Beta Release Schedule Shakeup (Patreon)

My latest post about map zooming has gotten me into a new mindset...

Part of why I've had no idea when Beta 13 will be released is that despite all the work that's already gone into it, I've yet to nail down how much the final version will include. And I'm not talking about minor inconsequential features, just big stuff like there's another map after Scraptown, and more significant related events. After all, how else do you get a whole new faction and ending ;)

I've always tended to lean towards releasing everything together, since it's all tightly coupled, but now I'm thinking of a different route, especially since this map zoom thing seems promising, on top of a confluence of other factors... we're coming up on the end of the year, it's been a while since a major release, I've already completed a decent chunk of content worthy of release...

Maybe on this new timeline we should switch back to a faster schedule (this also tends to be better for sales, by the way :P)

If this zoom thing goes smoothly, a public release before the holidays is probably reasonable. This does imply I would at most be able to release only part of Scraptown next, so minus the major NPC stuff and a portion of its encounters. I'd probably have to even temporarily remove some items, robots and whatnot from the files to avoid leaks, mainly because of wizard mode and LuigiAI. Funny enough, Cogmind's alpha versions could and did include fresh content that would eventually be used one day, and almost no one knew about it because there weren't easy ways to access the internals like you have now!

One unfortunate but acceptable side effect of this schedule shakeup is that I would no longer be able to claim that the new version comes with more than 100 new items, since they would be split into at least two releases :P

Anyway, here's a summary of how I've been thinking of dividing things up, rather than pushing massive releases (the current Beta 13 changelog is already on par with past huge ones...):

• Beta 13: Subcaves, part of Scraptown, zoomable map (December)
• Beta 14: Complete Scraptown/UFD
• Beta 15: New late-game map and ending (mysterious)
• Beta 16+: Unchained (you die here, so maybe we don't need more betas? :P)
• (make decision on specific timeline to 1.0 and whether Merchants come before or after; other important developments in betas here include a huge new set of achievements, and possibly a more expansive new type of scaled UI depending on reception of the map zooming feature)

Wow these numbers are getting big fast xD

Obviously the list only indicates major features, while there are other smaller things I said would be coming in Beta 13 which could get shifted back to Beta 14 as well, and other shuffling around.

Another drawback I can see is that having been split up, some of these intermediate releases may tend to leave a few loose ends, but I can try to hide those in the design until they're ready.

Also no dates, of course, just a general idea that such a b13 should hopefully be released this year without needing to rush it too much. I should emphasize that none of this plan involves reducing or adjusting the total amount of content I've been designing, it's simply a different way to cut it up for release.

What thinks you?

Addendum

The above was actually first written some days ago, and since then while working on the map zoom feature it's really had me thinking who just wants map zoom and not also really prefers just bigger text/everything???

In that light I've been considering going one step further and not just finishing off the map zooming feature, but even trying to fast track the third phase of the UI design I've been wanting to eventually experiment with. Maybe now is the time...

An alternative UI would reduce the terminal grid row count in exchange for a 33% increase in cell size for everyone, and I think it could work. This is a whole different area of discussion, and naturally reduces how much you can see at once in terms of both the map and other data, but I've been anyway I've been thinking about trying to build it immediately on the heel of map zooming.

If it goes smoothly, trying to release that this year would mean it completely replaces Scraptown in Beta 13, which instead becomes just Subcaves + Interface (plus of course a bunch of little things), and Scraptown could get a solo release in its entirety (which wouldn't take forever because again a lot of that work is actually already done, it just still needs to be pieced together which will take a while).

Sure is gettin' busy over here xD