Welcome to the "MoonWard Going Forward" (MGF) blog!
I'm Mr. Slate and I'm here to let you know what's been happening with MoonWard as of October 2024!
Before I begin, please make sure to check out the MoonWard demo on the Google Play Store and our Discord Community!
With that out of the way, let's get to the news!
There are two things I'd like to focus on in this month's MoonWard Going Forward.
Future Releases
Firstly - v0.7.1 of the MoonWard Demo just came out - go get it if you haven't! It's got a ton of new story content, more enemies, more loot, quality of life improvements and much much more!
Alright, I know I've been neglecting releases for the past two months but I'm getting back on the regular patch train. I've got a few cool features I'm adding to MoonWard and they'll be featured in the demo (check the features list below). While I'm working on that I'll also be finishing the main story, side content, quality of life and polish for the full game.
As you've probably noticed I've began ramping up the version numbers. Next patch will most likely be v0.8.1. That's to signify the amount of changes, but also the closeness to a release date. This patch unfortunately also brought a cut-off in backwards compatibility with previous versions. While you can still play your old characters and should be able to simply buy new gear and reset the bounties to the new ones, there will most likely be bugs and things that look wrong. You'll also miss out on the new story content. With all that said, all future patches should be backwards compatible so this shouldn't be an issue again.
In truth there isn't much left of the game to be complete before the full release. Speaking of the full release I'm still not ready to commit to a release date but it's getting close now! Like months away.
Enough teasing, here's the goal - I'll get back to releasing a patch every 3 weeks (next one should be 29th of October). That should include the last of the content for the demo and some new features. It'll also have some more quality of life features and polish. That also coincides well with my iOS release target (before November) so the two should be at an equal quality.
iOS Release
Oh boy. Not only do I not have any experience with macOS or iOS or the apple store, but I'm also having issues with enrolment into the developer program. Nothing on my end mind you. Like always, I underestimated the ability of a $3.5 trillion company to mess up the simplest things like online payment and quality control.
At least there aren't any technical issues so far. The game runs fine on my dev mac book. Actually that's the one good thing - setting up the dev environment on the mac was quite painless. The hardware is also fairly decent even if it's old so I don't have any issues doing work there.
So here's my current status. I can run MoonWard in the Unity editor on a mac book. All warnings and errors are fixed and I've started changing the content to comply with apple's "no demos or unfinished apps" policy. The way I interpret this is there shouldn't be hints of unreachable content, like the inaccessible counties. The solution I'm implementing should cover this. There will be slightly less story content in the iOS version but there's no other good way I can think of at the moment. The full iOS version will of course have everything.
Lastly. With all of the admin issues I'm having at the moment (hour long calls with support) I'm not so sure I can hit my vague promise of "before November". There might have to be a slight delay. I'll let you all know when I know for sure.
Features
Here's a list of done, approved and work in progress features as of writing this. The WIP percentages are all over the place, that doesn't mean I've started and stopped work on these, or working on them in parallel. In games development larger features are broken down in standalone tasks as small as 1 hour. For example, "New Enemies" is actually 4 separate tasks of varying duration and can be done in any order. So with that in mind...
Enough rambling! Here's the current approved major feature list:
DONE: Improved Player Onboarding. Includes interactive battle tutorials.
Approved TBD: In-Game Wiki (Notes). It's in scope again. Hoping to be able to finish this by next MGF.
Approved TBD: Aspect introduction.
Approved TBD: Auras. These will be abilities that enemies will have or have a chance to possess. Some will be innate like a fire elemental's passive "Fire Cloak". While another could be "Backup" where the character would be attacked by allies of their bandit opponent in random intervals but will be alerted to the attack and could dodge them if timed correctly.
Approved TBD: Boss fights. I want boss fights to be a bit more involved. I'm thinking multiple stages, dialogue, custom musical tracks, more and special moves, maybe even custom brawl screens! This should be fun :)
Approved TBD: Increased hex variation. This won't affect the demo as much because I'm fairly happy with the hex variety in County 1 and County 2. You'll be able to see the new hexes on the map but the counties will still be locked.
DONE (DEMO): Revised/expanded story content. This includes unlocking mechanics as you play.
DONE (DEMO): New enemies.
WIP 90%: More County 2 content. This includes more lore friendly dwellings and main and side stories. Update - I've decided to drop main stories for County 2 from the demo. With the expanded content in County 1 I'm already giving away more than a fifth of the full game for free. I think that should be enough to create a purchasing opinion. There will most likely be one more side story and that should be the end of content updates for the demo.
WIP 20%: iOS Build. It's in progress. I'm having issues with enrolment into the Developer program (they just won't take my money!) and I imagine there might be a bit of forward and back when it comes to submission to the store.
WIP 10%: Long term Save Game. Currently all of your characters are deleted forever when the game is uninstalled. This is obviously not ideal. Modern games save these in the cloud. I'm not interested in that. So I'm looking into options to let you save/load a character locally. I also have no interest in encoding those files so you could in theory just open them up and cheat. Wouldn't that be cool?
Pricing and Support
Lastly, I'd like to elaborate on a couple of things regarding the demo and pricing.
Price. The demo (and App Store intro version) will always be free. The full version will always be a one time purchase. There will never be any in-app purchases. There will never be any adverts. There will never be battle passes. There will never be Web3 technology.
Support/Patching. When the full version is released, the demo will continue to receive patches at the same rate as the full version. This will include new or changed content in county 1 and partially (side stories and bounties) 2, as well as any upgraded/new systems and mechanics available in those hubs. The demo will also get bugfixes in parallel with the full version. In reality, the demo will stop receiving content updates once county one and two are content complete.
Before I go, if you'd like to support us, please check our Patreon and Ko-fi! Any donations and patronage towards Slate Games and MoonWard development are greatly appreciated!
Thank you all so much for your continued support! It's very humbling to be able to do what I love!
Like always,
stay awesome!
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