For the past few weeks, Fai and I have been answering a lot of questions with a statement like, "we have big news to announce after the generator is released." Well, this is that announcement lol.
The Announcement
The past two years have been incredibly exciting for us and we hope for you as players, as well. We have grown so much and added so many things, it's hard to believe where we were just 2 years ago. In that time, though, we have learned a lot about our game, our features, and our players. We now feel that it's time to take that knowledge and apply it as best as we can.
For basically the past year+, we've been in this "revamp" phase. In our assessment, it's not really working as planned. Taking one feature at a time while maintaining the rest of the Site, working on Festivals, etc, is making it take what seems like eons to go anywhere. Overall, we aren't satisfied with the progress we're making towards getting the entire Site revamped. After lengthy and well-thought consideration, we have decided to change gears. Rather than work on one feature at a time with an inefficient database as its framework, we are going to work on the entire Site at once on a test server and rebuild our database.
Why would we do this?
Up until now, working as we have is kind of like a game of Jenga. When I update a feature, I have to meticulously remove one block at a time so that the entire pile of blocks doesn't fall over. I then have to put in place a new block that seamlessly connects to the other blocks. This is not only a painstaking task, but it also limits what I can do with that new block because it has to match the other ones.
Starting fresh would allow me to just simply start with a blank canvas and build everything at once, seamlessly, applying all the knowledge that I have acquired in the past 2 years. The end result would be a well polished, well performing, complete Sylestia. A Sylestia that would no longer need a Beta tag and would be a complete game.
What about my current items and pets?
There will be nothing taken away. All data will be retained. It will just be moving to a new, shiny location with some alterations. So all of your pets, your items, your progress - everything - would be retained during the eventual upgrade.
Can I still play Sylestia?
Yes! Sylestia will keep up to date and active as if this post never happened. We will still be revamping artwork. We will still be releasing Festivals. We will still be here everyday like always. The only difference is there probably won't be any new features (except for one, read below) for quite some time since our time will mostly be devoted to rebuilding the Site as a whole.
How long will this take?
It's impossible to accurately answer that question. Anyone who's been here for long enough, or followed any game under development for that matter, knows that giving time estimates on large developments is very hard to do. My best guess would be a minimum of 6 months. Because of this long time of development, we are going to give you guys one last hurrah of content before we begin...
Introducing: The Mega-Zone
Before we begin on this major developmental project, we are going to release a mega-zone for you guys. This mega-zone will sorta be like a glimpse into the future. We are working on a new zone for the Astryl's Vale region that will contain content for Levels 60-75. It will contain unique Themed Pets, lots of Named, puzzles, rare items, and anything else we can think of stuffing into a single, enormous zone.
Our goal is to basically offer players enough content, in combination with species revamps and Festivals, to keep you busy while we rebuild the entire Site.
The Mega-Zone will be divided into multiple areas with varying degrees of difficulty. The deeper into the zone you travel, the more difficult it will become. We plan on having some very challenging encounters in the zone that will require the time it takes to level pets to 75, upgrade their gear, and figure out the encounters. We also plan on having some dynamic events for the Zone to make it even more interesting and to promote working as a community to achieve Site-wide goals. it truly will be a Mega-Zone.
Back to the Development.
So what exactly do we plan on doing for this development? Why will it take so long?
We will be creating a brand new database from scratch that will allow us to greatly improve the performance of the Site. At this time, our database is poorly structured. This is simply because I didn't know the things that I know now when I created it almost 3 years ago. It's very difficult to rework a database, as explained at the top with the Jenga analogy. However, starting from scratch is pretty easy. The only hard part is then just transferring the old data into the new database. The main catch though is that it can't happen on a live environment.
So, the first part of the development is to just recreate everything in a much better form. The second part, though, is to add everything that we've ever wanted to add into the game. We will be redesigning a lot of aspects of the game. While I can't share the specifics of the changes yet, when the time comes, we will be keeping a stickied announcement thread that will be up to date with what we've worked on, what we've changed, and what's next. We will be sure to be detailed and provide screenshots when available. In other words, we will keep everyone in the loop during this developmental process. You will know exactly what is changing and how it's changing before the project is finished.
As specific as possible, these are the type of things you can look forward to:
-A Gathering System.
-A Crafting System.
-Advanced Character Customization
-Advanced Pet Customization
-Improved Explore Window
-Improved Battling System
-Improved Interfaces (Inventory, Trade Broker, Pet Profiles, etc, etc)
-Improved Avatar Selections
-And most importantly, a Seamless, Polished, Sylestia. No more mixing of layouts. No more "work in progress" pages. No more "yea we plan on doing that" responses. Everything we've wanted to do will be done all at once and released all at once. |
