Welcome back part 4: Where do we go from here?

Ok, so we have this new website, and I’m going to commit to posting here or adding new resources once every week or two from now on. But you’re probably wondering whether you can download a new build of the game yet. As I write this post, you can’t! But if you live a week or two in the future, check the Dashboard and see how things turned out.

The previous website was private, meaning only Kickstarter backers had access to the software and creatures, as they were entitled to. But now I have to protect my IP a bit better, because the site is open to the public. Only Kickstarter backers and new people who have active paid subscriptions should be able to download the game and use it fully. I can somewhat protect the download section, but really the only way forward is for the game to ask this website’s API whether the person using it is currently an active member.

This isn’t too hard to do – I just haven’t done it yet. If I’d gone the Patreon route I’d have needed two systems: one for existing Kickstarter backers (which I’d already written) and one for new Patreon members, which integrated with Patreon’s API. Now that I’m managing the membership process myself, with the help of ‘Paid Memberships Pro’, I can mercifully combine the two into a single system, and this will make things a lot easier down the line. As well as enabling new features, which I’ll talk about another time,

So, I need to get on with that next, and also tidy up the game a little bit before posting a new build. Obviously, everything is still a work in progress – please don’t judge me when you see it! The things I’ve talked about in these posts – the Rectory, the themed gardens, how cozy Frampton Gurney will seem – are mostly still in my imagination. But in a matter of days you’ll be able to go there for yourself and meet the new creatures, even if it’s mostly a building site at the moment.

Once I have the new build out, I hope to get into more of a steady rhythm. The virtual world needs filling with vast numbers of new 3D objects, and the Encyclopedia Phantasia needs fleshing out with a lot of information. Both of these are high priorities from my perspective, but they’re very incremental and can happen steadily over the coming months. Crucially, none of this requires me to invent things that nobody has ever done before!

In terms of the game itself, I think the next major feature I should add is some scientific apparatus. We’ve had chemistry equipment and brain monitors before, but that was a long time ago and for a different scenario, so I need to rewrite them. I’m thinking of keeping this equipment inside the Society’s headquarters. To do chemical experiments, I’m going to add a syringe to the toolbar – you’ll be able to take blood samples back to the lab for analysis, or inject chemicals for medical reasons, etc. Right now, I pick up their brain waves by dropping a big transmitter gizmo onto a creature’s back, but I need to rethink that a bit.

My biggest fear by far, is that there isn’t much for users or their creatures to do, yet. There’s a lot that can be done in principle, but I just haven’t built the virtual objects that are needed in practice. For a long time it’s been possible to dress a creature up in a silly hat or other clothes, for instance, but we haven’t actually had any hats we could dress them in. My focus has always been on the infrastructure, and whenever I got something mostly working, I’d move on to tackle the next problem. Nobody has even seen most of the things I’ve added yet. But at last I can start to flesh these things out. Even so, exactly what users and their creatures can get up to on a day-to-day basis, is still something that needs to evolve a lot more.

Of course, any ideas you can come up with, will be most welcome. And even any volunteer help with making 3D objects, if anyone fancies lending a hand? For the latter, I think it will be best to wait until I’ve written up the requirements, because making game graphics is very different from rendering things in Blender for fun, plus there are specific needs for this game in particular, so I probably need to write a tutorial or something before anyone starts. Let me know below if you think you might like to help, though, and maybe I’ll adjust my priorities accordingly.

On a related subject, I need to do a lot more work on modding tools, but I’m thinking that should happen further down the line? The basic infrastructure is there already, but making it practical is quite a task. The way Unity works, and especially the fact that I use a lot of paid assets in the game that can’t be distributed, make it a non-trivial problem for people to add objects at runtime. I did make a functional playground toy and imported it over the internet, so it can definitely be done, but there’s a lot of groundwork needed to make the experience pleasant. All of this was stalled until I had the biology sorted out and everything had become relatively stable and certain.

As for the biology, there are still a lot of genes to add, and many, many parameters to tweak. Also genetic variants – a gene pool of alleles – to be created. The creatures are still very stupid, but they are pretty alive now, and they generally seem to pay attention to the things you’d expect. They still tend to stand there until they die of starvation, but that’s a tweaking issue – there are just so many factors controlling their attention, impulses and learning.

I’ve had a couple of natural births, now, so I know that it basically works, but the whole mating process is extremely complex – just getting them to like each other enough can be a struggle! So there’s a lot to be done there, too. Some of these things take so LONG. Waiting for a couple of creatures to mature, learn how the world works, come to like each other, mate, conceive, and go through pregnancy is a long, multi-step process, so debugging and balancing it can be very slow, to put it mildly. I’m hoping you guys will eventually start to take careful field notes! And we need the scientific tools to back them up, as well – when is a female ovulating, for instance? How can we tell if she has conceived?

On the subject of food, I accidentally decided that all of these creatures will eat mushrooms. There’s a bit of an Alice in Wonderland thing going on there, but mostly I needed it to be clear which things are actual virtual food, versus vegetation that’s merely scenery. I’ve created a genetic system for these mushrooms, meaning that different varieties live in different conditions and during different seasons. It’s even possible to try and cross-breed them to create new varieties, perhaps with medicinal properties. I’m hoping that becoming an expert in Frampton area mycology is eventually a meaningful activity – perhaps even publishing papers in the Society’s Proceedings – but I need to flesh it all out a bit more, yet. Anyway, if your creatures seem to be starving, try feeding them toadstools!

Okay, that’s a random overview of some of the tasks ahead. I think I’ve mostly brought you up to speed, now, and I’d better get on with publishing a new version of the game… Thanks for listening!