Hello folks,
first of all, we'd like to apologize for missing some of the messages that have been posted here. We're hard at work on Empires Apart: development is still going strong and since 1.3.1 we have built quite a significant amount of improvements. Here's what we've been working on and what you can look forward to in the near future:
Crashes
This is obviously the number one concern of ours and we understand the frustration that crashes bring. We've been working hard for quite a while now with the help of Epic to find the source of our crashes. They're seemingly random and inconsistent, which makes them very hard to track down. This is our primary focus, we're making progress and we hope that the next patch will improve the situation.
Desyncs
It appears that a new source of Desync has arisen. We're investigating it and we hope to fix it in the next patch.
Performance
1.3.1 brought huge performance improvements to the game but there's a lot more coming. We worked a lot to improve on the performance of our next biggest bottleneck: the AI. Many areas of the AI have seen huge improvements in terms of performance and in the next patch, playing against multiple opponents will be easier. The general performance of the game is also constantly being worked on and there are some improvements coming on that front as well.
AI
We wanted to reveal this at a later date but I guess it's better to let the cat out of the bag. There's a new A.I. coming, codename "Agatha". Agatha has been built from the ground up to be more fun, more smart and to be capable to play all the current game modes and upcoming ones.
Agatha has tremendous variability in her builds, going for different strategies at different times, helps allies, responds to pings, trades, buys and sells resources at the market, can form alliances and much more. We're putting the final touches to Agatha and we won't be satisfied until it can comfortably, consistently beat the current AI. We might release Agatha in a beta state in the near future.
Multiplayer
We're working to make the unranked multiplayer experience more streamlined, so it's easier for everybody to find matches. There's some big improvements coming on this front that we can't talk about at this moment but do know that we're looking at ways to make the game more accessible and more streamlined on the multiplayer front.
New gamemodes
We have some new gamemodes coming. We don't want to announce anything yet but we're looking to add more "fun" modes to the game.
Minor features
We also have some minor features coming including, but not limited to:
- Control groups are stored and retained through savegames and resyncs
- We now display how many villagers are working on each resource.
Other minor issues
Various minor issues have been solved during the past few weeks including, but not limited to:
- Issues with Merchants
- Issues with Mongol settlers.
- Missing Hotkeys
- Cooldowns on some active abilities
- Tower upgrades
- Fog of War Issues
- Visual bugs on villagers and units
Overall, there's a lot to look forward to in the next patch and beyond. We're working hard to make Empires Apart better and even if today I listed a lot of stuff that is coming, that is not all. We hope to share even more news about the future of Empires Apart soon. Stay tuned.
Thank you all,
Gian Paolo
