This is IT!
This is now!
It's time now to put your first foot on your planet thanks to our first test drive of Colonization Step Two.
What is this test about?
Let's share every detail to you!
EXODE gets one big step further!
This is the important part here - EXODE is an ambitious game and it needs to show persistence and commitment from its development team.
Also, it needs to share its vision to the world with every one of its updates.
So, what is our vision of Colonization?
How to navigate the map?
How to represent regions?
How to represent your colony?
What happens when someone performs an action?
You will be able to check all of this!
This new access is a discovery dive into your planet in 2325.
Demo working in F&F (fire and forget)
This demo works in "Fire and Forget".
It accesses your planet and assets - so it has dynamic content - but allows you to retry at any time from the start.
New test drives may work differently - such as in a continuous mode where your colony is active, and then another continuous mode where people actually need food and sleep, and not to be eaten by random cyan dinosaurs with three heads.
But as this demonstration mostly "demonstrates some stuff" and tests a larger number of UIs (= user interface), it was safe to implement it in a F&F mode.
We'll reuse this from time to time because it's most effective to iron out bugs and reproduce them. Here we want to test map navigation and action reports.
The planet which should be accessed should only be your locked planet NFT.
In case it seems to access a different planet from one of your landings, or you think you locked a wrong planet, we'll get to that later too, in a later update!
Colonization: this means you need a planet!
Before I continue I must share one important point: this is a demo about colonization so obviously this means it is reserved to "people with planets"!
The first batch of testers should the ones who "locked a planet NFT" previously, meaning our testers until June or so who managed to acquire a planet.
But as a reminder every game of EXODE actually leads to colonizing a unique planet. We don't intend to leave any people behind. I would hate to make game content reserved only to some lucky people.
We intend to open testing to all players (meaning all players able to evacuate, scan a planet and land to it!) in a later update. Which is also great, because later updates will give access to a lot of gameplay!
Now, I have to admit something:
The last days had a lot of hours in 2325 so I have some galactic lag :D
So I'll cut to the chase and head to the content right away!
Read below to find how to access this demo.
How to access this content?
- Access your account ( such as from https://exodegame.com ) and log in.
- Click on GAME and then open your Colonization Portal (as displayed above)
- Click on "My Games" on the left menu (as displayed above)
Click on "Test Colonization" (as displayed above)
Also, there are sounds to test, so remember to have your sound equipment ready!
You should do all of the above right away!
But if don't have the time, or if you have any issue, or if you can't resist reading and being spoiled of this content, you can read below to learn more about items to see in this test drive!
Contents of this test drive
A) Confirming your alpha tester objective
Now that you are a test pilot you should first acknowledge some important information.
B) Testing map navigation
To tap into an impressive potential in debugging, every time you restart your test new region positioning and sectoring will occur.
This means restarting may change some data presented in your demo.
This is OK and will allow to circumvent bugs in many occasions.
Testing map and sector display is extremely important in this demonstration.
Future upgrades: this screen will be improved thanks to fixes and reports. We noticed a possible mismatch in region names and types (ie: regions called "forests" and being displayed as plains for instance), maybe because we expanded the number of possible region types lately.
C) Finding a landing site
To allow better testing all landing sites are revealed in this demo.
Here your mission is to navigate regions and find a landing spot.
Future upgrades: regions and landing sites will later display tooltips with a lot of information regarding landing difficulty, climate, ... we have all this data ready! such upgrades are already planned and are felt important to make the region and sector maps more enjoyable.
D) Checking another new feature: Action Reports!
An important part of this demo is to test 'Action Reports'.
This section addresses an important part of EXODE game model.
EXODE is a game of decision making with a lot of indirect control and events happening. We'll always strive to provide the perfect gameplay and enough control to the player without putting him or her into too much micromanagement.
Action Reports are a huge progress we make in that aspect. It is a new interactive way to resolve events and introduce how tasks are resolved.
In this case, this is a series of tasks executed by a citizen or crew member.
EXODE always had this model of task executed one after the other, as this is what is used in evacuation. However EVAC cannot give you any time to pause or zoom on a resolution, whereas colonization can.
These tasks can have consequences.
And some will have decisions.
Some original action reports will be encountered in EXODE - include research reports!
On this screen consequences are not displayed yet but these are calculated. Missing on some tests increases difficulty of final landing and can cause ship damage.
Future upgrades: we'll improve action reports with a lot more feedback, such as what consequence is there when you fail a step, and also add more FX at every step. Resolution will also be controlled by server and we will test interactive events.
E) Check colonization UI
The last part of your test drive gives you an access to your colonization interface.
You will see some tutorial there explaining to you a few very important concepts.
This will end your current test run!
What's next?
Our next update to colonization is to display citizen lists, and allow the creation of teams and support roles.
You will be able to send Away Teams (using the map tested in this demo) and to assign Colony Teams.
We will also demonstrate Research and Production.
Send your feedback!
This update also wants to know:
Are our interfaces going in the right direction?
Are our production values ok enough?
Is the way we implement planet map and action reports correct to you?
Is the vision correctly shared?
Feel free to share this on our Discord!
More information about EXODE can also be found on our website, our Discord, or multiple posts such as this one about our epic characters, or this trailer made by a fan, or this review or this one . A summary of latest posts and events is also here.
Also running a witness node:
You can check the post about it here and if you like what this means you can:
See you soon in eXode!
