Hey everyone!
I realized when I responded to a question about Alliance here last week that I hadn't really posted in a while, and I wanted to make a special post for this reddit since so many of you guys and gals have been following this project for a long time, and I wanted to acknowledge that.
So, in a nutshell, development is going AWESOME right now. Back in the days when it was me, an artist, and some help here and there, it was very slow going. Now that we have proper funding, we have expanded our staff significantly, so now we have: myself; our lead artist; another full(ish) time programmer who specializes in UI and LUA scripting; a systems developer who has been part of the team for a while, but who is now able to devote more time to assisting with the world-building, writing and story/quest systems; an award-winning novelist who is writing much of our stories, quests (quests?!? yuuuup) and rewriting the tutorial; and we are about to add another artist who will work closely with our team to provide a unified art experience.
So not coincidentally, we've just completed our best 2 weeks of output ever - we added the new story system UI and the LUA compiler, the new end turn window and button, we completed the alert bar with all hovers and popups, including a help system for potential issues like 'running low on food' or 'almost broke' that gives you tangible advice; and we added the invasion/planetary combat system. And we fixed a ton of issues. And added an in-game bug reporter. Whew.
By the end of the month, we expect to have a revamped House nexus, and a really wicked cool Emperor screen that really will be the focus of the game, as it should be - think of it as the lead character in an RPG's character screen, and you'll have an idea of its magnitude and importance. We'll also be adding the fleet creation screen, army management screens, and battle reports. We also have planned out and started programming for a new conversation system - when you talk to a character and they refuse to see your point of view, you will now be able to challenge them to a multi-round verbal duel - we're not talking Griftlands level of detail, since Alliance is not a battle game, but we think it will be an very interesting way of allowing your character to interact with the world and use the emperor skills (soon to be called 'epiphanies') that you have learned and leveled up. We'll be writing a full blog about that system soon, but I am literally more excited about it than any other system in the game.
Next month we'll be adding that duel system, updating the economic nexus, the stellar nexus (finally we'll have searchable and sortable columns for planets, systems, and provinces!) the character nexus, numerous custom tooltips for things like fleets, planets, systems, and other entities in the game that need unique tooltips, and last but certainly not least - a new character screen! Huzzah! Also we'll be working extensively on optimization and bugs, and starting to get feedback from our first beta about balance and any other issues.
I will say releasing the demo gave me a bit of nerves, since it's the first time most people have been able to get their hands on the game, and there have certainly been some bugs and issues, but all in all it's been a positive experience. We've gotten a lot of feedback on our Steam forums about the demo and a lot of it has been feedback we can use, and much of it has been offered in the spirit of making the game better because they're excited about it. We've certainly had one or two trolls, but that's to be expected when you wade beyond the chest-deep water in game development, and we're certainly headed for the deep end now! Several streamers have played the game over the last few months and they're basically in agreement: when it's completed, cleaned up, and has the full tutorial and in-game help, it's gonna be a winner.
So, basically, we're rocking along, we know what we need to improve, and we now have the people and resources to do just that. For those of you who have been along for a while - the end is in sight. If you played the demo and were confused about what to do, or felt lost, come back to it in a few months - we should have most of the in-game tooltips and help system in by then. And if you're one of those who got the game years ago and kind of forgot about it... well, man, are you in for a surprise about what we've done! :-) If you want to get more day-to-day updates, I strongly suggest joining our Discord channel - you can do so here:
https://discord.gg/ubXQTFmhnsAs always, thanks for your support and encouragement, and we'll see you in the Alpha Constellation!
-Steve