1/31/2022 - devlog
Michi implements Government Programs, and Fabian has news about the new color scheme for materials.
Michi (molp)
I finally started implementing the last missing big feature for our upcoming update: Government Programs!
Originally the Government Programs feature should have been part of the politics update, but this will have to wait a bit longer. Since it is rather encapsulated and has a small scope, we decided to remove it from the politics update and release it with an earlier release.
A governor will be able to select programs, which run for a week, from four categories. Immigration programs attract a certain workforce. Family support programs increase the growth of pioneer, settler and technician workforces. Education programs increase the level-up rate of all workforces and therefore, their chance to move to the next higher workforce level. Finally, festivity programs increase the happiness of all workforce tiers across the board.
All programs, except the immigration ones, will have three different versions with increasingly strong effects. Programs do not require any materials, only cash. The costs depend on a basis factor and population factor that scales linearly. We'll add the necessary information to the handbook on the release day!
Fabian (Counterpoint)
As promised last week, I looked into implementing the ability to block users from accepting your Local Market ads. I'm happy to report that the feature is ready for the upcoming release. You will now be able to add players to your LM blocklist, which works similar to the mute list we already had for the chat. If a player from your list tries to accept one of your ads, they will receive a rejection message. Better watch out, pirates!
In other news, I tackled the long-standing task of figuring out a (new) color scheme for our material category colors. In fact, so far material colors were assigned randomly based on the category's name. Now I tried to group similar categories together to be close in color and have a "progression" where it made sense (e.g. construction commodities range from light blue for the smaller pieces to dark blue for the prefabs). Also, no more duplicates! All of this resulted in many changes to the colors, which definitely takes some getting used to, but I think will work much better in the long run. Here's a quick teaser:
Nick
Last week I worked again on influencer and Reddit marketing. I'm happy to say that the ads are progressively getting better as we make small changes each week to help enhance each campaign. Sometimes I have to adjust the bids in the middle of the week since prices can fluctuate frequently, especially in the US and Canada. We should have a new YouTube video out by the end of the week, so I will link the video in next week's devlog.
I have also been working on the content for the upcoming release and am excited about finally getting a bunch of new release-related subject matter on the website and around the web. Fingers crossed for press coverage!
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!