Nov 3, 2022
TFM: The First Men - Gathering Tree
Thanks in part to your help and contributions, TFM will improve and become its greatest iteration. We've been working all night and day to analyze your suggestions and gather bug reports, and we're now prepared to talk about some of the upcoming and ongoing adjustments and improvements on the way. This will likely be the first of many updates we make throughout early access to inform you about how things stand and our plans.
We want to begin by addressing some of your biggest concerns.
We have been developing TFM in light of our Discord Community’s feedback, playing the game using the Steam Playtest feature since December 2021. With the transition to Early Access now, we are getting more feedback, improving the game further. Updating and prioritizing the roadmap is something we have been doing for a while, and the same will continue for at least two more years, with more players joining us every month.
Localizations have been a major request since the first development days. To fulfill this request, we’ve spared time to implement the necessary features first, partner up with a translation team, and start localizing the game in 9 languages, hoping to add more during the Early Access.
TFM is a unique game that depends on constant playtests, iterations, improvements, and additions. Because of this, it is nearly impossible to completely translate it, especially before the development speed slows and the game is in shape everyone is satisfied with.
Even tho our main intention was to make everyone happy, now we understand there were better calls than having language support. We have now decided to remove all languages besides English from the store page. Current translations will be accessible in-game still, and we plan to implement a community translation system after another design iteration to make the gameplay smoother.
We know that many things about the early game must be improved. The first thing on our roadmap was adding an extensive tooltip improvement; watching your videos, and listening to your feedback made us include additional improvements to this list.
We will be adding a guide system to the user interface.
Calls will tell you when a game feature needs your attention; you will see this guide, such as a character waiting to use path points or a tradition ready for selection.
New crafts that are ready for production will be displayed similarly. When you choose a new passion for one of your characters, you will be able to see this guide in the interface telling you a new construction ready after your action.
Hints are the next guide we want to implement. We will try a way to help guide you all when you are dealing with multiple selections. This will be an optional feature that can be turned off from the options menu.
Using these features, we also plan to improve the current tutorial, and probably make an additional tutorial map, since we will no longer be thinking about the translations.
We heard and saw many of your characters constantly blocking each other, especially in combat, and staying under a tree forever without your knowledge.
We've been working on this for a while and are almost ready to roll out a new navigation system to resolve almost all of these pathfinding issues.
This one has also been in our Trello for a while, and wish we had time to implement this before the release or prioritize it; well, we are learning!
We will be adding several new additions to the options, such as; windowed mode support, resolution change, keybinding options, and accessibility features such as switching the primary mouse button.
This is a REAL Early Access game, we want players to participate in the development process rather than thinking about reaching a large audience now.
So, if you want a complete experience, please consider purchasing the game in the future.
Furthermore, regional pricing was an issue. Valve updated the pricing matrix last week; like many other games, we wanted to use Steam's default, and the change came too close to our release date to catch us off guard. We hope this will be normalized soon or that other games will adopt the new standards.
Please keep the feedback and bug reports coming, and let us know your thoughts about the changes here or in our official discord.
We want to begin by addressing some of your biggest concerns.
Localizations
We have been developing TFM in light of our Discord Community’s feedback, playing the game using the Steam Playtest feature since December 2021. With the transition to Early Access now, we are getting more feedback, improving the game further. Updating and prioritizing the roadmap is something we have been doing for a while, and the same will continue for at least two more years, with more players joining us every month.
Localizations have been a major request since the first development days. To fulfill this request, we’ve spared time to implement the necessary features first, partner up with a translation team, and start localizing the game in 9 languages, hoping to add more during the Early Access.
TFM is a unique game that depends on constant playtests, iterations, improvements, and additions. Because of this, it is nearly impossible to completely translate it, especially before the development speed slows and the game is in shape everyone is satisfied with.
Even tho our main intention was to make everyone happy, now we understand there were better calls than having language support. We have now decided to remove all languages besides English from the store page. Current translations will be accessible in-game still, and we plan to implement a community translation system after another design iteration to make the gameplay smoother.
Early Game Flow
We know that many things about the early game must be improved. The first thing on our roadmap was adding an extensive tooltip improvement; watching your videos, and listening to your feedback made us include additional improvements to this list.
We will be adding a guide system to the user interface.
Calls will tell you when a game feature needs your attention; you will see this guide, such as a character waiting to use path points or a tradition ready for selection.
New crafts that are ready for production will be displayed similarly. When you choose a new passion for one of your characters, you will be able to see this guide in the interface telling you a new construction ready after your action.
Hints are the next guide we want to implement. We will try a way to help guide you all when you are dealing with multiple selections. This will be an optional feature that can be turned off from the options menu.
Using these features, we also plan to improve the current tutorial, and probably make an additional tutorial map, since we will no longer be thinking about the translations.
Pathfinding Issues
We heard and saw many of your characters constantly blocking each other, especially in combat, and staying under a tree forever without your knowledge.
We've been working on this for a while and are almost ready to roll out a new navigation system to resolve almost all of these pathfinding issues.
More options for Options
This one has also been in our Trello for a while, and wish we had time to implement this before the release or prioritize it; well, we are learning!
We will be adding several new additions to the options, such as; windowed mode support, resolution change, keybinding options, and accessibility features such as switching the primary mouse button.
Pricing
We also wanted to talk about pricing. According to our experience and feedback, TFM provides at least 40 hours of gameplay; some of our community testers have played thousands of hours. We stand by our decision to keep the price at 24.99 USD, even after receiving feedback that it should be reduced. This is a REAL Early Access game, we want players to participate in the development process rather than thinking about reaching a large audience now.
So, if you want a complete experience, please consider purchasing the game in the future.
Furthermore, regional pricing was an issue. Valve updated the pricing matrix last week; like many other games, we wanted to use Steam's default, and the change came too close to our release date to catch us off guard. We hope this will be normalized soon or that other games will adopt the new standards.
Please keep the feedback and bug reports coming, and let us know your thoughts about the changes here or in our official discord.
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