4/22/2018 - devlog
After the flight model, the material tree is in for a material overhaul (haha), and so is the game's entire look. Besides preparing all this, the team has been getting ready to travel north.
Martin
I'm writing this on Thursday since I'll be traveling to Amsterdam tomorrow for an AirlineSim meet-up. So if you happen to be in the area, why not join?
Concerning the past days of the week: Michi and I sat down - virtually - to discuss the material tree once again. Similar to the corporations feature I talked about last week, the tech tree needs to be taken to the next level, so-to-speak. It served its purpose quite well during the initial alpha tests, but now it needs to be expanded with mid- and end-game features in mind and with a more long-term and structured view on player progression. This is about as complex as it sounds and will keep us busy for quite some time and I'm sure you're going to read more about here over the coming weeks and months.
Since I'll be spending the vast majority of tomorrow on trains, I might do some work on the corporations feature or continue reading Persepolis Rising, the 7th part of the fantastic Expanse series, for…erm…research.
Michi (molp)
Besides what Martin already mentioned, I was working on two other things this week: The preparations for Quo Vadis and the space flight refactoring.
The Quo Vadis conference is just around the corner and Julian and I will be there to present Prosperous Universe to the attendees. While Julian is handling all things related to PR, I am in charge of technical preparations. Since the currently running alpha version already uses our live account backend, we decided not to use the alpha in the presentation since that would mean that every player would have to create a real account before trying out the game. That is just too much hassle. Instead, we have installed the game on an ordinary laptop. Of course that makes it pretty much a single-player game, but it will be enough to show the game's core features.
The space flight refactoring is taking shape slowly. I was able to fix the visualizations of own ships and other player's traffic in the universe and system maps.
Julian (Mjeno)
As I mentioned last week, both our homepages are about to receive an overhaul. More excitingly, however, we've decided to give the game itself a new and improved look. We've already commissioned some 3D art for our Universe map, System map and Planet overview and we're currently looking for a sci-fi UI pro to help us polish the look of all the 2D elements. That's why, this week, I spent a lot of time going through portfolios of freelancers and CGI studios I'm about to get in touch with. If you know someone who fits that description, it'd be lovely if you pointed them to us.
Most of my time, however, went into researching games events. We're hoping to exhibit Prosperous Universe a couple more times this year, and since the festival season has already started, it's about time we sent out some more applications. We've picked about a dozen events in all of Europe and some in Asia, so there's a chance we'll see you there in person soon (sorry, American players).
Lastly, as Michi already mentioned, our first exhibition is just around the corner. Since it's a live event, I thought we could give Instagram Stories a spin, so keep an eye out on Tuesday for live updates from our Instagram account!
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on the forums!
Happy trading!