Since I started working on PWO, my mental list of things I’d like to add or change has only grown longer and longer with time– I always come up with ideas faster than I can implement them all properly, so there were tons of things I’d love to do with this time. But I know that, while in the long term the ITM system will make the game better for everyone, it doesn’t make for a very exciting or flashy update, and the game still doesn’t have a lot of appeal for new players as it stands. I wanted to find something that’s really going to draw in new players and raise the profile of the game, and when I was going down the list, I realized there was one thing that would do that better than anything else, and I’d just recently heard that it might be easier to do now than I’d ever thought it could be before.
Download it now through the menu on the left, or possibly above on mobile! This was a HUGE update, so be sure to read about what all has been changed and added in the announcement here! My thanks again for everyone’s patience, this was hopefully the longest an update will ever take for the game, we really got a lot accomplished with this one! Keep an eye out for a Dev Journal going out to supporters before long that I think you’ll find pretty exciting, too…
This one has been a beast, partly because I have completed one of the largest and most important chunks of work for the project: getting the first chunk of the new system for controlling NPCs built and working! I’ll be talking about that in just a second. This update did get delayed some at the very end just because my personal life went a little crazy at just the wrong time, but it sounds like there’s a lot of that going around these days. Hell, the last year has been a lot of crazy stuff, but you know what? I made my first build of PWO in a similarly miserable period of my life. I guess in a way, this game has been my escape and my avenue for expressing myself in a lot of difficult times. Let’s get into what I’ve accomplished.
So where are we in development? The good news is, we’re very close to a new release! The bad news (for me) is that we’re in one of the most frustrating parts of the process. I want to make some claim about being done before the end of the year or something like that, but at this point issues keep coming up and I have to pace myself to keep motivated, so I’m not ready to set a deadline like that, just in case.
That’s the short version. To get into the details, let’s start with a quick review of what’s even going on.
On the long, strange grind of tackling this, arguably the greatest challenge of this entire project and maybe even of my career, it’s easy to lose track of time. When the last update came out, I mentioned that my next big goal was to finally and truly tackle the centerpiece of Project Wild One: an NPC engine capable of, in some basic way, interpreting the actions of others around it and choosing from the many different courses of action available to it in a way that actually makes sense. I’ve been calling it AI, but I know you hear that term used a lot for systems based on machine learning these days, and that has nothing to do with my work here– this is all hand-crafted.
A couple months ago I checked in with supporters about how immensely challenging this process has been, and how things were coming together, but it was still such a monstrous task that I could only barely even estimate how much work remained at the time. Since then, I’ve made several significant breakthroughs, and I’m close to a big turning point. Let’s talk a little about the pieces of this system.
You can play it now in the menu on the left, or maybe above on mobile! I made a whole bunch of changes with this update, so read up on all of that over here! I also fixed a few typos folks reported on the Discord since the supporter release. My thanks to everyone that lets me know when they find issues with the game!
Finally rolling this one out! It’s been a hell of a journey, but I’ve talked about the challenges I’ve run into a lot over the past few dev journals, so let’s focus on what’s changing with this update, because there’s a lot to cover! I’ve made changes across so many different parts of the game with this update, there are some obvious connections here and there, but let’s just try and organize it into major sections of the game that have been affected.
We’re putting the final pieces together now! It’s been quite a journey, and I’ve accomplished a lot I wasn’t expecting, as well as faced setbacks and challenges I didn’t see coming. Let’s catch up.
I’m deep in the process of building Project Wild One’s AI overhaul, but that’s required a lot of smaller support projects along the way. I’ve been working on a lot of different parts, and I think it might be about time to shift focus again so I can get a new update put together sooner rather than later. There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get into the thick of it!
I got a lot of helpful reports in after v0.06 went public, and it ended up being enough separate issues that I decided to go ahead and push out a new version.