Hi everyone,
Happy Labor Day. Fitting name for this one, because it's mostly labor.
First, some news: I made another game. It's called HUSKBOUND.
It's procedurally generated. It has a very weird story. You go out, you do your best, you bring back meat, you trade that meat in a void. There are strange monsters and there are boss fights. If you like weird indie titles, this one is probably for you.
Check it out here: https://play.fn.gg/island/8661-6277-7262?pl=cr00001
So where does that leave Swampfall?
I sat down and looked honestly at the game design, and what I found was a cluttered mess. Daily rewards. A convoluted story. A rent mechanic that never quite made sense and never quite earned its place.
I fell into the classic live service trap. I added and added and added, and made the game worse over time.
So this update is mostly subtraction. Daily rewards are gone. The rent mechanic is gone. The story is getting cut down to something a human being would actually want to read.
What I'm Working On Right Now
The Bridge & Procedural Generation I'm reworking the entire map. I'm bringing over what I learned building Huskbound, specifically the procedural generation, which means the world will spawn differently every single time it loads. The bridge itself stays. What's on the bridge changes with every session.
Ironically, this should make the game run better than it does today.
Fewer, Better Buildings I'm closing off a lot of buildings that had nothing inside them. Only the buildings that actually have something worth walking into will stay open. An empty room is not content. It's just a room.
Quests & The Localization Mistake A while back I moved quests to be handled programmatically instead of through the devices Fortnite gives me. That was a mistake. The text I used was a plain string, but proper translation requires a special localization message.
The result: every player, everywhere in the world, has been reading my quest text in English. To our international players, I'm sorry. That one is entirely on me, and it's being fixed.
Clean Up I'm actively stripping the map down to something leaner. Better performance, fewer moving parts.
The Future
I am waiting, eagerly and unreasonably, on an update that lets me build custom vehicles.
The idea: you build your own junk vehicles out of scavenged parts, and every part changes how the thing drives. A bad engine and a good frame is a different car than the reverse. Neither of them is a good car.
We already have that system for weapons, and I'm eager to get started on it.
Craftable weapons and craftable vehicles. That's where this is going.
Support the Journey! If you're enjoying the direction, please give the map a Like and Favorite. It costs nothing but means the world to this one-man team.
Stay stoked,
GraphicSurfer
