Ahoy Mateys!
This regular update fills in a few more QOL and stability features, whilst also giving a few more options & cleaning some of those new features up a notch.
This week we reached the amazing milestone of 500 Reviews also. A gigantic thank you to all of you dropping reviews and showing support. I really can't express how thankful I am to have such a strong community growing around Rise of Piracy. The Early Access experience for me as a solo developer has been incredible and I appreciate all the friendship and support.
New Difficulty Setting
You can now control how long it takes for buildings to complete development on islands! From my own testing, and comments from community members since this new feature of the game has been introduced, I've seen the places that you're having issues with & felt them myself. Plenty more updates around these coming in future after the current major update is complete.
Like the other customization features for the campaign, this feature can be changed during gameplay to tailor your experience a bit better to how you want to play.
Existing Island Features when Captured
Settlement features now exist before capture so you don't have to start fresh every time you capture one. Some more functionality is coming to this feature but these new features should eliminate some pain points :)
[carousel autoadvance="true"]
Waiting at Port
You can now wait in safety at a friendly / owned port! You won't be engaged on by a random enemy fleet passing through, and you can let time pass normally without having to worry.
UI Improvements
The initial loading screen has had some more data included & its not just an empty void anymore.
Minimum Crew has been added to the display on the drydock items. This will allow you to see how many extra units you have on each vessel alot easier.
Another heavily requested QOL was adding the "Ship Type" to the drydock screen. I have planned to put this detail on a few other places also in a future patch.
Bug Fixes
Some rare occurrence crashes have been fixed up.
A bunch of Exploits (thanks for reporting them folks!!) have also been squished.
There was an item that I believed to be fixed in the previous patch but hadn't quite found every case for the issue but I can confirm now that Merchants will no longer spawn with super low hp or on fire. This issue had haunted me since release and I finally found the root issue earlier this week.
Towers having infinity range has been corrected.
Immortal gates are now no longer immortal. This was a strange one - only manifesting last week in some super old code. Its fixed up now but I'll be investigating this for posterity over the next few weeks.
Mutiny Balance Changes
Mutinies can be brutal - I felt that the punishment was too severe, so now you'll retain a bigger chunk of crew, and your ship will no longer take damage as a result.
Here' a full list of the items completed since the last Major Update.
New
New Difficulty setting - building speed / scale is now customizable.
Islands will now have completed buildings when taken over.
Added a new "Wait at Port" feature to player owned or marque islands info screen.
Added the Ship Type to the Drydock stat list.
Added Min Crew display to the Drydock.
Cleaned up the initial loading screen and added some imagery and description.
Fixes
Fixed issue with Mutiny screen showing above final warning screen.
Fixed issue with Audio sources not releasing resources after a scene change.
Fixed issue causing invulnerable gates on some islands
Fixed Island screen race condition error caused by changing screens without properly unloading.
Fixed some exploits for player owned islands and withdrawing money. - Ship Sale, Unit Upgrades.
Fixed finally the Merchant fleets having low hp on entering battle.
Fixed issue with unclickable destroyable barrels.
Fixed Tower range being seemingly infinite.
Fixed exploit where you could purchase to defense fleet and send to your fleet to get around level cap limits.
Changes
Removed punishment HP loss from mutiny.
Mutiny will no longer take every crewmate.
Renamed the Difficulty Presets section.
Some small performance analysis and improvements.
Cleaned up some logging.
Thank you
Again, thank you very much to everyone reporting bugs and exploits. I really appreciate it.
And to everyone dropping reviews & showing support. I can't thank you enough. I'm extremely motivated to bring this game closer to v1.0 every day.
Events
Nexus is coming up in September!
I host an annual Game Jam starting on the 15th of September. If you're interested in game dev and would like to try your hand at it - details are on the discord.
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening:
Happy hunting folks!,
John
