Today we want to talk about the alpha period and the overall direction of the game.
First, I want to give some more history on myself (Whitney) and the game’s development. When I started developing the game over three and a half years ago, I was still a software development student, nearing the end of my degree. I had never worked in the tech stack I chose for the game, and the whole process was a huge learning curve for me. That being said, I stand behind the decision of the tech stack that was chosen, as I still believe it was the best choice.
What does this mean for the game? It means that I made some mistakes in the early development due to inexperience. It means there is some “technical debt” as we software developers like to call it, that has left the game vulnerable to exploits and introduced some performance issues. All of this, that we are aware of, has been patched. That being said, it also means that the code is a bit messy. Yes, everything works, but it doesn’t work as well as it could and is going to be harder to maintain long term in its current state.
The version of the framework that the back-end of the game was built on has also reached ‘end-of-life’, which means it is no longer supported by the developer. If left as-is, this could make maintenance and updates to the game difficult in the future.
So, where am I going with this? The long of the short of it is that we have decided to rewrite the game from the ground up. That may sound scary to you since it took over three years to get it to this point, but don’t worry, much of the current code can be recycled and reused so the rewrite should take a fraction of the time. With the framework hitting ‘end-of-life’, this was going to need to happen at some point, and we have decided it is best to go ahead and update while we are still in alpha. The rewrite would implement the game on the newest framework version, which is still supported by the developer, has better security features, performance considerations, etc. and has newer features which will make future updates much, much easier.
What does this mean for the alpha? The legacy code (no pun intended) will still be maintained and bugs will be patched, albeit potentially slightly slower for smaller bugs, and Lydia will continue to work on artwork. But, no new features will be added to what we are calling V1 of the game. Instead, I have been working diligently to both migrate the existing code and add new features to the new version of the game, which we are referring to as V2.
We have a lot planned for V2, and we will be sharing more about the changes with everyone in the near future. (If you want early updates and extra insight into the changes coming in V2, please consider supporting the development of the game by becoming a Patreon member at https://www.patreon.com/LegacyHorseGame.)
What does this mean for the timeline of the alpha and the full release? We will need to extend the alpha period. I have already begun rewriting the code and am making very good progress, but V2 will likely take at least three to six months to complete (this is including the rewrite and adding in a bunch of new features, such as the new training system and all the other new features we plan on adding to the game at this point). After V2 is live we will also want at least a minimum of six months of testing before going public, but it is possible that V2 testing will go longer, well into 2025.
This also means that there will be two partial game wipes during the alpha period, once at the end of V1 and again at the end of the alpha, immediately before the full game is released. These wipes will remove all the horses/show history/etc but will leave the player and ranches intact. (It will reset the balance and import credits of all the ranches to the starting amount.)
Why do we have to do two wipes, let alone any at all? V2 is fundamentally changing how the horses are created and stored in the database. A migration of the existing horses from V1 to V2 would be time consuming and expensive and while we were willing to put the time, effort and money into the migration the active players voted to instead have two wipes.
So, does this mean you shouldn’t start playing the game now? That is entirely up to you! Many people are using this current alpha period to experiment with different play styles and breeding strategies. Personally, I think it is a great time to start to learn the ins-and-outs of the game without major consequences, but whether you start playing now, during alpha V2, or during the full release of the game is entirely up to you.
To join the alpha testing, simply go to https://legacyhorsegame.com/register.
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