Helloooo guys, this is MIke the Community Manager.
I'm back to share with you guys another patch. Today's patch focuses more on optimization, fixing bugs and improving UIs here and there. Please read below for more details on today's patch.
The end of the Halloween event.
- All good things must come to an end including Halloween.
- All the cool skins and background images are now back to...normal. See you again on next Halloween!
- Except...Jace. She will stay with you even after the Halloween party, which means you can still play as her.
Optimization
We got many comments about Dicetiny running not very smoothly especially on low-spec PCs/Macs/Laptops. Our programmers worked hard to optimize our game as much as possible, and now we're little more happier about it. So we reduced the video card memory usage, so those of you running the game on low spec PCs or OSX or Laptop will be able to play the game more smoothly. Please let us know how this goes on your computer.
And here are some of other things we improved with this patch.
- We moved the position of "the arrow" that takes you to the next page in MY DECK little lower to make it more visible.
- Now you don't have to wonder how the hell you can zoom-in on a card in MY DECK, because we added a text that says "Please click and hold a card to zoom-in." Some of you suggested right-clicking to zoom-in so..maybe in the future we may consider this.
- Now text boxes stay longer so you guys can enjoy the very EXCITING dialogue between characters for now, but In the next patch, we're planning to add a button that lets you skip each text box. Hooray!
- Alright streamers, now you don't have to worry about that annoying Volume control that never worked. You can now turn down (or up) the volume so that your sexy voice is heard more clearly.
And meanwhile at Fakedice...
In an effort to be more candid about what we're up to, and our plan for the future, I'm sharing here some of the topics we discussed in our weekly meeting that took place this Monday. These are some of the things we discussed.
Here's us
Fatal Error and other errors.
First of all, we apologize for this error guys. I think not having enough beta-testing before Early Access is costing us. But the good news is, the latest improvement in the optimization department may solve this issue to some degree, well at least we hope so. So try this latest build and let us know if this solved that issue for you guys. It hurts us to see all the negative comments because of this...(sniff, sniff) Anyhow we're doing our best guys so we ask for your patience. (we partly blame Epic for their very complicated engine)
Some of the other known issues...
- If you hover the mouse cursor over a minion card during a battle, the minion card moves to the cursor.
- If you hover the cursor over a miinon that's just been placed, the zoomed-in card sometimes doesn't disappear.
Multiplayer
Ok, another thing that we talked about in our meeting is Multiplayer. We know some of you guys want Multiplayer a lot, and our current build has a lot of PvP feel to it, but we decided to focus on Singleplayer for now for the following reasons. We don't have enough user-base for smooth Multiplayer experience. We don't want you guys to wait for an opponent for half an hour and leave with bad taste in mouth. Second, we don't have enough manpower + time/money to implement multiplayer at the moment. Balancing, and setting up servers will take time and money. And with our current resource, we decided in stead of making half-complete multiplayer, we will make complete singleplayer that is fun and full of surprises. Now we're not putting multiplayer aside for good. Multiplayer will be our highest priority if the conditions are met. So we're sorry if this disappoints some of you, and we understand that but that's our current situation.
More RPG elements in plan, and other things we discussed.
So since we will be focused more on Singleplayer, you will be seeing more RPG elements in the future updates. Some of the ideas we discussed were, having a big map with many missions, and you can freely complete each mission without any order within a given days, maybe 28 days? (one day per mission), and in the last day, you face the last boss "Dead Serious" This is a rough idea, and will be reviewed. Another thing we discussed was item equipment. If you equip an item, it buffs your hero and so on. We also discussed multiple stages that follow linear storyline (think of 80's arcade games)/more special spaces/random events/range minions who can attack not just the current space but also spaces away from them among other things.
Public Trello
I've been leaving an URL to our public Trello in some comments I left, but I will share it here again in case some of you don't know it exists. =) Along with the game design, another thing we want to improve upon is English in the game. (All the blame falls on me because I'm the one who translated all the texts. (sob)... I'm thinking about adding a public spreadsheet where you can correct grammar errors or even suggest card names/descriptions so please stay tuned guys. This will also be a good place to start localization to other languages such as Spanish/Polish/German/Chinese, etc.
https://trello.com/b/H4rLrGHc/dicetiny-roadmap
Mike's Interview with Darkstation.
Mike (who is the community manager, and also...ME!) had a personal and honest interview with Darkstation (www.darkstation.com) so check it out here if you're interested.
http://www.darkstation.com/podcast/darkcast/dci-darkcast/dci-108-dicetiny-interview/
Gstar
We will be at Korea's biggest game show, Gstar http://www.gstar.or.kr/eng/index.asp happening next week. Dicetiny will be featured at an indie game booth. I will be sharing some pictures and some videos on our social media, so stay tuned guys. If you don't know where to find our socia media, here they are.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourdicetiny/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/YourDICETINY
Tumblr: http://fakedice.tumblr.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/YourDicetiny
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dicetiny/
We need some love with these social mediat sites guys! Especially reddit...not sure why there are so few subscribers.=(
Alright guys, that's all for today. Have a good weekend, and talk to you later!
Mike "People's Community Manager"
