Developer stream announcement and future updates

A developer stream is going to happen on 23rd September at 19:00 CEST on Twitch. I will show off the upcoming update, answer any questions and play the game for a while. The update will be released during the stream.

Information on future updates
The upcoming update doesn't have as many features and improvements as the previous ones. There is a good reason for that. The current version has come a long way from a prototype that started as a very different game with a very different goal. A large part of the game's code base is a hodge-podge of half abandoned ideas and hacks for making the new ones work on the old systems. At this point, it started to reach unsustainable levels, where even small features take entire days to implement.

I've been aware of this problem for quite some time, years in fact. It is a bad idea to base the final game on the same code base as the prototype, because this is inevitably what's going to happen. The plan was to eventually stop working on the prototype and instead move on to the final game on an entirely new code base, now knowing what I want and how things should work thanks to the prototype. And this is exactly what I've been doing for the last 6 months - I've been gradually moving work towards this new code base.

It is time, however, to shift this effort up a gear. The upcoming update is the last one with any meaningful new features on this code base. There will still be bug fixes and content updates (as new content can be easily ported to the new version), but aside from that, you will have to wait for the reworked version to come out. Which, I expect, should happen sometime during next year.

You may be worried that essentially rewriting the whole game so close to finish is a waste of time, but in fact, the game is still very far from being finished. There are important features I'd like to include, that are actually impossible in current version, like bridges and tunnels, liquid water, modding support or, most importantly, political simulation. It also isn't as much effort as it seems, as many systems are working well and can be moved to the new code base with little changes. Additionally, it is a good opportunity to look at some of the less useful features and unnecessarily complicated design decisions and remove them.

While the small updates that result from this may be disappointing, I assure you that in the end, the game is going to be in a much better shape after this.