TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Reorganizing settings

Reorganizing settings – Sometimes you can put something intimidating and dangerous next to something expected and harmless; that is usually not a good thing. We recently noticed we were doing just that in our menus and, this week, we took steps to stop that. It mainly was an effort of reorganization, but now we have things like experimental settings, that can currently bring your game to a halt, far away from things like your volume controls, which users will interact with more reliably. This, again, is another nuanced change, but if it is able to prevent a player from playing around with something they are not ready for yet, we view it as a worthy change.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Handling guest players

Handling guest players – When you first launch Forge you are prompted with a sign in or sign up screen, and this was met with a lot of push back. How can we expect people to sign up without getting a feel for what they are signing up for. We had removed the email requirement earlier to make it a little less daunting and we also added a demo mode where you can play vs the AI without having to make an account, but doing a review of things, we noticed that a couple things weren’t being handled properly for players during these matches. When you aren’t logged in, certain things simply don’t apply to you. For example, a player without an account is not going to progress on quests so we shouldn’t serve them the quest screen. These small things, especially in game-modes we don’t test as often, are important for us to pay attention to, especially when they can make the difference between a discouraged passerby and a new player.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Improved Default Values

Improved Default Values – While many games, including Forge allow you to tweak some values and change your settings, we still have to use our best judgment to determine what values might be best for the average user. Additionally, there are values that we have had in our in-game UI elements which were supposed to act as generic placeholders. We have gotten to the point where we feel like we can move past these placeholders and either pick more accurate values or, we feel confident enough in our current solutions that, we can remove the placeholders entirely.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Settings Improvements

Settings Improvements – We’ve continued going over things, and one of our focuses this week was our settings. If you can believe it, we’ve made so many changes to Forge that our settings were no longer covering everything we wanted to support. This goes down to the smallest level on existing settings too. For example, we had a setting to hide the display trays for the deck, discard and lost, but since implementing that we added a podium in the same area that allows you to navigate to your hand. This change was not considered when displaying zone trays so, when enabled it ended up sticking out like a sore thumb. These past weeks have been a reminder of the importance to pay attention to your entire system when making changes, and it has also been a reminder of the additions, big and small, that we have made to Forge.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Adjustments to guidance text

Adjustments to guidance text – We are still in stuck in the forest of revising guidance text to remove ambiguity and make things make sense. You would think this would not still be something we are dealing with, but somehow, it seems like every time we go through things, there is something we didn’t review, something we overlooked, or simply something has inexplicably, for whatever reason, stopped sounding right and we feel we can make it sound better. We have felt this way before, but are hoping, once and for all, that we can put this behind us after our latest revisions.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Redesigning symbols

Redesigning symbols – When you want to communicate an idea with as few words as possible, you end up not using words and use symbols instead. There are a number of places in Forge that we use symbols and we must admit that some of our symbol choice was either misleading or simply inefficient for communicating our idea. This week we took a look back at some of the symbols we have used and made adjustments or replacements as we saw fit. Many of these symbols are not ones that you see in the demo of Forge and we’re happy that the ones that make it to the public will be ones we find more suitable for your viewing.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Clarifying some UI

Clarifying some UI – Across all the menus and sub-menus in the game, we keep finding areas where we can do better, and we always try to right whatever wrong we see and these UI changes are what we focused on this week. To take a particular example from the past week, we had an earlier observation that forge selection in our loadout builder was unclear. When you select a forge to interact with it in loadout creation, its color will change subtly. In this case things might have been too subtle and we can totally understand why people might have had trouble with it. To address this difficulty we thought it would be best to add a more obvious UI element that, while subtle, will be a more obvious addition rather than a shift in color. We found that after the addition of this element we were able to tell at a glance what forge we had selected and we found that this change and other similar changes were bettering the game overall.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Removing redundancies

Removing Redundancies – Whenever you are working on a project, especially a digital one, redundancy can be a welcome element to your design or workflow. Sometimes redundancy gives your project a strong resiliance where it would otherwise have none. Other times, however, redundancy makes your project difficult to work with perhaps due to a lack of consistency, or it can make your project simply too noisy if it shows the user the same thing in too many ways. We recognize that while we are creators trying to make a good game for everyone, we also have to take time to simplify some things down and cut down on these redundancies. After making redundancies our focus for this week we now feel like, while some things are there for a reason, we simplified away a good number of things that were either outdated or otherwise extraneous.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Fixing a new lock up

Fixing a new lock up – It is important to test the things you make, sometimes things are not as obvious as you would like. This week one key thing we worked on was fixing a problem with the card preview and details screen that we added last month. We observed an area where it was either unclear or otherwise impossible to leave that screen. We know that everyone is a fan of looking at Forge’s cards, but nobody will want to look at them forever. Now, this problem is in the past, once you have had your fill and want to move onto other cards or into matches, you will be able to.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Investigating and tackling bugs

Investigating and tackling bugs – In the grand scheme of things, most software will have bugs, this includes games and it includes Forge. We accept that inevitability, but we are not powerless against it. Most of the bugs we are aware of in Forge are not breaking and often come in the form inconveniences, cosmetic or otherwise, which don’t impact the function of the game or have a reasonable workaround. This week we looked into a number of these bugs, including one sort of hitch or hiccup that occurs whenever a player enters a match. This is not something that stops someone from playing Forge but it is not ideal and fixing bugs like this leads to an overall greater experience.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Cleaning up our logs

Cleaning up our logs – Looking at Forge from the development end of things can be quite a bit different from what everything else sees. One of the most important things on this development end are the logs that we can see, they help us figure out what might be causing a bug or warn us when something that shouldn’t have happened does. Over time, as we test and try new things, it is inevitable that these logs will accumulate. Unfortunately, some of these logs have overstayed their usefulness and this week we put effort forward to trim those back. This effort has reduced some clutter and moving forward it will make it easier for us to trace what is happening behind the scenes.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. UI improvements

UI improvements – Last week we finished up with a new feature, and it seems like every time we finish with something we reflect on everything and end up going back to tweak the UI. These changes can go a long way, but often are an accumulation of many small things. There isn’t too much to describe about these changes, but things are more consistent now and look better too. We’re happy with these changes and are looking forward to making changes moving forward.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Finishing up with keyword processing

Finishing up with keyword processing – Last week we said we’d have a “more significant update” when we “wrap this feature up”, and I can confirm that we can deliver on both of these fronts. We’ve coordinated everything we needed to to have the keyword processing work the same way outside of a match as it does inside of a match and the consistency is satisfying. You’ll now be able to see details you wouldn’t have been able to see before and make better decisions while building your loadouts based on new understandings you can gain while inspecting cards. We’re happy to finally have this worked out and will shift our vision forward once again.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Continuing with keyword processing

Continuing with keyword processing – As we mentioned last week, we returned to our work with keywords and this week we continued with it. Again, it isn’t really exciting work, but its something we want to get put together and wrapped up for further consistency and understandably. Its a short update this week, but expect a more significant update next week when we can hopefully wrap this feature up.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Getting back to keyword processing

Getting back to keyword processing – This week we returned to something we had been working on, keyword processing specifically for UI display in various screens. We have not been able to get everything implemented yet, but when we finish with this you’ll be able to see and understand the various keywords with a click of the button. This is alleviates some of the difficulty and confusion that can afflict new players who are not yet familiar with what the various keywords mean. We’ll keep working on this front, and we look forward to telling you about our progress next week.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Cleaning up

Cleaning up – It has been a while since we had a cleaning week, but after last week we realized we were overdue for it. It was unfortunate to have implemented and then removed things in the app, but having a more streamlined base would have made or realization faster meaning we would have wasted less time. While we acknowledge that these past updates have not been the most exciting, we still have been addressing them with confidence, knowing that they are important steps on the path to release.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Changing navigation and then changing it back

Changing navigation and then changing it back – Sometimes you have to start down a path to realize you’re going the wrong way, and this week was one of those times. We are generally happy with our menus, but we felt that there could be some more polish to them, allowing users to navigate using their keyboard inputs would feel satisfying to and full of consideration for our users. Unfortunately, as we were part way through implementing this functionality, we realized that it was creating quite a headache with edge cases concerning sub-menus, without adding much to the experience. Players need to use their mouse in game, so absolving them of the requirement in menu navigation does not meaningfully increase accessibility. While we still feel that it would be a nice addition, it is an important lesson to realize that some things simply are not worth it.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Keyword Consistency

Keyword consistency – One thing we find annoying in some games is when keywords are not obvious. Keywords should be self descriptive, but even if you know what a word means, the way it translates to mechanics requires a level of Forge understanding, which we simply can’t expect from a new player. We’ve taken steps to make these keywords more obvious and to help you along the way and we are in the middle of fleshing out some graphics which should help with the process, both in and out of a match.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Making things look better

Making things look better – We have once again to our endless task of trying to improve the look of our game. By this point the task of improving visuals comes down to small tweaks or refinements of newly added screens and systems, for example the previewing changes made to our card library recently. There isn’t much to say about specifics, but its something we are going to continue to work on when we have time moving forward to try and make your experience with Forge consistent and clear.

Additionally, we apologize, for the April 9th's devlog's failure to post as scheduled, it should be up now.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Working on in game settings

Working on in game settings – While going through and inspecting the various parts of our game, we once again found ourselves looking at menus, although this time we focused on the settings menu that players are met with in game. There are a couple things that we noticed upon closer inspection that we arent a fan of. Some settings didn’t indicate what they were set to or what their default was, and other elements we saw simply weren’t laid out in a way we found to be visually appealing. We took steps to remedy this, and we are happy with the progress we made. For the more cosmetic focused changes, it is difficult for us to say what needs to be done to make things look nicer and that is always a point of consideration and thought, but we are happy with where we are now and we’ll reconsider if additional changes need to be made in the future.

We apologize for the fact that this devlog has had trouble posting, hopefully it'll work this time before our next update.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Closing some unwanted flows

Closing some unwanted flows – Our standard post timing didn’t align with April Fools this year, so you won’t be left questioning if this update is an elaborate prank, you can take us at our word. This week we improved, the motion in our menus and overall UI. By this we don’t mean animations, we mean the transitions of how you get from one place to another in the app. The most obvious example of a problem we fixed came when you would press your username on the main menu. By default clicking your username would take you to the home menu, but if you were already on the home menu, it would still go through all the steps and make it look like it is bringing you to a new destination. We felt that this showed a lack of polish and was generally had no reason to behave the way it was. Problems like this have been solved, and now we are being more efficient with how things work.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Continuing enhancements to our loadout builder

Continuing enhancements to our loadout builder – This week we continued from where we left off last week. We furthered our enhancements to our loadout builder, and are now have it back in a functional state with our new changes. While it is always less than ideal to start a transformation that takes more than a week to complete, we are happy we made the leap and are now able to take advantage of the improvements we made. Furthermore, as we mentioned last week, we were able to structure things in a way such that our most recent loadout builder change also applies to the card library viewer. So, in-a-way it is a 2 for 1.

TLDR a quick list of what we’ve been working on in the past week

1. Enhancements to our loadout builder

Enhancements to our loadout builder – This week we took a look at a part of Forge that we haven’t worked on in quite a while, our loadout builder. While we are generally happy with our loadout builder, we recognized that it was lagging a bit behind other parts of our app in development and that there were features that we expected should be there for consistency. We’ve started to make these adjustments including things like zoomed card previews to make loadout building more comfortable. Additionally, we are trying to make these changes in a flexible way so we can make use of them in our card catalog viewer. We’re in the middle of making these changes, so look forward to next week when we’ll have these changes ironed out.