More dev blogs /progress updates

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    The boards are getting very quiet, the only threads that get some action are the stupid suggestions that bring up the PvP vs RP debate.

    Could we get small dev updates, like 1 a week of whats up, or even pics of a random ship saber smashed up, anything?!?
     
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    DukeofRealms

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    Could we get small dev updates, like 1 a week of whats up
    We've pretty much been doing this already.

    We're still deciding on what news posts will be and when they will happen. This was posted last week: StarMade Release Cycle & News Posts

    News posts will likely be every week, so it'll be a dev update news post independent from game releases and game news posts. In it, it would detail what we're working on at the moment, some things we've discussed and general development direction. Ideally, we'd have a typical dev blog every month, which would basically summarise all those dev updates. This is all being discussed and planned at the moment.
     
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    DukeofRealms thats not really news or an update, thats a clarification post, but i didnt know it was there. Also its in the schine subforum where everyone sucks up to Saber , ewwww!

    Hopefully i havent hurt my chances of getting him to review my latest ship haha
     

    DukeofRealms

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    DukeofRealms thats not really news or an update, thats a clarification post, but i didnt know it was there. Also its in the schine subforum where everyone sucks up to Saber , ewwww!

    Hopefully i havent hurt my chances of getting him to review my latest ship haha
    I didn't say that was a news post, we also have a news post from last week. What I meant by that, is that post is there to show release cycle changes and will show when we do news posts.
     

    alterintel

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    I have to say that Shine is THE most communicative indie company that I've ever had the pleasure of following. We do hear something every two weeks, and sometimes more. If I had to guess I think we get meaningful information regarding short term direction and goals about once every two to three months on average, which is excellent.

    What I see as the "issue" here is the management of expectations. I think people for the most part are expecting a Dev Blog every two weeks. All people really want to know is: "What's :schema: workin' on?". ie, what's going to change in the next Update? In the past we could clearly see what schema is working on (albeit, after the update has come out) just by reading the update news releases. But now with the much needed extended release cycle we're getting allot more communications along the lines of requesting more feed back from players. Recently the requests have been for bug reporting with release candidates. And I don't think anybody will soon forget the request for opinions regarding the power overhaul.

    Unfortunately I think Shine has fallen into the trap of saying nothing is better than saying something that may backfire. This is a real danger as evident by the huge dust up over the power overhaul. There is also the danger of revealing plans that go too far into the future as they may not come to fruition in a timely manner. For example look to the Development Direction post by Bench back in 2015, which described allot of features that just haven't happened yet. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the infamous Space Whale who first debuted at about the same time. But not saying enough can also be a problem. When there's no news, then there's very little of substance to talk about. This results in petty squabbling that just angers and feeds people's baser tendencies.

    I think everybody enjoys the Dev Blogs when they come out. These blogs are essential for the moral of the community as they give the feedback that people desperately need. But the last Dev blog we got was almost five months ago.

    Suggestions to fix the problem:
    • Allowing other Shine Dev Team members to write the Dev Blog. I'm sure Bench could use the help sometimes.
    • Allow somebody from the Council of Intergalactic Representatives (CIR) to write the blog. They would sign an NDA and be allowed access to all recordings of Dev meetings. They would then be given instruction as to what can be publicly disclosed and what can not. They will write up the Dev Blog every two weeks. A system would be setup to were all Dev Team members can review and approve or disapprove the document. After 3 days if a majority of Dev's have approved the message, and nobody has disapproved then the author is able to publish.
     
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    alterintel you summed it up nicely, can also be small posts like a pic of the new planets and saying all is going well.

    Anything to move the topic away from regurgitated power threads
     

    DukeofRealms

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    "What's :schema: workin' on?". ie, what's going to change in the next Update? In the past we could clearly see what schema is working on (albeit, after the update has come out) just by reading the update news releases. But now with the much needed extended release cycle we're getting allot more communications along the lines of requesting more feed back from players. Recently the requests have been for bug reporting with release candidates. And I don't think anybody will soon forget the request for opinions regarding the power overhaul.
    You can see a lot of what we're working on here: Trello

    You'll be getting news posts on what we're currently working on and what we plan to work on next either this week or the next. The reason you're not hearing news right now, is because there is really nothing to update on development. After working non-stop on the previous bugfixing update, many of us (including schema) have taken some time off or have switched to planning (universe, power). Simply due to the fact that we've been working overtime in the last release schedule. It's only been a week since the last news post.

    There's a bit of bugfixing and lots of planning going on at the moment. The power proposal that we've been working on internally has gone through a few revisions already, that looks like it could come out within a week or two. It's really not because we're hiding things, it's simply due to the fact that we're working on scheduling for news (release cycle post I linked), planning lots of things for development ahead and taking a bit of a break.
    For example look to the Development Direction post by Bench back in 2015, which described allot of features that just haven't happened yet. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the infamous Space Whale who first debuted at about the same time. But not saying enough can also be a problem. When there's no news, then there's very little of substance to talk about. This results in petty squabbling that just angers and feeds people's baser tendencies.
    That document is not a promise, or an absolute indication of what will happen. It is what it claims to be, a post about the direction of the game. No mentions of when this will happen, merely a post to give people an idea of what we aim StarMade to be.

    But not saying enough can also be a problem. When there's no news, then there's very little of substance to talk about. This results in petty squabbling that just angers and feeds people's baser tendencies.
    It's an endless hole, we're saying more than we've ever said before. There's really not much more we can open up. You'll be getting a regular news schedule, you'll be getting development updates (which we've already done).

    But the last Dev blog we got was almost five months ago.
    We put out "dev blogs" when we have nothing else to put out. There are plenty of posts and news by me, schema Bench and others which go into far more detail than a dev blog ever does. We haven't had a dev blog for a while now, simply because we've been sharing a lot of information already. Just a heads up, the person who posts the news does not necessarily mean they are the writer :) I've posted news that had very little involvement from me, and others have posted material I've written. It's a group effort.
     

    alterintel

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    There are plenty of posts and news by me, schema Bench and others which go into far more detail than a dev blog ever does. We haven't had a dev blog for a while now, simply because we've been sharing a lot of information already. Just a heads up, the person who posts the news does not necessarily mean they are the writer :) I've posted news that had very little involvement from me, and others have posted material I've written. It's a group effort.
    I couldn't aggree more. A post like this one for example could be the "Dev Blog" and it could be posted on home page in the new cycle.
     

    DukeofRealms

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    I couldn't aggree more. A post like this one for example could be the "Dev Blog" and it could be posted on home page in the new cycle.
    Sure, as I mentioned above, we're working on our news cycle at the moment.

    You can see the section I reserved for it here :)

    When do we release news posts, and what should we expect to see?

    TBD
    Last news post was a week ago, we're taking a little break and you'll likely see that question I made last week, answered within the next 7 days.
     
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    DukeofRealms who came up with global factions? its in the proposed section on Trello
    that is a very limiting idea for those that play on multiple servers

    something like this should be discussed by whats left of the community, another idea ive seen on other forums is asking the community questions like "what is the best/worst part about something?" and find ways to improve in areas and get them talking about that subject
     

    DukeofRealms

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    DukeofRealms who came up with global factions? its in the proposed section on Trello
    that is a very limiting idea for those that play on multiple servers

    something like this should be discussed by whats left of the community, another idea ive seen on other forums is asking the community questions like "what is the best/worst part about something?" and find ways to improve in areas and get them talking about that subject
    That's been there since Jun 3, 2015, it's in the proposed section, so it was proposed by the Council (from community suggestions). It's been there for a long time.
     
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    Honestly, right now this game is too hard fro new players to pick up. As for all the tutorials and online help, that is fine, the community is warm and welcoming, but some people need their hands held and flashy lights a pretty sounds to keep their attention. Soooooo looking forward to the SFX release... its been a long time coming in all honesty.
     

    DukeofRealms

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    Sort of realised I didn't quite respond to some of these statements.

    Sorry, just been noticing how quiet these forums have gotten over the past month, just thinking of stuff to resurrect some of the old players
    Forum activity and general StarMade activity decreases from January to June, where it picks back up in the second half. This is often the case with most other games and even films. There's not a lot to be concerned by, we'll be taking the time in this part of the year to work on more "controversial" features/reworks, before we hit the big spikes in the second half. We're not really interested in bringing back old players just yet, there's the universe update currently in planning and a power proposal, one will require a world reset and the other rebuilding ship systems. It makes little sense to do this in a time of high activity. We haven't marketed the game since 2014 Steam EA release, so, activity is bound to gradually decrease over time.

    I missed mentioning what news posts will likely look like, I speak about that in another news post thread. I've added this to my first response:

    News posts will likely be every week, so it'll be a dev update news post independent from game releases and game news posts. In it, it would detail what we're working on at the moment, some things we've discussed and general development direction. Ideally, we'd have a typical dev blog every month, which would basically summarise all those dev updates. This is all being discussed and planned at the moment.
    Previous talk on this:

    Ideally, we'd be releasing dev build news posts every week or two with details on what's new, this will of course help with public testing. Perhaps we'd schedule a dev blog for every two weeks, to talk about our plans, current development in a general sense. We'd have the same amount or more news posts, just fewer releases.
    With the universe update, it's allowing us to work on plans for beta launch and map out our first marketing campaign. Right now, most of our focus is going into universe (power proposal is pretty much done), it's a lot of planning and is the basis for a lot of features to work correctly. It'll be hard to get right, and will likely take a lot of our time to power through. For the next few months, a lot of the work we do is probably going to see people having to reset and change. But once we've gone over that hill, a clear path should be there, and if plans go correctly, a nice stream of cool content to look forward to (not sure exactly what just yet, that's all scheduled to be sorted in universe planning).

    We have a lot of plans to bring back existing players and bring in new players, once universe and potentially power are done. The lead up to beta will see us beginning that task. This is marketing mainly.

    One project I'm excited about is Events, which is basically us, the council and the community running and promoting scheduled events throughout the year. Once I've finished preparing our end goals document for public viewing, I'll likely begin work on starting the Events system.
     
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    Ithirahad

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    That document is not a promise, or an absolute indication of what will happen. It is what it claims to be, a post about the direction of the game. No mentions of when this will happen, merely a post to give people an idea of what we aim StarMade to be.
    That may be so, but the implication is still that you guys would be moving in that general direction over the next year or so: crew, quarters, fleets, NPC factions, fauna, the chairs people have been waiting for since this game first released to the public, and other related mechanics. Out of those 6+, we got about half of two. I understand that the schedule changed, but we weren't really notified about this for quite a while, leaving everyone to believe that Schine literally just pulls random things to implement out of a hat and occasionally throws out a promising-looking dev blog, then proceeds to randomly do something else again. Likewise with the whole impression that we'd get significant AI improvements soon after the NPC faction update, and IIRC, unloaded fleet combat, better fleet features, and something about a War Score system for NPC faction wars.
     
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