Development Media

Cute but deadly

 

Wanderlust and desert dust

 

Get ready for an adventure!

 

Where we're going we don't need roads

 

Are you open to new mysteries?

 

Found this in the garage, mechanics - speculate! ⚙

 

How about a pit stop? ⛽

 

Sunshine rays and warm embrace ( つ´∀`)つ

 

Peek-a-vroom ヘ(◕。◕ヘ)

 

Ever wondered what it looks like when we design new things?

Here you go. This is a veeeery early concept document about some planned changes to manual gearbox shifting, it's evolving very quickly and I'm not sure at all yet how much of this is actually doable or where we need to take shortcuts.

Think of it as an idealized best-case version of what I'd like to see.

 

It's shaping up

#TeaserTuesday

 

We sure took a gamble on this one!

#TeaserTuesday

 

Name this config! (wrong answers only) in Update Speculation pls
#TeaserTuesday
#gambler500

 

Rowdy

#TeaserTuesday
#gambler500

 

Last few days I've been doing some basic checks of our UI translations. My original idea was to simply clean up unused, deprecated translations, which only contribute to slower menus. For example, research features that didn't pan out and were removed. Content that was renamed but the old codenames are still present and unused. Typos in the translation identifiers. All that kind of stuff.

The way our translation works, it is very resilient to most kind of issues. Which is great for modders and everyone, since things typically Just Work™. The flip side is, spotting problems is hard or impossible in certain cases. So I decided to program an internal tool to help spot such issues:



Explanation:
- A green check ✅ means the translation system was used with success. It's still possible the text has some typo or grammar issue (this tool is not a spellchecker), but other than that, things are good.
- A red cross ❌ indicates the translation system was used, but without success. Essentially, it searched across translations (first the current language, then it falls back to search for english), and found no results for the request. This search request is what we call a "translation id". So the game now enters a further fallback mode, where it will display the translation ID (together with a red cross now). Translation IDs normally look something like "ui.levels.something.blahblah.whatever". You've probably seen that kind of stuff after installing certain broken mods. Here the translation ID appears to be just "stats", which does not look like a normal translation id, so it's probably a mistake. And the game will end up displaying "STATS" no matter what language you are using.
- A lack of icon (the white circles in that image) means the translation system wasn't used. So you'll see that exact same text no matter what language you set the game to. This happens very easily: development of game features is often not straightforward - plans can change, things will often get refined, modified, renamed, even removed, or added, etc. Adding translation support too early results in unnecessary inertia and overhead, since you need to maintain them while the feature itself is still continuously changing and improving. That lack of icon could indicate someone forgot to add translation support at the end of developing a feature.

The feature is internal only, so don't worry, you won't have to suffer that horrible icon spam.

 

It's their morning routine

#TeaserTuesday
#gambler500

 

Gear up for that soccer practice, champ!

#TeaserTuesday

 

Ready, set, speculate!

#TeaserTuesday

 

A brief look behind a document we're using to track preparations for an upcoming feature. Normally this would be numerous individual documents, but given the nature of this feature, a single document was simpler while still effective:


"Blocking" means that we literally will cancel/postpone the release of the feature if those points aren't implemented on time. For example "would be cool if the game didn't crash each time you use the feature" is an obvious one. But also stuff like "this is a minor issue but will generate SO many complaints, that it can swamp our Support Team with a spike (or a mountain) of additional workload".

"Nice-to-have" includes some of the most absolute basic functionalities of the feature. Things that most of you will probably consider absolutely essential. But which we are willing to evaluate skipping in favour of an earlier feature release. Stuff like "this should so clearly have been a customizable option to cater to different preferences" or "there's this clear visual artifact that anyone could see" - those may be an acceptable compromise if we are able to deliver the unpolished feature to you guys some months earlier. Anything that is truly optional, anything that is not a release blocker, is considered a "nice-to-have" in this document, and is part of considerations when deciding whether to release early or to postpone the feature.

And then, not listed in that document, there would be dozens of things that I never bothered writing down at such an early stage despite how obvious they are; things which a lot of you in the community would likely be requesting as soon as this bare-bones feature is publicly available.

Also, this list is dynamic, and expands over time as we research the feature and discover new corners that were hidden to us initially.

So what is the feature and when will it release? As usual, we prefer to be cautious and not disclose what it is until When It's Ready; I hope it's ready for the next update, but only time will tell if we can manage to hit the deadline for blocking tasks, and then how many nice-to-have are still pending by then.

 

Weight for it...