New build: 1.3.3

Hi all,

The builds are coming thick and fast! As more people have been playing the game recently due to the new builds, more bugs are being reported and fixed.

Your saved games from the previous version should work fine with this release. Here's a list of changes:

• Unblock AI when 2 agents get stuck. This was a nasty bug and should cause characters to behave normally in longer running games - they should now be more reactive in general (follow you onto your ship, turn up for meetings, or run the transit mission you paid them for, etc).
  
• Fixed academic manuscript mission to be completable[forums.revelationgames.co]
  
• Proper version number on main menu now
  
• Fixed missing string on certain locations[forums.revelationgames.co]

Enjoy! Any problems post on the forums either here or at http://forums.revelationgames.co. Please do post screenshots of any error messages, and attach zip files of a save games if relevant.

Thanks!
Chris

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New build: 1.3.2

Hi all,

A quick point release for you all, to fix a couple of crashes discovered in the 1.3.1 release.

NOTE: This build will reset your game options - you'll need to set resolution and sound levels etc again. Sorry about that.

• Fix crash when filtering conversations by planet or ship
  
• Added enable VSync option to help faster computers manage frame rate better.
  
• Fix bug on windows with conversation icons going super large when vanishing!
  
• Stop game attempting to autopilot to own ship
  
• Changed keyboard input for flight slightly in an attempt to fix a weird stuck keyboard bug that happens only on a very few computers.

Enjoy! Any problems post on the forums either here or at http://forums.revelationgames.co.

Thanks!
Chris

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New build: 1.3.1 released

Dear all,

I've just released version 1.3.1 of Sol Trader, which fixes a number of niggling issues in 1.3 and improves gameplay balance.

NOTE: this version will invalidate save games. If you want to continue with an older save, then do the following to stay on an older version of the game:

• Right click on the game in your Steam Library and choose 'Properties'. Click the 'Betas' tab.
  
• Enter the beta access code ’soltraderversion13’ and click 'Check code'
  
• Choose the ‘version1.3’ option from the drop-down list
  
• Wait for your game to update and play!

Here's a list of changes:

• New feature: Organisation charts are now available on a tooltip over the organisation name, and also by clicking on the small organisation button in the middle panel heading.
  
• New feature: Communes are now Parks: hippies still hang out there, but so can everyone else. It's another place you can find people socialising during the day, who perhaps don't like visiting bars.
  
• New feature: History generation now prioritises jobs in low-population cities. This has the effect of rebalancing things so that Frontier Space and the Outer Alliance have more people than before, so it's easier to progress.
  
• Made the AI more likely to choose to go to work, even for non-essential jobs.
  
• Increased speed of history generation by 5% and dropped save file footprint by 40%.
  
• Stopped traders getting stuck when selling goods.
  
• Stop the player from asking for an introduction to someone who is dead.
  
• Fix crash when landing in a place with a destroyed ship.
  
• Fixed Missing Strings in profession choices.
  
• Fixed bug where having map open whilst landing would cause weird effects.
  
• Characters now tell you the missions they have available on the tooltip before you start speaking to them.
  
• Triple-click on a navigation label or arrow will now start autopilot.
  
• Made Tiger I slightly lighter and therefore faster.
  
• Sleep/work/launch are now icons at the top of the screen, so that they don't conflict which each other.

Enjoy! Let me know if you have any issues.

Chris

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Sol Trader follow-on Ealdorlight goes on Kickstarter at 4pm today

Dear all,

I've deliberately avoided going on about this on here, but I thought you'd like to know that my next game is going live on Kickstarter at 4pm UK time today!

Visit Ealdorlight’s Kickstarter Campaign

(This post is deliberately a little earlier than 4pm to give you a sneak preview and so you can watch the campaign go live if you want. Earlier backers get lower edition numberings on some of the rewards, so you might want to be there from the start!)

The sixth of June is a significant day for me personally. In 2004, I spent the entire of the day in hospital. I remember the 60th anniversary commemorations of D-day on the TV in the background, as I sat beside my wife, in labour with our first child. I became a father an hour after midnight on the 7th June; my son becomes a teenager tomorrow.

Twelve years later, in 2016, I spent the entire of 6th June glued to Steam watching and waiting whilst Sol Trader was released to the world. This was a career dream come true: since I started programming at six years old I’d always wanted to create and ship my own games. Sol Trader’s release was ultimately a painfully formative experience for me, which I wrote about at the time and was interviewed about recently in this article for GamesIndustry biz[www.gamesindustry.biz].

Over the last year, I’ve been keeping busy doing two things. One is to support Sol Trader as much as I can with countless updates and patches. I’ve also been working on a new game, Ealdorlight, a medieval RPG-style take on Sol Trader’s mechanics, with turn-based combat, realistic damage and great graphics. I announced Ealdorlight in March and demonstrated it at Rezzed, strengthening my hope that the idea was a good one.

I decided fairly early on that I wanted to take Ealdorlight to Kickstarter. Sol Trader’s successful Kickstarter was a brilliant experience. The Kickstarter community is one of the kindest, most positive on the Internet. I also needed funding for this game: Sol Trader was self-funded through many long evenings and contracting work, and for Ealdorlight I need a bigger team to realise the vision. It’s built in Unreal Engine 4, which simultaneously saves me loads of development time and means I need a bigger team to pull off the realistic art style I’ve gone for.

As time came near to launch, the first anniversary of Sol Trader’s released seemed an appropriate day to launch the campaign. So today, 6th June 2017, I will spend the entire day glued to Kickstarter as my campaign goes live at 4pm today.

Visit Ealdorlight’s Kickstarter Campaign



There’s plenty more about Ealdorlight on the campaign - head over there and read all about it! A huge amount of work has gone into it, and I’m very grateful for all the support and help I’ve received from the team I’ve put together, and for friends and family who have given me endless encouragements and feedback.

One immediate question you might have is "What about Sol Trader?" Whilst the bulk of my time and attention needs to be spent on Ealdorlight to make the awesome game it could be, I'm still committed to fixing bugs and issues in Sol Trader as they arise.

Thanks for being part of my video game creation adventure so far, and I hope you'll stick with me for the next game!

Until next time,
Chris

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Ealdorlight's Kickstarter is live at 4pm today

The sixth of June is a significant day for me personally. In 2004, I spent the entire of the day in hospital. I remember the 60th anniversary commemorations of D-day on the TV in the background, as I sat beside my wife, in labour with our first child. I became a father an hour after midnight on the 7th June; my son becomes a teenager tomorrow.

Twelve years later, in 2016, I spent the entire of 6th June glued to Steam watching and waiting whilst my first game Sol Trader was released to the world. This was a career dream come true: since I started programming at six years old I’d always wanted to create and ship my own games. Sol Trader’s release was ultimately a painfully formative experience for me, which I wrote about at the time and was interviewed about recently in GamesIndustry.biz.

Over the last year, I’ve been keeping busy doing two things. One is to support Sol Trader as much as I can with countless updates and patches. I’ve also been very busy working on a new game, Ealdorlight, a medieval RPG-style take on Sol Trader’s mechanics, with turn-based combat, realistic damage and great graphics. I announced Ealdorlight in March and demonstrated it at Rezzed, strengthening my hope that the idea was a good one.

I decided fairly early on that I wanted to take Ealdorlight to Kickstarter. Sol Trader’s successful Kickstarter was a brilliant experience. The Kickstarter community is one of the kindest, most positive on the Internet. I also needed funding for this game: Sol Trader was self-funded through many long evenings and contracting work, and for Ealdorlight I need a bigger team to realise the vision. It’s built in Unreal Engine 4, which simultaneously saves me loads of development time and means I need a bigger team to pull off the realistic art style I’ve gone for.

As time came near to launch, the first anniversary of Sol Trader’s released seemed an appropriate day to launch the campaign. So today, 6th June 2017, I will spend the entire day glued to Kickstarter as my campaign goes live at 4pm today.

Visit Ealdorlight’s Kickstarter Campaign

There’s plenty more about Ealdorlight on the campaign - head over there and read all about it! A huge amount of work has gone into it, and I’m very grateful for all the support and help I’ve received from the team I’ve put together, and for friends and family who have given me endless encouragements and feedback.

This post is a little earlier than 4pm so that you can watch it go live if you want. Earlier backers get lower edition numberings on some of the rewards, so you might want to be there from the start!

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How Ealdorlight's story stands out

As we head towards the Kickstarter campaign launch on June 6th, I want to talk a little about the story behind Ealdorlight works.

The basic story stays the same for each game: you are discovered wandering through a remote village at a young age, and realise your destiny is to overthrow the King. However, like in Sol Trader, every person you meet is randomly generated. This means that your real identity will be different every time, and you’ll have to discover it all over again every time you generate a new game.

Handcrafted story in a random world

The trick is layering a great story on top of a generated world with random characters. Building empathy with the main character and his family when all characters are generated is hard, and hinges around being able to hook the story in at the right moments.

My plan is to write plenty of tightly connected story arcs that are triggered on events that happen during history generation. These will in turn trigger future quests the player can undertake. Not all story-arcs will appear in every game: it will depend on how the history generation goes. I will constrain things such that there is always a route through the game, and that players always have a way to overthrow the King, even if that might be easier or harder depending on the starting setup. These story-arcs then should interact with each other, hopefully producing a unique path through the game.

Identity

Ealdorlight is set within a low fantasy world, and there’s no traditional magic. The player gets more powerful through discovering key pieces of knowledge about their past. These insights into of your real past feed directly into your character’s stats, skills and abilities.

I’ve long been fascinated with identity: knowledge of who we truly are affects many areas of our lives for the better. In Ealdorlight I wanted to tell a story which takes this to an almost supernatural level. By removing the player from their birth family, they start as an entirely normal person within the world. It’s only after their early game encounter with the Ealdorlight and the discovery of their past that things begin to change.

Much more on this to come, but in the meantime, here’s a glimpse of our story’s beginning.

Ealdorlight: backstory teaser (updated)

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Sol Trader 1.3 released!

Now that I’m back after some time away with family and training away from home, I’m able to support a new release of Sol Trader: 1.3 is now finally released after a length beta period.

Here are the highlights:

• You can now chat to characters directly on the right if they’re in the same location as you
  
• Pirate Chief and criminals are now more likely to try to destroy you
  
• Fix a bug where you’re not paid enough for a mission
  
• Dignitaries now fly around a little less than before to make it easier to pin them down
  
• Inter-faction missions now pay slightly less
  
• Business trips now pay slightly less
  
• Taxi missions now pay slightly more
  
• Talking to your criminal parents will no longer cause them to forget who you are
  
• Fix crash where a character develops an opinion of the player mid-conversation
  
• Fix crash when showing GUI for a ship the AI is driving
  
• Fix crash where a character would attempt to sell a good on a ship they’ve lent to the player
  
• Can now initiate conversations when paused - will restart the game but at realtime speed
  
• Fixed the Tiger II achievement

Thanks - let me know what you think!
Chris

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Ealdorlight Kickstarter on 6th June, Sol Trader 1.3 released

I am now back from some extended time away after Rezzed, both on holiday with the family and training some clients away from home. I’ve released Sol Trader 1.3 today, and set the Kickstarter for Ealdorlight to 6th June.

Rezzed was fantastic: it was great to see lots and lots of people wearing our Ealdorlight crowns. We ran out of crowns on both days, with some creative head displays on offer:

View post on imgur.com

Ealdorlight Kickstarter launch date: 6th June

Yes, I know I said May :) I’ve decided to go for a 31-day campaign, starting on the 6th June, for a few reasons:

• It doesn’t clash with any major US holidays, like Memorial Day. The 48-hour reminder email should go out on the day after 4th July.
• I want to give myself the best chance of success by polishing the combat demo hard. It was great to get such good feedback at Rezzed and I think it’ll be a great hook. I need more time to do that well.
• 6th June is the first anniversary of Sol Trader’s launch, so it ties in nicely with the ongoing Revelation Games story.

I’m excited and nervous about this Kickstarter campaign: my third one to date. After succeeding last time I’m really trying to take my time and get it right.

Sol Trader 1.3 released!

Now that I’m back, I’m able to support a new release of Sol Trader: 1.3 is now finally released after a length beta period.

Here are the highlights:

• You can now chat to characters directly on the right if they’re in the same location as you
• Pirate Chief and criminals are now more likely to try to destroy you
• Fix a bug where you’re not paid enough for a mission
• Dignitaries now fly around a little less than before to make it easier to pin them down
• Inter-faction missions now pay slightly less
• Business trips now pay slightly less
• Taxi missions now pay slightly more
• Talking to your criminal parents will no longer cause them to forget who you are
• Fix crash where a character develops an opinion of the player mid-conversation
• Fix crash when showing GUI for a ship the AI is driving
• Fix crash where a character would attempt to sell a good on a ship they’ve lent to the player
• Can now initiate conversations when paused - will restart the game but at realtime speed
• Fixed the Tiger II achievement

Your steam copy should automatically update. I’ll be releasing an updated downloadable version to SendOwl in the next few days.

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Sol Trader 1.3 out soon: get a sneak peak

Hi all,

Sol Trader has update 1.3 on the way! Get an early look at the latest UI and gameplay improvements by helping to beta test it!

There are a wealth of things for you to try out:

• You can now chat to characters directly on the right if they’re in the same location as you
  
• Pirate Chief and criminals are now more likely to try to destroy you
  
• Fix a bug where you’re not paid enough for a mission
  
• Dignitaries now fly around a little less than before to make it easier to pin them down
  
• Inter-faction missions now pay slightly less
  
• Business trips now pay slightly less
  
• Taxi missions now pay slightly more
  
• Talking to your criminal parents will no longer cause them to forget who you are
  
• Fix crash where a character develops an opinion of the player mid-conversation
  
• Fix crash when showing GUI for a ship the AI is driving
  
• Fix crash where a character would attempt to sell a good on a ship they’ve lent to the player
  
• Can now initiate conversations when paused - will restart the game but at realtime speed
  
• Fixed the Tiger II achievement

Here’s how you test:

1. Right click on the game in your Steam Library and choose 'Properties'
   
2. Click the 'Betas' tab
   
3. Enter the beta access code ’soltraderbeta’ and click 'Check code'
   
4. Choose the ‘beta13’ option from the drop-down list
   
5. Wait for your game to update and play!

If you hit any bugs, please do report them on the Technical Support forum here on Steam so that I can fix them before releasing 1.3 at the end of the month.

Until next time,
Chris

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What's next for Sol Trader and me

I’ve been rather too silent in the last couple of months about what I’ve been working on. Here’s the low-down:

Sol Trader 1.3: enhanced gameplay, balance & UI improvements

I’ve been thinking about how to further improve Sol Trader, my first indie game released last year. The game hasn’t sold that well - you can check the numbers on Steam Spy for yourself. I’ve written about this before: in summary I’ve put the lack of sales down to a crowded space-sim genre and a lack of focused playtesting which gave rise to gameplay and UI that was hard to learn.

Encouragingly, people who do get past the UI tend to love the gameplay, and I’d love to continue to support players by releasing free updates. In particular there are some balance and UI improvements coming, I’m going to bump the number of characters to ensure jobs are filled, and I’d love to sneak in a surprise new gameplay feature…

I’m showing Sol Trader again at Rezzed at the end of March, so if you want to see a preview of the improvements, stop by and come and play the game! The new major update should be ready in April. You can also buy Sol Trader on Steam right now.

The next game :)

Eventually, I’m best served by moving on to a new project, so I’ve also been prototyping an exciting new game idea this year. It’s based on some of the best ideas in Sol Trader, combining a lot of the innovations with a streamlined gameplay experience that will be easier to get into. I’ve already got together a name, backstory and setting (it’s not a space game) and test gameplay. I’m not quite ready to talk about it publicly yet - I will be soon!

I’m in the process of figuring out funding for the new game, and I’m thinking of running another Kickstarter in March as part of this journey. I loved being on Kickstarter last year - the people I met through that community are amazingly supportive and it would be great to ensure that I’m making the game that people want to play.

I’d love to hear from you if you have thoughts about funding. I’ll also be at GDC next week if you want to chat there.

Introducing: Revelation Games

I’ve finally pulled my games development work into my own label: Revelation Games. You can follow on Twitter to get the latest updates, or sign up to the mailing list.

In summary: I’m excited about what’s next and what the next couple of years will bring! What’s new with you?

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New build: 1.2.2

Hi all,

Another new point release of Sol Trader for you to enjoy! Here's the list of fixes:

• Show the working hours on the GUI so you can see when you are supposed to work.
  
• Made ship components the same cost across all ships
  
• Closed exploit: Can only now eject people from your own ship
  
• Can no longer eject whilst paused
  
• Fixed smuggling GUI crashes
  
• Disallow introductions to existing family members
  
• Luring people for an eject is now only possible if you are a at the 'blue' level or higher with them
  
• Prevent repeatable delivery of special gifts from powerful people
  
• Fix crash where ship blows up whilst in mid-jump transition
  
• Fix typo in missions file
  
• Fix crash where ship blows up the same frame it overlaps a jump gate
  
• Fix incorrect relationship labels on GUI

Until next time,
Chris

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New build: 1.2.1 with rare crash fixes

Hi all,

There were a few rare crashes and some bugs in 1.2 which I've now fixed and released in version 1.2.1:

• Prevent players hiring a ship twice
  
• Prevent players buying a ship they've already hired without returning it first
  
• Guard against weird situation when character is alive without an AI
  
• Prevent crash when clicking on conversation options very quickly
  
• Prevent crash when hiring a room after other character has left chat
  
• Prevent saving after death
  
• Prevent close chat crash when GUI hasn't caught up
  
• Prevent corrupt opinions crashing game
  
• Fixed data for opinions and added better validation
  
• Stopped an endless positive loop exploit when ordering drinks or asking about another's story
  
• Prevent ejection of character whilst still in base
  
• Show how to quit a mission on the "Launch Ship" tooltip to aid the player with too many passengers

Enjoy!

Until next time,
Chris

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1.2 now released!

I'm really pleased to announce that Sol Trader 1.2 has been released!

Version 1.2 is the most feature packed and streamlined Sol Trader experience yet, with a myriad of UI and gameplay improvements. Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sTGFze-oh4

The update is packed with job salaries, new missions, upgraded conversations, transit options, full modding support and Steam Achievements.



The gameplay has had a number of improvements made to it, both to the core systems and to the user experience. The addition of salaries for jobs, and the possibility of being fired, provides early direction to the game. You also now have a reason to stay close to home and build relationships with co-workers.



The hundreds of UI improvements and extra tooltips have streamlined gameplay. New missions provide a more interesting and rounded set of things to do for characters. New conversation questions and a 'meet me' option makes finding people that much easier. The ability to ask characters for transit between cities and planets helps with mid-late game ship management.



The addition of Steam Achievements provides an extra opportunity for players to notch up rewards and compare their progress. Finally, full modding support is added in 1.2, which gives modders the ability to change almost everything about the game, including all the graphics.

Thanks for all your support beta testing: if you have any further issues please do post them to the forums.

Until next time,

Chris

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Sol Trader 1.2 trailer

Thanks for all the help testing the beta of 1.2. The trailer for the new version is now available:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sTGFze-oh4

I've released 1.2 to the press today, and I've set a launch date for general release for November 23rd - just seven days away!

Until next time,

Chris

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5 ways I screwed up Sol Trader's launch: a post-mortem

So the Sol Trader launch (Website, Steam) didn’t quite go according to plan. Here’s my take on what happened, and what I’m doing about it for a 1.1 release in July.

1. Last minute tweaks gave rise to bugs at launch

I tweaked space flight on the weekend before launch in order to make it quicker to travel between planets. This revealed a very nasty and previously hidden bug that I had unknowingly introduced several weeks earlier. The bug seriously affected space flight, causing ships to over-accelerate and become difficult to control. Because the change was made the day before launch, I didn’t have time to spot and fix this bug until 24 hours after launch. At this point, it had already caused a number of players to quit the game in frustration.

Games are different from business software: there are many more unexpected side effects and combinations of features coming together to affect the gameplay in unexpected ways. Since I’ve been much more careful with releases, testing them on several platforms with a number of beta testers before pushing them out to the world, and ensuring that key areas of the gameplay are thoroughly checked.

2. I launched too soon to avoid big press deadlines

The initial launch was timed to avoid E3 and the launch of No Man’s Sky. In hindsight, I don’t think this mattered at all. People still played Sol Trader in any case and I believe they would have anyway. Plenty of sites have already reviewed it - the reviews were mostly positive thankfully - and No Man’s Sky was delayed last minute by a few months.

I should have finished the game, then planned the launch, not the other way around. By pushing myself to hit a deadline, I missed some of the gameplay flaws that I mentioned earlier.

Going forward, any other game or update that I launch will be out when it’s done! 1.1 is provisionally scheduled for July, but I’m not feeling pressured to release it by then if I feel it’s not ready yet.

3. I was too “close” to the game

A system map… an obvious feature that I should have put in from the start! Turns out I was way too “close” to the game. As I have been playing Sol Trader for years, I knew exactly where everything was, and so did my beta-testers, so we felt there was no need to put a map in. I should have to given Sol Trader to some fresh players to spot these issues - just hiring some gamers from Gumtree to see how they found the game would have been so useful.

As it was, the first time I heard calls for a map was from Twitch and YouTube streamers who had early press copies of the game. This is not the ideal audience you want spotting bugs and missing features on your behalf.

Next time I launch a game, I will definitely get some fresh players in at the polish stage. In the meantime, there will be a fully interactive map in 1.1, clearly showing areas you can and cannot travel - it’s already done:

4. The core gameplay loop needed work

It is very hard to see design flaws when you’re so focussed on getting a finished game out. I was throwing in lots of interesting features which were exciting on their own, but weren’t coming together as a whole. My response should have been to pare back the design to the core gameplay loop and then to work hard at refining that, rather than adding yet more features in to the mix.

One example of an area that needed more “fun factor” is the core conversation mechanic. I’ve already improved this part of the game since launch, and I’m in the process of making it more of a mini-game in its own right. I’ve released updates to the UI which make it much more intuitive to work with:

This is just the beginning: making friends with people is going to become much more of a skill. You won’t be able to earn friendship events quite so easily, which means you’ll have to pick and choose your friends very carefully, and rely more on having complementary stats. Endlessly boasting about your accomplishments is now going to seriously annoy people, so you’ll need to try more indirect methods to get people to like you…

5. I misread the expectations of the Steam audience

The audience on Steam turned out to be different to my expectations. I’m used to launching business web applications, where you “release early and often”, making lots of changes in response to feedback. It turns out that the Steam community seem more used to developers cutting and running after release if they don’t release in Early Access. Therefore, when Sol Trader was less than perfect at launch, many were unsurprisingly vocal about the issues, assuming the game would never get better.

In hindsight, a Early Access period might have been wise, so my expectations would have better matched up to those of the Steam community. After launch it’s too late for this though, so I worked very hard to bust people’s assumptions about my intentions. Even though Sol Trader is released, I still plan to continue working on it and respond to feedback as much as I can. I am very active and responsive on the Steam community forums to assure people that I’m not going anywhere. This has resulted in a lot of much needed positivity and support from the community. I’ve also made friends with a couple of active people on the forums who can beta test 1.1 for me, which is enormously helpful.

Nothing can prepare you for a release

Self-publishing your own game is like nothing else. It’s incredibly hard to get right. I can understand why people only work with publishers! I’m sorry that some people had a poor first impression of the game. Even though the launch could have gone better, I’m determined to make Sol Trader the best game it can be. I have a clear vision in my head for how I want Sol Trader to end up, and we’re not there yet. I will continue to improve it until I’m happy with it.

Roll on 1.1 in July! Join the Steam community to hear more detailed updates.

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