“Andrew, why haven’t you added more features yet?” you might ask.
Because the next update, the 1.1 build, isn’t called 1.0.5 or 1.0.4.5 for a reason. It’s not small. In fact, it’s the largest single update to Might & Fealty since I’ve taken over coding. It might be the single largest update to Might & Fealty since its launch, save maybe the Lendan towers (but they were later removed).
Yeah, it’d be really easy to make this update just add a way to designate realm capitals. In which case it would’ve been complete like a month or two ago. But I want to add capitals as feature-complete. That means what I want to put into the game, isn’t a staged-release. I want you to see as many of the parts of this update that exist in my imagination now, as possible, as soon as any individual part of it is pushed live. The only exception to that being player complexes, which would probably push this update back a few MORE months.
So, what will this update actually include? Well, how about we turn this into a status of the build update as well. For these, I’ll describe the feature itself, and what it’s about, and then follow it with Database, Logic, and Usability statuses. Database describes whether we’ve settled on how the game will store and recall this data. Logic is the rules for the player actually using this feature and interacting with it. Usability is whether the game has pages for actually interacting with and setting it. These three combined, should allow us to give both simple, and meaningful statuses on any features we’re working on. When they all say N/A or Ready for Implementation, it’s complete. When they say something else, it isn’t.
- Realm Capitals — The code is in place for the database to understand this, but there’s no logic allowing a player to set it yet. This will utilize a modified version of the code that allows you create subrealms out of the regions in your realm. What we need to do is make it so that you can designate ANY region, regardless of if it’s your realms or any of the subrealms of your realm.
- Database update: Ready for implementation.
- Logic: Exists on paper, not in code.
- Usability: Non-existent.
- Seats of Power (Palaces) — The buildings exist, ready to be loaded, along with some new building handling logic so we can extend buildings to not just settlements. Yes, we’re still working on how exactly it’ll work, but you’ll be able to build certain things outside settlements.
- Database: Ready for implementation.
- Logic: Ready for implementation.
- Usability: Already exists in game.
- Description Service — Palaces, are HUGE. We don’t want to constrain players to all having the same palace. This is something you should be able to put to words. It’s simple to add a description field, but one of the shortcomings we see in BattleMaster was that you don’t know what it was described as before. So, we’re adding a proper game service to handle any/all important descriptions. And that will include palaces (as a type of Place, which I’ll cover in a bit), settlements, artifacts, items (which we’ve not added yet), and anything else we add down the line we want to have historical descriptions. Rocks maybe? Toast? It could happen. The game presently understands the database structure of descriptions, but there’s not yet any code in place to actually set or update that structure.
- Database: Ready for implementation.
- Logic: Exists in Andrew’s head.
- Usability: Not applicable.
- Settlement Descriptions — We’ve hardly started on these besides figuring out how we want the server to store it.
- Database: Ready for implementation.
- Logic: Non-existent.
- Usability: Non-existent.
- Artifact Descriptions — We already have these, so it’s more an upgrade. But we need a way to port all the existing ones over when we upgrade. For the player, this will be transparent, we hope.
- Database: Ready for implementation.
- Logic: Non-existent.
- Usability: Already exists in game.
- Places — This is a catch-all term for any building or location that will have advanced interaction capabilities or might be of interesting note. Taverns, in role playing games, tend to be unique and described, so why can’t you describe the tavern(s) in your city? Capitals, like I said before, are distinctly unique, and worthy of description as well. But Places aren’t just describable locales, they can even be upgradeable facilities. Forts, are a type of place that will be (hopefully) added in this update. Temples, are a place. Building in them is still being worked on, but how you build in/on a Place might depend on its type. What’s neat is they can exist both inside and outside settlements, and you can be either inside or outside of them, meaning you can be in a settlement but not a place, in a place but not a settlement, in a place AND a settlement, or in neither. Fun stuff, and we’ve already taught the game how to put you in one, or let you leave one.
- Database: Ready for implementation.
- Logic: Work in Progress.
- Usability: Work in Progress.
Hopefully, you can see that this is fairly expansive, and can understand why it’s taking a while. If you’re curious about any of these updates, by all means, don’t hesitate to ask. We always like feedback on how you think things are going, and if you think we’re heading in the right direction.