DW2 Updated State of the Game and Roadmap (April 2023)

[Erik Rutins]

State of the Game and Roadmap
As of April 21st, 2023
(Official Version “Aurora” 1.1.2.4)

Greetings again to everyone in the Distant Worlds 2 community,

First, Elliot and I would again like to thank our players for their patience and support since Distant Worlds 2 was released about one year ago. Time continues to fly and we’ve made some major progress in improving and expanding on Distant Worlds 2, but there is also much more in the works.

(TLDR: We have expanded the DW2 team to ensure the issues with the initial release are not repeated. The massive Aurora update was a major step forward for almost all areas of the game and the first DLC adding in the Ikkuro and the Dhayut which we released in March was well received. We have a major performance improving update in the works which should be released next month. We’ve also made other improvements and fixed many gameplay issues, but many more remain. Our future focus is on more on gameplay fixes and improvements, UI and AI improvements and additional content. We are continuing to release regular free updates to keep improving all areas of DW2 while also working on a second Factions DLC and a major expansion after that)

The State of the Initial Release

We’ve posted three state of the game announcements in the past to apologize for the issues in the initial release, but some have not seen those, so we’d like to address that again.

It’s clear, in hindsight, that while we had over 300 testers (three times what we had on DW1) and DW2 was in alpha and beta testing for a year and was delayed twice internally to try to make sure we would have a solid release, we did not have a large enough testing pool to catch all critical issues related to hardware configurations or even all the gameplay issues. It’s also clear that despite the best efforts of a lot of very good volunteer testers, we didn’t achieve the level of polish that many of you expected at release and that is our responsibility.

Many have asked how this could have happened and we’ll attempt to summarize below. DW2 is a very ambitious release for a small team and Elliot’s first 3D game. Regarding the low level technical issues that caused so many crashes and problems on a lot of systems, we saw only the very tip of that iceberg in pre-release testing and did not realize how big a problem it was. A larger test team would have given us a much clearer picture of this critical problem and we would have delayed the release further to address it if we had realized it’s scope and severity. Fixing that properly has taken up much of the last year of post-release work, a significant part of it to even fully understand the issues which we could not duplicate on our original test systems. Regarding the gameplay issues, too many issues got by us because we were trying to do too much in too short a time. Some issues were missed, others were found and we though fixed but in fact still unresolved, others were reported but missed or misunderstood.

As a result of all this, we have expanded the DW2 team since release with an additional developer who is focused on the more technical side of the engine as well as adding other team members and expanding the roles of still others. We’re also adding more bandwidth on the testing and administration side and changing our procedures to focus more on internal testing. A large part of the goal here is to allow Elliot and I to spend a bit more time on gameplay as we did with Distant Worlds 1 and pass on a few of the other hats we’ve been wearing to others who will wear them better than we have.

The Current State of the Game

With the “Aurora” update we released as official in March, about four months of additional work on DW2 was stabilized and rolled out to all players. This included improvements across almost all gameplay areas and a significantly enhanced AI. You can see a summary of all the changes in the update announcements, there are far too many to go over here but if you haven’t updated lately we recommend it! The feedback on this update has been very positive, with many players reporting much improved gameplay and performance. However, issues remain and we’ve been listening to your feedback.

We had in parallel been working on major performance and technical engine improvements, which were not stable enough for the “Aurora” update but we released those in the post-“Aurora” public beta updates for a first public test. These changes increase performance massively compared to previous versions, but they required so many changes that they also introduced many new bugs. We’ve been working through those new issues and hope to release these performance improvements in an official “Hyperspeed” update in the next month or so.

We also released the first content expansion for DW2, a new DLC which adds the Ikkuro and Dhayut as new playable factions. These new factions were the first to showcase increased faction differentiation and the feedback on these has also been generally positive, though some issues specific to the Ikkuro storyline as well as some minor bugs are being addressed. As we stated when we released the DLC, we wanted to make sure players who had been playing DW2 and enjoying it had something new to try out, and there’s more of that coming, but we will be updating the base factions to bring them to a similar level as well in future free updates.

The DLC release and future expansion plans do not change our commitment to continue updating and improving the base game in continuing free updates. We want to make sure everyone who purchased DW2 can enjoy it to its fullest on their system and for their playstyle.

On the gameplay front, we continue to read your feedback and much more gameplay work remains. For example, we can see that there are still some fleet behavior issues especially relating to tankers in manually controlled fleets and we will continue to give more attention to all areas of gameplay.

Our next areas to focus on are listed below…

Future Priorities

1. Complete and stabilize the current performance public beta updates into an official performance-focused “Hyperspeed” update which should resolve all remaining significant performance issues.
2. Update the base factions in the game, one by one, to a similar level as the recently released Ikkuro and Dhayut when it comes to faction differentiation.
3. Improve the AI further, especially in the areas of economic management, population policies and research prioritization.
4. Improve message handling further, especially regarding attack notification message spam and repeating advisor messages. We plan to add additional message filters for “all Pirates” and “all Empires” and rethink and improve the message purge system. We also hope to add the ability to tell an advisor “do not suggest this again” or to tell a Pirate or an Empire “do not contact me again with this offer”.
5. Improve the appearance of empire borders, adding a thicker border line at the edges of an empire to help distinguish it from nearby empires with similar flags and colors.
6. Continuing improvements on fleet and ship behavior. This especially relates to recent reports of incorrect tanker behavior in manual fleets. The vast majority of issue reports in this area still involve very specific combinations of tactical and automation settings in specific situations, in other words they are now mostly rare, but as this is a core part of the game we’ll continue improving this area until it’s as polished as it can possibly be. We plan to add a tutorial for fleet and ship tactical settings as well as more detail in the galactopedia to help with these issues.
7. Further improvements to pathing issues related to nebula storms and pathfinding issues that still in rare cases result in ridiculous paths around the galaxy. We plan to review the area of storms and galactic terrain to make sure that they are providing the gameplay benefits we were hoping to see and if not, we will rebalance them. We are also looking into the question of making it easier to plan jumps that do not require star system waypoints.
8. Improve quality of life for manual players further. We have already made a series of improvements here, but our plan includes returning the full manual play functionality of DW1. While DW2 includes quite a few new semi-automated features which can help with manual play, for example the global queues and fleet and army templates that were not in DW1, we recognize that many players are still missing tools that would make manual play more enjoyable. Next in line as a large task are ship and fleet order queueing as well as a lot of additional minor improvements to various UI areas.
9. Further improvements to ship auto-design and auto-upgrade to better consider nebula/storm defenses as well as existing weapon component categories and sizes for the upgrade system, so that players will find the upgrade tool more generally useful and so the AI empires will be better able to manage your empire and their own when it comes to navigating the galactic terrain. We plan to add policy settings to allow players to better specify which component families their auto-designer should emphasize.
10. Adding a Galactopedia and Galaxy map Search function and Distance measurement tool. This has been requested by many players.
11. As a result of the addition of the Dhayut, we’ve seen more feedback and suggestions on the population policy side, specific to slavery but also other policies. We plan to revisit the design of these in the future and also improve the AI’s management of population policies
12. Modding support will continue to be a priority. We’ve expanded this greatly since release, including the addition of an in-game mod manager, Steam Workshop support and much better handling of multiple mods. Our next steps will focus on better support for code modding and making data and bundle modding easier.
There are also other reported issues beyond those above which we will also address as we go forward, this is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are our current highest priority goals.

Second Content Expansion

As always, the Content and Art teams are not heavily involved in most of the game fixes we’ve been working through, so they have been spending most of their time working on some new playable factions. We plan to release a second “Factions” DLC content expansion in the second half of this Summer, which will add the Quameno (the ultimate research-focused faction in DW2) and the Gizureans (the most rapidly reproducing growth faction in DW2) to the game.
We also have a major expansion in the works involving the Shakturi, but we can’t share any more details about that yet.

Update Schedule

Finally, let me discuss the update schedule. Our current workflow allows us to release one new beta update per week but it’s typically better for us to release one every two weeks. After the performance betas become official, we expect to shift to a bi-weekly public beta update schedule. It will generally take 6-8 weeks of beta updates to get to an update that is stable enough to become official. This means we expect public beta updates roughly every two weeks after the “Hyperspeed” update and new official updates every 2-3 months.

Our Thanks

Thank you again if you took the time to read all of this and for your support of Distant Worlds 2. Please check in weekly going forward and try the newest beta updates if you’d like to see how things are shaping up. Please stay tuned for more information on the upcoming expansions as we get closer to Summer 2023.

Sincerely,

Erik Rutins and Elliot Gibbs
Matrix Games and CodeForce

[GHerr]

Thanks to the whole DW2 team for a great game. Thanks for this updated road map. Looking forward to all the update.

[rxnnxs]

Yes, thank you very much for your exhaustive explanation on how and why.

THIS is my favorite:

12. Modding support will continue to be a priority. We’ve expanded this greatly since release, including the addition of an in-game mod manager, Steam Workshop support and much better handling of multiple mods. Our next steps will focus on better support for code modding and making data and bundle modding easier.

BUT all of it sounds really intriguing. DIstance Measuring, Queue for micro managingm better flight paths, nice!

And I keep in touch of all patches so I can see how it takes shape.

but PLEASE, make us able to change the music in an easy way.
I have exchanged EVERY part of the music files, and that is really too hard work.
It should be possible to change the xml file in a way to use some music files for each category like action and so on.
And other music snippets from the original music should not be played.
This should be possible working on it for an hour. shouldn't it?

with kind regards

[Cauldyth]

Once again, thank you to the entire team, for what is clearly a passion project. There's nothing else out there like the DW series!

[Buio]

Thank you for the roadmap update. Looking forward to the upcoming patches and new content.

[Tanaka]

Thank you for the very detailed update Erik. The game is finally shaping up!

[Thelonelychair]

I appreciate the team’s focus on tightening up the game’s existing mechanics before stacking a bunch of new ones on top. Also looking forward to seeing the new factions, but damn it if I’m not the worst for always wanting to role play as humanity basically every game. As such I wouldn’t mind humans getting some fleshing out in an up coming patch, i imagine they are a popular if no let the most popular faction to play.

One other suggestion I would make, is to add more sound effects to the game. Im mainly talking about sounds when you open a menu, or select a ship/planet, etc..

[Erik Rutins]

but PLEASE, make us able to change the music in an easy way.
I have exchanged EVERY part of the music files, and that is really too hard work.
It should be possible to change the xml file in a way to use some music files for each category like action and so on.
And other music snippets from the original music should not be played.
This should be possible working on it for an hour. shouldn't it?

Would it be possible for you to join one of the Friday modding chats with Tyler on our Discord server to discuss the problems you've experienced with music modding?

[Erik Rutins]

I appreciate the team’s focus on tightening up the game’s existing mechanics before stacking a bunch of new ones on top. Also looking forward to seeing the new factions, but damn it if I’m not the worst for always wanting to role play as humanity basically every game. As such I wouldn’t mind humans getting some fleshing out in an up coming patch, i imagine they are a popular if no let the most popular faction to play.

I can share the good news that Humans will be the first of the base game factions that will be getting a pass to bring them up to the Ikkuro/Dhayut level in terms of faction differentiation. That work has already begun.

[thegreybetween]

I can share the good news that Humans will be the first of the base game factions that will be getting a pass to bring them up to the Ikkuro/Dhayut level in terms of faction differentiation. That work has already begun.

Any chance that update will include some female character art?

[rxnnxs]

but PLEASE, make us able to change the music in an easy way.
I have exchanged EVERY part of the music files, and that is really too hard work.
It should be possible to change the xml file in a way to use some music files for each category like action and so on.
And other music snippets from the original music should not be played.
This should be possible working on it for an hour. shouldn't it?

Would it be possible for you to join one of the Friday modding chats with Tyler on our Discord server to discuss the problems you've experienced with music modding?

I can try, but maybe I can set things clear beforehand.
I do not think that talking about that is the first step - better would be to show what is in my eyes needed an what is not working right now.
Please feel free to look into my new thread concerning this and explaining in detail what I experienced while trying to change the music:
Begin of explanation

[OrnluWolfjarl]

Thanks for the roadmap and all your hard work!

[rustyj]

I really enjoy the game and look forward to future developments. One area which does not seem to have been fully fleshed out and was not mentioned in the roadmap is planetary defense. ATM the only defense that is worth building is the fighter base and that is definitely not working in the beta and seems buggy in the public. Given the ineffectiveness of the other available defenses, the fighter bases were essential in a big match up late game, at least for my game style. In fact the role of current defense facilities is mystifying given their ineffectiveness to repel even a small flotilla. I would like to see a major rebalancing and bug fix for planetary defenses, as the existing situation is game breaking. It simply is not practical to have fleets cover an empire with 100+ planets.

[Thelonelychair]

I really enjoy the game and look forward to future developments. One area which does not seem to have been fully fleshed out and was not mentioned in the roadmap is planetary defense. ATM the only defense that is worth building is the fighter base and that is definitely not working in the beta and seems buggy in the public. Given the ineffectiveness of the other available defenses, the fighter bases were essential in a big match up late game, at least for my game style. In fact the role of current defense facilities is mystifying given their ineffectiveness to repel even a small flotilla. I would like to see a major rebalancing and bug fix for planetary defenses, as the existing situation is game breaking. It simply is not practical to have fleets cover an empire with 100+ planets.

I can’t comment too much on the planetary defense installations, but are you using automated defense fleets? Because it may not be practical/‘realistic’ to harden every single planet in a huge empire with defenses strong enough to ward off any given random fleet incursion even if installations were balanced more to your liking. (He who defends everything, defends nothing.)

In my games I will have a number of large battle fleets, each assigned their own Hotkey 1-9, that I mostly control manually. And a much larger number of small automated defense fleets to scurry around destroying creatures, pirate bases, and random pirate fleets. They don’t always get there in time but such is life. IIRC you have to set your global fleet attack setting to ‘automated’ in the fleet tab of the empire policy screen for the automated fleets to function. The fleets you want to keep in manual will stay in manual even with the fleet attacks set to automated.

Sorry if this is all old news to you, but I have no problem maintaining order in huge empires with auto defense fleets.

[rxnnxs]

but PLEASE, make us able to change the music in an easy way.
I have exchanged EVERY part of the music files, and that is really too hard work.
It should be possible to change the xml file in a way to use some music files for each category like action and so on.
And other music snippets from the original music should not be played.
This should be possible working on it for an hour. shouldn't it?

Would it be possible for you to join one of the Friday modding chats with Tyler on our Discord server to discuss the problems you've experienced with music modding?

I can not write you a private message or I am not understanding how it works. I have now two posts in my outbox and I did not find out how to send it!

Now here is what I wrote in the forementioned thread to make it short:

Just to make it short and describe ONE (or two..) of the things that do not work:

When the data/music folder is NOT renamed or deleted, contents of it are played, regardless what you have in your base mod folder.

IF it is deleted OR renamed, the music in the mod folder (the upmost folder and that music) will be played.
NOT CERTAIN aboout the mod/music-folders INSIDE the FOLDERS below MOD/MUSIC/FOLDERS..

SO, if I make a mod, all what is inside should replace the original files when they are at the same place and have the same name.
To make things easier, it would be great if we could have the .xml file that controls all the music and therefore we can overwrite the .xml folder with the locations for the music files.
then we do not have to replace every music file but can delete and modify it that way.

The musicTracks.xml file is not the file that controls it. it must be in the packed game files.

[Clux]

Thank you so much Erik for the update! I really like how much work you guys have put into Distant Worlds and accepted criticism from the initial release, it shows us than just as us, you guys really love the game and want it to be the best possible

[rxnnxs]

I would like to join a discussion with tyler today on discord, but there is no sign of activity.

@clux:

Thank you so much Erik for the update! I really like how much work you guys have put into Distant Worlds and accepted criticism from the initial release, it shows us than just as us, you guys really love the game and want it to be the best possible

SIgnature:
Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics!

p.s.:
Intersting, what a coincidence!
Today I read this saying the first time in my life:
"Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics!"
And now you have it in your signature.
I read it today in an article about russia and ukraine and how russia as one said, just has a problem with logistics..

[boolybooly]

Dropping in to say I am looking forward to the upcoming performance update.

Will start a new playthrough when that is live.

[Thelonelychair]

I appreciate the team’s focus on tightening up the game’s existing mechanics before stacking a bunch of new ones on top. Also looking forward to seeing the new factions, but damn it if I’m not the worst for always wanting to role play as humanity basically every game. As such I wouldn’t mind humans getting some fleshing out in an up coming patch, i imagine they are a popular if no let the most popular faction to play.

I can share the good news that Humans will be the first of the base game factions that will be getting a pass to bring them up to the Ikkuro/Dhayut level in terms of faction differentiation. That work has already begun.

That’s awesome! and no rush or anything, but would you be able to ballpark when that might be(human update)? I’m just curious. Totally understand if you’re unable to say.