Hello everyone,
My 'holiday break' is finally over and so it is time for a quick update (and a reminder that I am still alive and working on the game again :) ).
Localizations
As promised, I will be starting with localization preparations from September. This is going to be the tedious grind through the code, catching up on all the YAGNI work from 4 years ago.
It includes reworking text-printing, updating fonts and reducing text overlaps. After that the partitioning of texts to translation keys and building up the externalized resource files which will then be sent to translators.
In my current capacity I expect all this to take at least until November (there's more text in the game than it looks - not long texts but it is in lots of places). At that point I would start reaching out to translators and then integrate translated texts into the game around the end of the year.
Which Languages will be supported?
I have run a very quick check of the playerbase of Microcivilization versus player population estimates versus non-english speaking rate estimates and it looks the most impactful translations might be these (not necessarily in this order):
German
Spanish
Russian
French
Polish
Italian
Japanese
Chinese
Korean
So for now this is my working list for which I would prefer having a professionally-translated texts (ideally also tested by third party - depending on my budget). I will probably also include machine-translations as an alternative (i.e. not initially tested by any humans)
Version 1.2 when?
These localizations will be core of the next version update. Because the change will be very broad, I will definitely run another beta test round. But in order to give people some motivation to run the game again I plan to also include a bit of content extension.
This means some extra workload (e.g. a month - depending on the content size) before the next version is released. My guess would be that 1.2 will be coming out around March 2027 with (hopefully) most of the translations and some of the new game content. But this is a guesstimate in its truest form...
What happens after that?
There are many things still in backlog. After localization is done I will move on to next phase of development - finalizations.
Beginning from 2027 I would like to start filling any gaps in the game and upgrading some of its weak spots. There is also a lot of optimization and balancing to be done and I also would like to pay some attention to AFK gameplay and smooth casual gaming experience (possibly rebalancing difficulties a bit).
I have not yet decided on my strategy for 2027 and further. I have a bunch of things I definitely want to do and a massive list of things which are 'nice to have'. I could easily spend the whole 2027 on fulltime extending the game but at some point next year I will have to make the decision when to stop developing new features and instead move on to a new project.
This is all for today's brief update.
Cheers,
Ondrej
