Well, this year went fast.
Unfortunately, things have pretty much carried on this year where it left off last year – i.e., way too much things to do at work eating into my free (and MicaBytes development) time. That reality – combined with the problems I had while developing the combat module – caused work this year to slow down quite a bit.
Still, work on Pirates and Traders 2 has progressed this year, even if it’s been going more slowly than I’ve hoped for. I finally got a version of the combat system on-line that I am relatively satisfied with (I’ll probably never be 100% satisfied, which is one reason it’s taken so much time). I also replaced my “home-grown” Ink story engine with blade-ink – something that should hopefully lead to fewer bugs in the stories over time (using the standard Ink engine means that I can use the standard Ink tools, which means better editing support, and the ability to do trial runs of the Ink scripts outside of the game). Finally, I’m almost done moving the game UI over to the new Android navigation architecture. It’s not something I had really wanted to do, but looking at the code a few months ago, I realized that I’d have to do so eventually, and I’d rather do it now (before working out the kinks in the current UI) rather than do a bunch of fixes and then have to port it next year.
The down-side is that the amount of infrastructure work has meant that there has been a dearth of new features during this year. For those of you who have been waiting for this; my apologies. It’s coming.
That’s basically the plan now. The next few weeks, I’m looking to finish work on the UI (hoped to have the first update out on the beta channel this week, but unfortunately too many bugs needed fixing for that to be practicable). Soon.
Once that is out, there are three big issues I’ll be focusing on:
- Adding all of the quests from the old game, and then adding the new stories that I have planned.
- Adding more NPC interaction. This is really intertwined with the quests, but there are also in-game effects to implement (e.g., if you’re a good friend of the local merchant, you should get some discounts when trading, etc).
- Land movement – being able to move inland, which will allow the player to move to places such as Panama.
Plus lots of other small improvements (including some of the stuff that people has wished for/suggested on the discussion forums). I still have lots of plans for this game, so although things have been a bit quiet recently, there is still a lot to come.
Once again, thanks for all your support and patience and (for those of you celebrating) have a Merry Christmas – and the Best Wishes for the New Year to you all.