Hello everyone and welcome to the latest installment of BSF's 2000 Characters. To get right to it, I want to apologize for the big fat elephant in the room which is the unfortunate production delay in the last weeks leading to features being released much (much) later than expected. Really not much more to it than a bit of personal life and business life (outside of programming) causing my hands to get tied up and away from their programming duties. As I've mentioned in a past issue, being a player of indie games myself I know how frustrating it is to receive the "personal life" explanation that accompanies delayed updates and/or missed deadlines. Now being on the other side of the spectrum, I also know how frustrating it is to have to give said explanation as I really enjoy what I do and it's never fun when circumstances keep you from doing what you want to be doing (in my case, programming). But I am definitely sorry that you all have had to wait longer than you deserve to be waiting for some of these features and I plan to get them to you as soon as possible.
While we're at it, I did want to quickly mention the whole deadline issue. I really try my best to have a good amount of transparency about what's going on in the background production-wise so that you all know what's coming up and around when you can expect it. As such, I let you know a date when you can expect something, but unfortunately, with so many unknowns that randomly pop up at times, the estimated date can change quite quickly and unexpectedly. This is probably my fault for phrasing these dates as "deadlines" and definitive instead of the estimates a lot of them have been. I guess I just want to make sure you have some kind of idea when a particular feature or update is suppose to arrive as opposed to not having any clue whatsoever. But in the midst of bad wording, delayed features, and missed deadlines I can definitely see where some frustration is coming from and hope to work at correcting what I(2000) can. In the future I will try to give more broad timeframes and make it more clear that any dates given are purely estimates to give you some kind of idea. But my priority is to make sure that the features I put out are to a high standard and to not compromise on that and I hope when you (finally) get to see the two upcoming features that you will see the diligence that was put into each of them.
Besides that, you all pretty much know my game plan for what's to come as that hasn't changed. The crew overhaul discussion amongst the Elite Guard has been completed and an excellent blueprint for how the new crew feature will be has been drawn up. This is thanks to all of the Elite Guard contributing their time to the discussions as well as any players who have over time contributed their ideas in the forums, Help Desk, BMs, etc. The design of the mobile version of the game has also been drafted up and has a great look to it. Both of these are awaiting production and should enter it shortly.
To end I just want to thank you for your patience during the delays and I look forward to releasing Achievements to you very shortly. Blackjack will follow thereafter and then production of the crew overhaul and mobile version will commence. I really think you will enjoy all of the aforementioned features and certainly know you will enjoy them actually being released. So until next time, have fun!
