I feel like Stonehearth is starting to do something in secret and not telling us.
Alpha 17 was about engineer and more bug fixing
Alpha 18 was about destroying houses and bug fixing
What is coming in Alpha 19?
For all previous releases we could surmise what was coming from videos and updates. There was chatter about engineers while on Alpha 15 and they came in Alpha 17. Orcs and other baddies were worked on for a long time and came in Alpha 16. Recently there has not been much chatter on forums, the streams, or blog about new content. Mostly bug fixes, tapestries, tuning the animation and adding templates. None of that is new. We know Allie is working on the world. Allie and Linda are working on templates. Yang and maybe someone else is working on optimization. But that only accounts for 3 people. There are a lot more people.
What are you hiding?
We know there is new content such as geomancer, magsmith, biomes, seasons, other people (pirates… etc), then there is stuff you said you wont work on till later such as multiplayer, mac. Which one are you working on?
They aren’t hiding anything. If you listen carefully on all the livestreams, you can tell what is everyone working on currently, even those that we haven’t heard much of recently
A19 focus will be to update RC, which was behind in comparison with Ascendancy, and more performance work. Oh, and probably that new idle system where the hearthlings talk (which has been seen on some livestreams).
If we get any new feature as a surprise on A19, I doubt it will be any of those you mentioned, as they require a lot more time to develop.
as @Relyss said, so far A19 is about updating Rayya’s Children and performance, though i’m personally hoping A19 will also include more of @Raj’s amazing music.
One thing we can notice is that now it is way harder for them to make a “themed” update. Before, there was much to fill, they could get a theme about the lacking features. Like the a16 that added a lot of fighting mechanics, fighting classes, mobs and new campaigns.
I believe the “Theme” of Alpha 19 if you want to wrap all the updates into one package and label it is adding “Life/Personality” to the hearthlings with a big focus on RC.
They want to distinguish the personalities and differences between the 2 kingdoms. They were adding in more idle stuff for the hearthlings which included them conversing between one another(like small talk), and more idle animations.
This isn’t from any inside knowledge that I know, it’s just from gathering all I’ve heard from the dev streams and the general direction they seem to be moving towards with upcoming updates.
Well, they can do a theme update easily enough, but it wouldn’t be quick and it wouldn’t add a lot to the development progression. It would just be a bunch of content… which is nice, but not the top priority right now.
Maybe for, like, alpha 22-23, it might be nice to take a break from adding new mechanics and tech, and go back to adding new content to keep the gameplay fresh. New monster variants, more fine craftables (especially for the potter), new quest/story events such as Black Cord activities or a different side of the Red Kiln storyline (e.g. establishing a relationship with one of the tribes by sending gifts and eventually unlocking a trader). All of those sorts of additions could be nice side-projects, and they’d liven up the gameplay for the holiday season.
Then again, we’ll probably have a new Frostfeast around that time anyway… at least I hope we do!
But you’re right, the features Radiant are working on now don’t fit together into convenient bundles anymore. Partly that’s because these current updates (both the recent ones and the in-progress ones) are more focussed on “behind the scenes” rather than visible content; but mostly it’s just a matter of priorities like with the combat update.
