Dev diary 43 - Open Beta 0.1.0 post-mortem
The first beta patch has been out for a week now and given the absence of "My game crashed!" or similar bug reports and the low number of reported bugs overall I'd say things went about as well as expected (having zero bugs would be quite surprising;
vanilla still hasn't managed that one, and probably never will). There
are certainly some issues with the 0.1.0 version -- the number of issues I'm aware of is approaching 100 (the
vast majority are on the level of "This event's localization needs work", and most are things I've noticed in my own games) -- that will need to be checked (and ideally fixed) once bugfixing begins (barring something major being discovered, that's still a couple of weeks away).
Since there likely isn't complete overlap between who, where, or how people are playing it's quite possible that some of you have encountered bugs or other issues that others have not, so I'd once again ask you to report bugs in the
Bug Report thread and would also ask that you provide other feedback ("This event's reward is much too powerful", etc.) here, as anything that's not reported is pretty unlikely to be fixed anytime soon as that'd require me to find the issue by accident either in my own games, in observer games I'm running, or when checking a file for a completely unrelated reason. Even smaller issues like "Province X has a weird religion/culture/holder/liege", "Character Y has inappropriate traits/religion/culture/etc., has an incorrect name, incorrect parents/children/etc.", or "Event Z messes up the name of one party/fires in the wrong scope/ietc." (please check the event id with charinfo and report that, as it makes it easier to find it) are worth reporting (but try to report them as
one report as spamming the thread with tiny issues makes it more likely that things will be missed), though depending on just what issues are discovered it is possible that some smaller fixes will have to be delayed. Given that I suspect that at least some people here will vanish to play CK3 on Tuesday and might not return anytime soon (if at all), it might be prudent to do so sooner rather than later.
0.1.0 was -- all modesty aside -- a pretty big update; over 4000 new historical characters were added (the vast majority of them in Japan and China), quite a few fictional placeholders were cleaned up (4500+ of them Han...), and over 2000 new events were added (if memory serves, both MNM and JD have less than 1000 each, while HF has a bit more than 2000), to name a few things. Some parts of the update were planned well in advance, such as the overall history file cleanup/improvement (considering some of the more "interesting" things I discovered, I'd say it was a good idea despite taking quite a lot of time), while others either were things that initially were planned for unspecified later updates (e.g. Sunrise Invasion) or that were thought up partway through the work on the update and made sense to include (e.g. the Warriors of the Rising Sun society).
I'd like to bring up the initial list of tentative features discussed way back in
dev diary 26 for a moment (ignore the version numbers mentioned there) to show how we did there:
- The Charlemagne start date.
Included. We used to have a version of it back before JD, which had quite a few issues (Japan had no vassals and Tang's post-An-Shi Rebellion breakup wasn't in, to name two big things) even before the post-HF map update made it unfeasible to support the start at that time.
- The Old Gods start date.
Included. As with CM, tOG used to be in back before JD and had a bunch of issues.
- The Iron Century start date.
Included. Given that the existing history files predated IC's release by quite some time in many cases, this had to be created essentially from scratch.
- Cultural buildings for the cultures that need them.
If memory serves, this got done in one of the smaller patches last year (aside from the Quechua cultural building (and making sure that cultures added in 0.1.0 got some already existing building)).
- Holy orders for the religions that need them (Shinto, Taoism, various reformed pagans), with related events (founding, castle construction, etc.).
Included. Not much to say here.
- Tweaks to the government setup in Japan, possibly regency mechanics for Japan, and possibly Shogunate mechanics (this is lower priority since the Kamakura shogunate only became a thing in 1185).
All of this got done (some of the government tweaks were included in earlier patches). Some of this might still require tweaks (feedback is appreciated), particularly as there's not yet a start date where the Japanese figurehead mess is more complicated than "The Tenno has a Regent" and testing of more complicated historical messes thus hasn't really been feasible.
A decent amount was added (even excluding dynasties that were added as part of adding historical or fictional characters). We still need Min and She dynasty names, however, as finding anything for them turned out to be much harder than expected.
- A Lunar New Year celebration for Taoist/Shenist/Reformed Shenist rulers, and some other flavour related to China/the Chinese religions/the Chinese governments.
The LNY was included (though it's currently off by one when it comes to the year; that's on my list of bugs), and also got the "party crasher" extra (some of you probably have discovered just what I mean by
that, but I'll keep it vague at least until the bugfix patch is out). Some other flavour was added as well (Shenist mourning and the Treasure Fleet being the big ones), though more stuff might still be worth adding. Ideas are welcome, though it should be noted that the flavour in question doesn't have priority at the moment even post-bugfixing (seeing as China already is in a rather good spot compared to quite a few other areas when it comes to flavour), so even good ideas might not get implemented right away.
- Tweaks to the CBs used to reunite/reconquer China.
The relevant CBs were adjusted a bit. Maybe more adjustments will be made in the future, and maybe more/different CBs will be considered, though an all-out "Take all of China in one non-claim war" CB is extremely unlikely to be considered.
- Tweaks to the Mandate of Heaven.
Included. Further tweaks are likely to be made (a few smaller ones are planned for 0.1.1), particularly as having more start dates around and several of those start dates having multiple Chinese Imperial realms of varying sizes in them will be useful when it comes to checking how the Mandate system works in starts when China isn't effectively united in a single blob.
- A Monastic Order for the Shinto religion (+ Japonic Buddhists, most likely).
Included, along with new pilgrimages. Oh, and they got a second society in the WotRS...
As you can see, most things got done, but what got done isn't exactly what was on the tentative list, and in some cases more got done than expected. This somewhat mirrors some vanilla teasers that look rather strange now, such as the first MNM teaser that was about Gnostics. I would expect this to continue to be true as tentative plans for future versions get revealed.
Yes; you read that correctly. The plan
is to continue development of Tianxia -- and that's CK
2 Tianxia -- even after the bugfix patch is out, seeing as there still are quite a few things we'd like to get done, at least as things currently stand (if interest drops to an unviable level, it is possible development will cease, and other commitments and interests could possibly get in the way down the line). It's too soon to reveal anything more specific than that (particularly as some big details need to be worked out first), but I hope to be able to reveal at least some things regarding future plans shortly after the bugfix patch has been released (how soon that happens depends on both the number and nature of the reported bugs/issues and how easy it is to find time to work on the patch, but it'll probably be within the next month or so).