Game Update
Currently doing testing to make sure that the latest features are good for the game. Primarily I’m checking the difficulty system, but so far it seems to be working with no big issues. We have noted some other quality of life things that will be in future updates as well. Things that will make the Force Organizations screen easier to navigate for changes that will improve the players squad. Right now there is far to much searching through troops to “find the upgrade.” This is a real drawback and wouldn’t have been surfaced without the new difficulty system that is removing troops sometimes after missions are over when they are dead.
Also I noticed that only one or two of my troops can do healing. With the new system this may become more of a coveted thing to have. This is at odds with the idea of fast levels with a lot of things dying on the enemy side as well as the player side. I’m experimenting with heavy healing to see of the systems we already have in place get broken when we do this. So far so good. The enemy still kills player troops when healing is in play and both teams are around the same level. Obviously when either side is at a higher level than the others then there is less damage done to the superior team in general.
I need to focus some more to get an update out. This update is SO EXCITING that it has me doing something that I hadn’t experienced yet. It has me thinking about the game when I am away from it. Creating situations in which there is a puzzle that isn’t “solved” as they say in the card game space is definitely something we are going for. I would love to eventually put some sort of “Relic” item system in place that would change the style of the game play.
I’m going to do my best to get a couple of solid stages out with the new random town events as well. This will need some testing as well. I may need to change the ending screen. It might be something where I will need to create a branch for the new version on Steam. I’ve had some issues doing this in the past so hopefully I can get it working with little effort.
This week the Unity Game Engine announced a $0.20 per install charge to low level developers for games that gross more than $200k or have more than 200k downloads. Lot’s of backlash in the community and I hope that they completely backtrack it.
My mentor said it probably won’t effect Six Aspects because the version of Unity we are in is quite old, and I know we can’t upgrade to something new without major revisions to our code base. Still it is troubling to see this as it goes back to the OGL debacle that Wizards of the Coast tried to pull on there community earlier this year. The only thing I think that they are trying to do is be oppressive to free software model games (freemium) with micro transactions.
It’s obvious they are targeting some of the big companies like Blizzard with Hearthstone. There is also a possibility that they are trying to devalue their own stock for a buyout as many of their CEOs sold stock right before the announcement. Looks like a lot of bad things are going on at Unity right now. Let’s hope they come to their senses before it’s to late.
Personal Update
Last weekend we did a birthday party for my youngest child. He asked for a skateboard for his birthday and I was a bit skeptical but he seems to be pretty good at it so far. I feel like there will be some life lessons in there with the amount of falling down and getting back up he will have to do in order to really get good at it. It’s been interesting to see how all of my boys are going in different directions with their hobbies.
Things reached a boiling point with Nordic Track as I reported them to the Better Business Bureau. They became mysteriously more compliant and more engaged after I did that. The treadmill is still broken however and I’m still seeking a replacement or a refund with them. We’ll see how long this goes on for. I would NEVER recommend their products to everyone as they have had many complaints besides my own and don’t seem to truly care about fixing the problems. I did however finally get some straight answers about some things that I had asked about for months. It’s likely there is a software error that is not fixable. I’m also pursuing legal action with them as I feel that this should fall into lemon laws with the company. At any rate, don’t buy Nordic Track, get a cheap treadmill, run outside, and take the money you would have spent and invest it in stocks or bonds instead.