Update on diplomacy stuff (back to the drawing board yet again).

[nas1m]

Thanks for elaborating. I will just have to wait then . Glad it's coming along!

[x4000]

Yep!  Turns out that I was wrong about the difficulty settings stuff, though -- that's going to take too long, so it will be later on.

[crazyroosterman]

hey so I was going through the store front to try out the demo for sky ward collapse(since I really know nothing that game I thought it would be fun) and was a little bit shocked to see were almost half way through august so not to be a worry wort but I have to ask are you getting any were with the diplomacy? I hope you are because not that I'm trying to stress you out but the realise date isn't very far away 0_0

[x4000]

We are a quarter of the way through August, not halfway!  And yeah, it's coming along.  I expect we'll be hitting the testing heavily again starting on the 17th, at this point.

[crazyroosterman]

We are a quarter of the way through August, not halfway!  And yeah, it's coming along.  I expect we'll be hitting the testing heavily again starting on the 17th, at this point.

I hate to nit pick but I didn't say we were half way I said we were ALMOST half but regardless I'm glad to hear that especially considering how long it will take to exterminate all the bugs ill probably find.

[Misery]

I'll be honest here, I'm surprised it's been this long since the last update; usually you guys sorta machinegun these things out pretty darn fast.  Must be quite a ton of stuff happening there.  Patch notes will be like a 500 page epic, half of which I wont understand, because math or something.

.....I can only imagine how long it'd take alot of other devs to do the same update 

Really, I still just dunno how you guys keep up that pace.

[crazyroosterman]

I'll be honest here, I'm surprised it's been this long since the last update; usually you guys sorta machinegun these things out pretty darn fast.  Must be quite a ton of stuff happening there.  Patch notes will be like a 500 page epic, half of which I wont understand, because math or something.

.....I can only imagine how long it'd take alot of other devs to do the same update 

Really, I still just dunno how you guys keep up that pace.

if this was blizzard in charge of this wed probably still be waiting for the territory's update mainly because there lazy.(disclaimer this is mainly from my experience with hearthstone whitch they haven't tried to freaking balance since like it was closed to the public I think)

[x4000]

A lot of the reason for such a long delay is a lot of internal iteration more than anything else.  I have thrown out more than a dozen diplomacy models, and even on the events model that I settled on I've thrown out 8+ partial data models.  It's been extremely slow and painstaking, because of trying to make sure the model fits all the sorts of cases that I'm going to want to support pre-1.0.  And that it's done in the most efficient way as possible for data entry and coding, because the plan is to have a ton of data just crashing through there over the next month.

Meanwhile, as that's been happening, Keith has been coding various things that are related, and then a LOT of other stuff that was completely unrelated.  Huge swathes of stuff from mantis got fixed up while I was crumpling up diplomacy models, which was really nice to have done.  A bunch of GUI redesign stuff has happened, and so forth.  Some of that was stuff I designed a while back, but we hadn't had time to code yet or to do the art for yet.

Meanwhile, Blue and Cath and so forth have been hard at work on a ton of different art things, and so on and so forth.

It's been kind of a strange period.  But this was one of those periods where I basically didn't need a bunch of people talking to me so much, because I already had so much feedback and it was all pretty clear.  I needed time to really sift through all the things that had been expressed to me already, all the things that I was feeling myself, and so on.

I'm supposed to be finishing the last of the event code design model today, and I think I probably will be able to.  Data for it is coming from myself, Erik, and a fellow named John who is working with us on this part, and it's going to be happening over the course of the next month or so.  But that will require almost no code in order to get that data in place, particularly after the first few weeks.  That's more or less what the most recent batch of agonizing has been over: the most efficient way for John and Erik and I to get in a ton of content without having that trigger a need for code, but also without over-engineering things to start with.

I'm pretty pleased at this stage, although I can't yet see it in practice in the game itself.  But by the end of this coming week, should be!

[Tormodino]

I am extremely eager to see the new changes. The game is solid and very interesting so far, and judging by what is being talked about on the forums it will only get better.

[x4000]

Fingers crossed!

[Zebeast46]

Alright I am back from a two week vacation, anyone wanna summarize what has happened during the time I have been missing?

[x4000]

Alright I am back from a two week vacation, anyone wanna summarize what has happened during the time I have been missing?

More or less this, but in a good way: https://youtu.be/AW2xyXl2tTI

[crazyroosterman]

hey is the diplomacy stuff still up for tomorrow? i won't have access to the internet for the next week so i won't be watching the forums instead ill probably do a first impressions on the update when i get back?.

[x4000]

We're running slower than expected since I stacked Keith's list a bit higher than anticipated.  A huge chunk of it is done, but there is still some more that needs to come about.  I've been catching up on emails and things with the artists and writers so far this morning, so I'm just about to start looking at the programming stuff and then get back to design on my own side.  Not sure if there will be a release today or not, but from the last I heard it sounds like Wednesday at the latest would be possible.

I might do one today anyway, just with the few events that are already fully supported, and then go from there.  There are some things that are unfinished and some others that I already know need extra work to really shine, but that's no reason to completely hold them back from any testing.

It does make me less enthused on doing a new round of testers at the moment, though.  It's not that I want everything perfect before the next round of testers, but I do want to be fully "into the next era" of the game so to speak before I bring in the next round of testers, so that they can actually play the game fully and not just "play at" the game.

[nas1m]

I might do one today anyway, just with the few events that are already fully supported, and then go from there.  There are some things that are unfinished and some others that I already know need extra work to really shine, but that's no reason to completely hold them back from any testing.

Any idea yet whether and if so when this will happen today?
I am back from my holiday and just trying to gauge whether it might pay off to stay up tonight here...

PS: Love the new Lander graphics and HUD btw!

EDIT2: Well, I guess I will see it tomorrow . Good night!