Patreon Weekly #55 - June 22nd 2020

Hey Patrons!

The beta for v0.8.1 has been live since last Friday, along with a new blog post! I spent most of last week getting that release lined up, plus some non-Shattered work.

I’m spending this week evaluating the beta and adding the last bits of polish to get it ready for release!

Getting v0.8.1 Ready for Full Release

The gameplay balance changes from 0.8.1 seem to be working well overall so far. The beta hasn’t been going on long enough to get precise numbers yet, but general feedback has been positive and nothing is showing as standout overpowered or underpowered at the moment. I am planning to make some tweaks though, of course.

Most notably, several people have expressed concern to me about the power of magic missile. So far analytics data doesn’t support that magic missile is overpowered, but that data is also very imprecise at the moment. I think that magic missile will likely be getting a nerf before release, but the specific form that takes will depend on how the data pans out. It’s possible that the nerf will be fairly minor or may just affect the battlemage (who currently has a very powerful synergy with magic missile).

As for the non-balance parts of the update, feedback has been near universally positive for both the splash art and new sound effects! I’m very happy these have been received well, as it’s the first time I’ve ever collaborated with others when adding content to Shattered. It’s been a bit nerve-wracking working with others …

Overall v0.8.1 is looking to be in great shape and should only need some minor tweaks and refinements before it releases later this week.

What’s Coming Next?

With 0.8.1 mostly out of the way, it’s time to start thinking in more detail about what comes next! Firstly, there are some interface improvements I’d like to make to the game, some of these were initially planned for 0.8.1 but I decided to delay them:

• I’d like to make further changes to the main menu of the game, mainly focusing on the background pillars and possibly the title image. These are both assets that are basically unchanged from Vanilla and it would be nice if I did something to make them a bit more distinct. This is something that might work well for a Patreon poll if I can come up with a few decent designs.
• As mentioned previously I’d like to add a ‘news feed’ section which pulls blog posts from ShatteredPixel.com. This would make it much easier for people to discover my blog and therefore stay informed about what’s going on with the game.
• Lastly, I’d like to redesign to the current supporter screen to improve the visuals, add support for more supporter rewards in the future, and to allow me to update to a more modern version of Google’s billing library.

Depending on how tricky some of these are, I might do them in a patch for 0.8.1, rather than rolling them into the next update. The supporter screen changes in particular might get fast-tracked to a patch as I would really like to update the version of Google’s billing libraries that Shattered uses.

Secondly, and more importantly, it’s finally time to start doing concrete design on that new gameplay system I’ve been talking about. I’m afraid I’m going to keep you guys in the dark on this just a little bit longer, but I’ll start sharing details on it very soon…