Patreon Weekly #56 - June 29th 2020

Hey Patrons!

v0.8.1 has now been fully released! You can take a look at the announcement blog here!

This week I’m working on patches for v0.8.1 and starting specific planning for the next update. Read on to find out more about that!

What’s Coming Next?

Now that v0.8.1 has released, I’m filling out more specific plans for what to do after it. You may remember that last weekly I talked about some UI improvements and additions that I ended up not putting in v0.8.1 because the update was getting too large.

Initially I considered just rolling these UI additions into the next update, but that sort of dev habit is what has led to huge updates in the past. So, in the spirit of trying to change that habit, I’m going to release those UI improvements in their own update: v0.8.2! 

I’m going to aim for v0.8.2 to be a very briskly developed update, releasing in July. It’ll contain UI improvements to the main menu, the supporter menu, and the addition of an ingame newsfeed. I’ll see about adding my usual group of incremental improvements and balance adjustments, but not so many as to slow things down.

Wait, then what about that new Gameplay System!?

So, as I mentioned previously the next update was originally planned to be the start of a new gameplay system in Shattered. I know it sounds an awful lot like I’m delaying it, but if things go well that won’t be the case. The UI changes were going to come no matter what, so ideally the only slowdown will be the overhead of releasing the UI changes in their own update. This should come to a few days at most.

Infact, I plan to spend some of the time on v0.8.2 doing concrete concepting on this new gameplay system, which you guys will be hearing about over the course of the next few weeks. To start with, let me share a bit of info about why I’m adding a new system:

Levelling up in Shattered isn’t fun.

The fun of progressing through the game happens at a steady pace for items, but when it comes to the hero that progression only happens at hero select, subclass select, and (if you use them) when class armors are granted. The frequent levelling that the player gets is necessary for the stat boost but does nothing for the game’s fun factor. 

So how to address this then? Well this is hardly a Shattered-exclusive problem, and a bunch of other Pixel Dungeons and other games have their own systems for this. You can call them skills, abilities, perks, etc. but the core idea is the same: give the player some incremental and customizable power as their hero levels up. This deepens the game’s strategy and gives another source of progression and consistent fun.

So that’s the main motivation of this system, make hero levels a more active, fun, and involved part of the game, instead of just a boost to health and accuracy. As for how such a system will work specifically, I’ll be sharing more on that in the coming weeks…