19 dicembre 2018

Complete Edition

It's been nearly four months since the first release of The Moonstone Equation and since then development has not really stopped (or slowed down).

I've released a dozen updates packed full of fixes and new features that have transformed the game as it was at release into something even better.

I have you the community to thank for much of that progress. You've provided great feedback (and found some great bugs) and your enthusiasm has ensured I've had the drive to work every day.



Today I'm marking a change in pace for any future developments and updates for the Moonstone Equation with the release of the 'Complete Edition'

This update has the usual collection of small bug fixes and tweaks but more significantly it also includes 25 Steam Achievements! for you to find and unlock. From now on any updates will only contain minor additions and occasional bug fixes.



Is this the end?

Not really, it's just a change of pace. There's only one of me and I need to spend less time making the Moonstone Equation if I want to spend any time making anything new.

I'll always be checking the community hub, social media all my emails so you can still make sure I hear you if you have any ideas or issues. I'm also not totally ruling out more content in the future.


Thank you again for all your amazing support.

3 dicembre 2018

Big Update - Version 1.3.53

It's been a few months since the last update. With the worst of the bugs squashed in the early updates I moved onto some more significant content changes. These have obviously taken longer to implement but hopefully you'll find the wait has been worth it.

There are fixes, changes and additions across the whole game. It will all integrate with your existing saves but if you want the full experience then you might prefer to start a new game. The easy way to do this is through the 'factory reset' option in the PDA menu (esc) or the quicker and more direct way is to press 'n' twice on the very first loading screen (you'll see a little message if you've done it right).

Some of the changes will be obvious very quickly but others are in some very obscure places. Also, some of the new puzzle are intentional very hard (but fair).

In general it seems that most of you have enjoyed searching around and piecing the parts of the plot jigsaw together at your own pace and in your own way. My intention was always to try and reward curiosity but there was a common thread of people feeling a little lost for what to do next.

I've not added any additional hand-holding but I hope you'll find the plots and pieces that make up the fractured world-story a little easier to piece together and as such find it a little easier to choose what you might want to do next. There's still plenty of very obscure and hidden stuff for those of you that really want to get all the answers.

So, With all that out of the way it's on to the bullet points. in no particular order.

• More dialogue for almost all the characters. Some characters now have more than twice as much to talk about over the whole game.
  
• More collectibles (and more plot because of them)
  
• More post end-game content.
  
• More puzzles. Not block pushing and not obvious to 90% of players but they probably represent a good few more hours of gameplay if you can find them. The early ones are easy enough but they get pretty hard.
  
• More hidden but direct clues and information about the lore and meaning of the Moonstone Equation.
  
• Subtle but important changes to the ledge balance points when idle. No more standing in mid-air. (also no more pushing blocks from mid-air, sorry)
  
• Command history for terminals (just press 'up' and 'down' to step through previous commands.
  
• Improved terminal email client a little bit.
  
• Added the missing 'DigSite' terminal into the dig-site.
  
• Allowed executable to use extended 32Bit memory space (Upto 3GB) so out-of-memory crashes should not happen anymore.
  
• A few subtle level adjustments that you'd only notice if you know what to look for.
  
• A few other small bug fixes.

If you're interested, you can follow my development progress very directly by looking at my
Trello Board

Warning! That's a direct look at my development tasks and my contain some spoilers. As much as possible I'll try not to give too much away but you have been warned.