We've Updated the Roadmap!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Aug 02, 2022 at 01:09:44 AM

Good day Travellers! 

I hope everyone has had a nice summer. Today I want to bring your attention to the fact that we updated the roadmap, which you can now see on Book of Travels' Steam store page (as well as below), as the previous one had become a bit outdated. 

You may recall that we put out our first Achievement pack, a set of new skills and spells, the new area "The Miskeeper's Toe" and the new outmark "The Underbelly". Therefore they are no longer represented on the roadmap - but stuff that we haven't yet delivered, like the Heirlooms and new Forms, are still on there. 

You may also notice completely new items on the list, and these are things that we decided that the game needs on top of what we've already promised. 

I'm sure you'll have questions about this, and I encourage you to ask them here. We'll then take stock on your Q's and try to have some A's ready soon. 

In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful rest of the week!

Best wishes,

Oliver and the team at Might and Delight

3 Month Tech Work Progress update – New Beta Test Environment
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 12:20:14 AM

We want to thank you for your patience. As you are aware we had some significant issues that we needed to take time to solve that we estimated would take 3 months. We are now 3 months and 1 week after that and finally have some news for you as well as a new Beta Test Environment for you to use.

If you followed our Tech Blogs you would have seen that we were doing “things” but as it was all short comments aimed at internal users it may not have made a lot of sense. In essence, what we have done is change some of the core tech the game uses as well as streamlined some of our production pipelines. That main change with this is an update of the Unity Engine from a 2019 version to the newer 2021.3.3f1 version. If you look this up you will see that yes there are newer versions, however we needed one that offers Long Term Support as well as not jumping too far ahead from the 2019 version.

Updating the engine comes with several benefits. You should initially notice that the game *feels* a bit smoother but mostly it allows us to add some new technologies in that we can use in the near future to give you better gameplay, from things like a new Input System (affecting mouse movement and potential controller support) to new cinematic cameras and live real time events. Now this stage is complete we need to present you with an updated Road Map which will be coming in the near future that will explain what we will fix and change as well as provide some detail on new content that we know you are all excited to hear about and play.

As well as the engine update we have started to make other performance improvements by re-writing portions of code and changing some visual effects to give a higher frame rate. The area you will see the biggest change here is with water. We use a very detailed reflection system which lead to water being always on, which is very costly. We have now managed to improve this system so only a small amount of water around your character is rendered leading to a significant frame rate improvement.

Overall one thing we need to avoid is making things worse. The problem with game development, especially in small teams, is being able to test all of the content to make sure its bug free and smooth before it gets released. This is one of the benefits of early access but also one of its greatest curses. One thing that greatly aids in this is a Beta environment, and that is what we want to share with you today.

Please understand – a version released on the Beta environment will be more unstable than one released on retail. It will also be a lot more restricted. However it allows us to have people play test updated versions without impacting the majority of players. We have now prepared an updated version of the game and propped it on the Beta Environment for you to try out if you wish to take part in testing new features.

Also it is important to realize that we have only addressed underlying core tech issues and general performance. Many of you wait for specific issues to be fixed regarding quests etc and these are not delivered as part of this update but will be addressed soon.

Be aware of the following:

• The Beta Environment is more unstable than retail.
• The Beta Environment will be turned off and restart at random with no notice.
• Characters created on the Beta environment will be wiped periodically – do not use this for long term game play.
• Only 7 seats exist per region – therefore only a total of 28 people can play on Beta at any one time.
• On Beta you will occasionally see content that is not fully known by other players. Please avoid Spoilers.

This gives us the following development pipeline so you can understand how we will release content going forward, where the quality of the game needs to be higher in each stage before it can be released to the next. This environment is Windows PC only.

Local Development environment –> Internal QA environment –> External Test environment –> Public Beta environment –> Public Retail environment.

Our goal is that a version will spend a week on the Public Beta environment before moving to retail. For those of you who play the current build on this Beta environment please be aware of the following issues:

• Boats will periodically teleport you when they reach docks – this might lead you to landing in water and having to walk to land.
• Some water has rapid wave effects (most notably in Siram Fields)
• The game client might hang during logout. You should be able to close it with Alt+F4

You may join with the password BetaShore2022 – for details on how to join a Steam Beta, see the Walk Through written by moderator Genghis Pawn  below.

Thank you for your patience,
Joe & the team at Might and Delight

– – –

Steam Beta walk through

Here are instructions for how to access the beta.

1. Navigate to Book of Travels in your Steam library (where you would normally go to launch the game).
2. Near the left side of your screen, right-click on the title, "Book of travels" in your library list (or alternatively: left-click on "Book of Travels" to pull it up in your library, and then click on the gear icon that appears near the right hand side of the screen)...
3. ...and select "Properties" from the bottom of the drop-down menu that appears.
4. In the pop-up control panel, Select "BETAS" in the left-hand navigation pane.
5. On the right, type in the beta access code that M&D have provided (BetaShore2022) and click "Check Password." This should be case-sensitive.
6. Install the required update (2.3GB) -- the title of the game in your library will change from "Book of Travels" to "Book of Travels [braidedshore]" to indicate that this is a different version of the game.

After installing the update, when you launch the game as usual from your library, it should automatically launch into the beta environment.

NOTE: Once you have verified the beta passcode, you can use the drop-down on the pop-up menu in steps 4/5 above to switch between the beta and the retail version (select "None" as your beta), BUT you will always need to install updates/patches to alternate between versions of the game. At the moment, this is a ~900MB patch to revert to the retail version, and a ~1GB patch to go back to the beta. Given that space in the beta is extremely limited (See the announcement) if your bandwidth is limited you may not want to be switching back and forth and doing all that downlading.

Technobabble for Those Fluent in Game Development
almost 2 years ago – Fri, May 20, 2022 at 12:04:23 AM

Dear Traveller,

Not too long ago we announced that we would be laser focused on the technical issues of Book of Travels and that we would seem quiet as a result. We've discussed ways to still give small signs of life and indications of what kind of work is being done and at some point it was suggested that we talk more openly about what tech work our programmers are up to. 

Why not just literally post exactly what tasks we do in list form and let the community try to decipher it as best they can? Now, for me personally, most of the tech jargon goes right over my head so I was mainly concerned about how interesting it would actually be to the average Book of Travels player.

But hey, it is entirely possible (plausible, even) that I have below average understanding of this stuff so we thought "why not". A while ago we launched a new subforum on Steam for this purpose, and we currently have three entries published. You can check it out for yourself on this link. 

Check back once a week or so for new entries if this sort of thing tickles your fancy. Right now we don't have anything else in particular to share with you, but we are making good progress and are optimistic about being able to bring you some exciting improvements very soon. Ish. 

Until then, stay safe and play responsibly. 

Best wishes,

Oliver and the team at Might and Delight

The Next Quarter and Beyond
about 2 years ago – Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 10:57:53 PM

Dear Traveller,

It’s been seven weeks since we put out any sort of community update, not counting the set of patch notes that has gone out between then and now. We’ve been very busy with our work to get Book of Travels to a good place and the studio is going through some important changes to that end, both in terms of how we structure and organise our workflow and in terms of leadership. 

You may remember our last communication in which we detailed our plans for the future development, and in broad strokes that plan still stands. What I want to do today is bring further clarity on what is being done and what is going to happen in the near future. 

Just like I put it on the table seven weeks ago, we are in a development phase of going back to the foundation and untangling the messier parts of the game code. To that end we’ve called in help from old friends with large amounts of experience dealing with situations like ours. You’ll get more details about these additions of talent and what it means soon. 

For now, know that we’re taking the necessary steps to ensure we get to a place where we can efficiently build a better foundation for Book of Travels to grow on. 

So, you may wonder what these actions mean for you as a player. Here’s the deal: 

• For the next 3 months we’ll focus on more large scope tech issues. These won’t be specific bugs or glitches that are typically visible to the player, but more world encompassing system issues that need to be addressed in order for the game as a whole to be more fertile ground for us to start eradicating the comparatively smaller problems that actually are evident to the player.
• During this time we may appear to be quiet or seem inactive. This is just because we will be very busy. Since the nature of these larger scale issues don’t always make them suitable for traditional patch notes, you won’t necessarily see a typical flow of those during this period. You will, however, notice the game getting updated in the Steam client, and if an update doesn't come with the traditional patch notes – now you know why.
• After this period we’ll resume with the releasing of additional content. By this point we plan to have the game’s foundation solid enough to allow us to start growing it again. We have lots of cool things that we’re dying to get into your hands. The city of Kasa, for instance, is very close to being finished and we know you’re excited for the deeper character customisation tools that we’ve talked about in the past. But this doesn’t mean that we’ll be done with fixes, just that we can start doing both fixes and fun new content.

So that’s the gist of it. We have a plan and the means to execute it. I hope that this has been informative and clear, and that you share our confidence in the project’s future. As always, we’re enormously grateful for the patience and the excitement that you continue to show us. See you in Braided Shore! 

Best wishes,

Oliver and the team at Might and Delight

An Update on the Near Future for Book of Travels
about 2 years ago – Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 10:41:31 PM

Dear Traveller,

Before we get to the matter at hand I’d personally like to thank you on behalf of the entire team at Might and Delight for playing Book of Travels, engaging with each other on our social platforms and providing us with the invaluable feedback we need to improve and grow the game.

Now, we’ve always said that we’re going to be communicating our plans and priorities with you as they take shape and today I’m going to tell you about how they’ve changed recently.

Our original plan was, as you may know, to continually flesh out the game with content in the form of additional features, levels, character forms and more – all of it along with a flow of patches with fixes on a regular basis throughout the Early Access period that we call “Chapter Zero”.

But the truth is – and this is the part where we need to be brutally honest with ourselves – Book of Travels is nowhere near the level of polish we expected it to be at this point in its life cycle, nor where we need it to be to make it a successful product in the long term. New content tends to birth new problems for us to deal with when they get added, and for a team as small as ours it quickly becomes unsustainable.

Simply put: we need to get Book of Travels to a place where we can start building it with brick and mortar rather than putting bandaids on it. And for that to happen we need to go to the foundation.

Waging War on the Bugs

It’s in light of this that we have decided to completely focus on fixing the game for the next few months, instead of having our attention split between fixes and new content. Of course, we realise that the fact that the game won’t see any new major content additions for an undetermined amount of time will disappoint some of you. But we also believe that any player who has invested any kind of significant playtime in the game knows as well as we do that this is what Book of Travels needs.

Last week we put out a form open for any and all of you to fill out, and in it we asked you what technical area we need to focus on getting better first. As you can see above, the majority of you want the gameplay bugs to be taken care of primarily, whereas the server stability/functionally got the most votes as a secondary objective.

This data didn’t surprise any of us, and we think that’s a good thing. It serves as a nice confirmation that the path we’re about to set out on is the right course of action. We do have the talent onboard to straighten this out, we really believe that. And with this new focus on fixing what’s wrong with the game, all hands on deck, we’re going to put everything we have into the betterment of Book of Travels. And hopefully, with that, we also secure a stable future for the world of Braided Shore.

That is pretty much everything that I wanted to tell you for now. While this new, aggressive campaign of ours indeed does mean that the output of new content will be put on hold, rest assured that we won’t go into complete radio silence. Whenever we reach milestones you will hear from us, you will get the patch notes and we are interested in doing more forms that you can participate in further down the road. And I will be here, lurking, and forwarding your will to the powers that be. Because your input, your voice will continue to be vital for our progress.

Thank You and Best Wishes

Oliver and the team at Might and Delight