(I was meaning to post this a few weeks ago but I got a caught up in optimisation and other work, sorry!)
 
It’s been an interesting few weeks for me since the release of the last build.
 
At the start of August, just after the release of Alpha 8, I drove all the way to telford for the weekend to attend and exhibit the game at Coxcon, a convention held by the lovely YouTube sensation Jessie Cox (see now there’s context it doesn’t sound so bad, does it?) – this was the first convention held by him in the UK as an opportunity for himself and a few other YouTube personalities to meet and greet some of their biggest fans across Europe.
 

I absolutely adore taking the game to conventions. Mainly because I get to escape from programming work, but mostly due to how great it is to get out there with the game and see people interact with it first-hand. I’m quite sociable and enjoy meeting people, most of my time at work is on my own and I’m often limited in discussing it due to the nature of the format being incredibly one-sided such as a blog or a video . So it’s always a fun experience for me to be able to actually talk to so passionately and freely about the game with an ongoing dialogue with whoever wants to listen to me ramble!
 
Secondly, due to the people in the industry that you meet. As I said, I enjoy meeting people and just from attending Rezzed back in March, I’ve managed to make a number of contacts that also develop games, make videos about games, write about games or anywhere in-between. I can seek advice, have been asked for advice, I can collaborate, share feedback and get support where needed. Something, up until March I didn’t even realise was possible. It’s now the most exciting thing for me about events, because I look forward to the other people that are going to be there, discussing their games or work and getting a different perspective on things. Which is a crucially refreshing experience for someone in my position.
 
I was pleased to be joined by fellow Rezzed Exhibitor Tom Pickard (of Knifey Spoonie Games) who helped out over the weekend and overall there was a large amount of positive feedback on the game. I’d noticed a distinct shift in player habits compared to back in March. People were asking a lot less questions about what to do and seemed to understand their purpose in the game a lot more than before, which is great news. I was able to take much more of a back-seat when demoing the game, often leaving players to just get on with it themselves. Which was ideal for a game like RPG Tycoon.
 
Next door to our stand, was J.S Collyer a very talented author and all round rather lovely lady who has come on board to help develop questlines for the Epic Quests in the game. She’s currently working on a sci-fi book series entitled “Orbit” and her work is well worth checking out, she’s a lot better at writing quests than me.

There were also various other developers at the event, the Block’n’Load team were an absolute pleasure and Sileni Studios a dynamic developer duo from Belgium stole the show with their artillery shooter Mayan Death Robots – so much so that during the panels when the exhibition hall was mostly empty all the developers would huddle around and compete with one another to see who was the best death robot overlord.
 
A huge thanks to the team at Coxcon for having us and everyone that I spoke to, it was a great way to spend the weekend. Now prep is on for EGX.
 

 
The fun thing about having worked on this game for a year or so now and having it develop so much over that time, is that old code and features that were in place since the beginning of the game starts to get outdated because you’re using different, new and improved techniques a year on because just like any project you work on for a long period of time, the more time you spend working on something, the more experienced you get with it and hopefully the skills that you learn improve and develop over that time.
 
So I’ve been aware of just how awful the performance for a while, I just hadn’t gotten around to doing anything major about it yet as I always just wanted to add more and push the content side of the game further. Which many of you understood and didn’t mind having to deal with the game freaking out now and then, and having to use work arounds. Fortunately, many of you who have purchased / are playing the game have seen it grow and develop, so you should know exactly where I’m coming from and know that I’m working as best as I can, and as fast as I can to improve the game as much as possible. I can’t thank you enough for that.
 
With the last build up, I realised I had to make the move and fully commit the time to fixing these issues and really start optimising the game before moving further with development as it could be detrimental moving forward if most of the performance issues aren’t ironed out soon.
 
So I instantly began working on improving the systems and re-writing a lot of the old code to try and make it more efficient. It’s no easy feat, working with old code that is the building block of how the game handles itself knowing that it’s incredibly inefficient and that making changes could cause various areas of the game to totally collapse in on itself. (Which totally happened a few times)
 
I’m not finished yet and there’s still a lot of work to be done, but the response from the optimised build seems to be good. I’ll continue working on optimisation improvements moving forward.
 
Finally, I’ve reinitiated sales via itch.io for anyone that doesn’t want to use Steam. You can now purchase the game through that service. Come release I’d like to get the game out on more platforms, but while still in development I’m keeping it fairly small due to the amount of work involved in patching and uploading update.
 
I’ve also launched a demo version of the game, so if you’ve been waiting to buy it and want to try it out. Go ahead.
 
I have some other topics to discuss, but I feel like this post is long enough. So I’ll save it until next week.
 
All the best,
 
Matt