October 2012 Roadmap [Updated October 26]

[Azerax]

Greetings all,

October is another busy month for the dev team!  Listed below are the items we plan to achieve in October 2012.

October 2012 Goals:

Siege Engines in Scout Reports
Automated Market Offers
New Message System
Facebook updates
Continued Doctrinifying the Guild scripts
Continued updating of the Admin backend
Continued Bug Fixes
Region Subtypes

As always, questions and comments are welcome.

Scott

edit: added Region Subtypes - we weren't sure if it should be included on the roadmap as it's a database entry but since phase 2 of it will be noticable I've added it.

[Zakilevo]

Facebook updates? What is that about?

[Penchant]

Seems like a lot of work is going to be done this month.

[Lanyon]

Curious to see that the statues addition is not in there

[Velax]

The additions to the game like "Siege engines in scout reports" - is the goal just to get them on Testing in October, or onto Stable as well?

[Gustav Kuriga]

I would imagine that statues would be a low priority thing compared to the major changes like sea zones and such.

[Azerax]

Yes, it is indeed a busy month for the developers.

Anything listed in the Roadmap is planned on being fully implemented across all islands in that given month.

As for Statues and Monuments not being included, after we estimated how many hours each item would take, compared it to how many volunteer hours the developers had available for October, we had more development hours required for all tasks vs available hours, so I removed it.

The Facebook updates is something I'm working on.  I have many years experience working with social media and know that having a Facebook page that's updated on a regular basis will help raise aware of the game and attract new players.  Once my plan for this is done I will post it publically.

You will also see that there is a great deal of work being done on the code infrastructure of the game itself.  This is something that is extremely time consuming and has to be done.  This is also why some approved features that seem easy to implement aren't being implemented as it would require them to be implemented twice (old code and new code) which is not time well spent.

Thank you for your questions and comments, I always welcome them!

Scott

[Azerax]

October Week 1 Update

October is a really busy month for the dev team.  The burn down chart this month will reflect the "Planned Work Done" vs "Actual Work Done".  This is reflected in total estimated hours.  As you will see, the dev team is volunteering 52 hours this month.

I like to post Burn Down Charts on Fridays because my weekends are not predictable.  This means that the dev team is being measured against 7 days when infact they've only had 5 to work.

October Goals
Siege Engines in Scout Reports
Automated Market Offers
New Message System
Facebook updates
Continued Doctrinifying the Guild scripts
Continued updating of the Admin backend
Continued Bug Fixes
Region Subtypes




As always, questions and comments are welcome.

Best regards,
Scott

[Velax]

Why doesn't the Planned Work line go down to 0?

[Gustav Kuriga]

You're expected to extrapolate.

Also, a comic referring to such:

http://xkcd.com/605/

[Nosferatus]

what are region subtypes actually?
maybe its an idea for the future to have a mouse over text box that explains the individual features.
I can imagine that most people don't know what the title of those features mean.

[Azerax]

You're expected to extrapolate.

Also, a comic referring to such:

http://xkcd.com/605/

lol that's awesome.

It should hit 0, I'll fix it

[Azerax]

what are region subtypes actually?

It's to assist with the upcoming food re-balancing that needs to be done.

[Azerax]

October Week 2 Update

October Goals and Status

Siege Engines in Scout Reports - In Progress
Automated Market Offers - In Progress
Doctrinifying the Guild scripts - In Progress
Admin backend updates - In Progress

Sea Routes  - Live on Testing Islands
New Message System - In final testing

Facebook updates - Complete - now requires regular updates which has been happening
Region Subtypes - Complete
10 Bug Fixes - 22 have been completed

New Addition
Buying Provisions - This is an expansion of Sea Routes




You'll notice there is now a slight bump in the blue line, this is due to the addition of Buying Provisions.

As always, questions and comments are welcome.

Best regards,
Scott

[Lanyon]

So if I am reading this right it means our awesome Devs have worked slightly more than they said they would so far.