Buy local – development log #175

In today’s devlog, we’re sharing numerous details on the upcoming local markets and the kinds of ads players will be able to post on them.

Michi (molp)

I could finally spend a big chunk of my available time this week on the new local markets feature. I began with the outlines of the local market tile which shows a list of all available ads. To be able to display some ads, they have to be created first, so I quickly moved on to the “post ads” tile.

In the beginning, there will only be two ad types: buy and sell a commodity, the type can be selected by the corresponding tab. An ad consists of a few basic components:

• The price for the commodity, including the currency. It is entirely up to the creator of the ad what currency should be used.
• The commodity itself. I wrote a new commodity selector (see below) to quickly search and select a commodity. The selector first tries to match the input with a commodity ticker, then with the name of the commodity.
• The amount of commodities.
• The maximum delivery time. Let’s say company A creates a buy commodity ad and sets a delivery time of 5 days. That means that the accepting company has 5 days until the goods need to be delivered to the creator of the ad. Failing to do so will breach the contract and might result in a bad rating.
• Ad visibility determines how many days an ad will be visible at the local market.
• Fees: The owner of the local market (right now the corresponding faction) will demand a fee to create an ad. The amount depends on a base value and the ad visibility time. The fee has to be paid immediately and in the currency of the corresponding faction.

Here is a work-in-progress shot of the tile:

Julian (Mjeno)

I’m keeping it super short this week since most of what I’ve done relates to things I’d like to keep secret for the moment and that you’ll get to see fairly soon anyway.

One thing I’ve been dealing with is the question when and how to advertise the switch to a free-to-play model, which is coming rather sooner than later, as discussed in our livestream and earlier devlogs. We’re pulling the free/premium distinction into the First Access phase, where players owning a key are premium users. We’ve made this decision to ensure that fewer interested parties are blocked off by our paywall, since the discrepancy in daily traffic to our website and the actual number of people ending up creating a company is quite staggering. Of course there are more adjustments to be made to our funnel (ugh), but we’re considering the current paywall to be the “Great Filter” right now. ;)

As always: we’d love to hear what you think: join us on the forums!

Happy trading!