The New Assistant - Development Log #336

Players vote on elements of the company creation assistant and a new Twitch stream is in the works!

Avatar Michi

Michi (molp)

Last week we deployed the new company creation assistent. Here is a screenshot of the planet selection step:

Company Creation Assistant - Step Planet Selection

We added a feature that we haven't had in the last iteration of the company creation assistant: An indicator of how well the selected profile (Metallurgist, Carbon Farmer, ..) fits into the currently selected planet. The widget shows a star rating, going from 1 to 5. Instead of deriving this rating from technical information somehow, we decided to go another route and ask our experienced players for help. We set up a spreadsheet with all combinations and players could either up or down vote a certain combination. After enough players had participated, we had a look ourselves and integrated this information into the assistant.

We also received some additional feedback since the new assistant went live. A player mentioned that it would be really helpful to show a list of key resources for each profile, so they can judge easier for themselves if a given planet is suitable to start on or not.

Fabian and I set together last week and looked into the three larger features, namely custom contracts, politics and infrastructure, that lie ahead of us. We were especially interested to see how we could split them up into smaller parts. The goal here is to have multiple, meaningful releases instead of three huge releases which will take us ages to develop :) We made some progress, but we aren't done yet.

I have also integrated some monitoring tools that will help us find performance issues faster in the future. I tested it on staging and will most likely add it to production this week.

Avatar Nick

Nick

Last week I was finally able to secure a contract with a streamer that has promised to do our game justice! We worked out the fine details about how they can prepare themselves for the stream so they don't look lost and confused when they play for the first time. They will also interview some of the team to get some more understanding of how the game was imagined and how many of the systems work together. They are also inviting us to sit in on the stream to help with any hiccups that may arise with finding certain things in the game, etc. I would also like to invite players as well if any are interested. I think it will be around 11am US EST. I will post the details when everything is confirmed. I am looking forward to this stream quite a bit, and I hope it will help us get some good quality content on the streaming side of things.

As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!

Happy trading!