how to make the progress of difficulty smoother, but I thinking staying true to the game I want to build outranks trying to get all players everywhere. My bank balance will probably hate me for it but at least my heart remains in the project.

And thats it this month. If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, let me know in the comments.