There were a lot of big changes to myMO this week although they were mostly behind the scenes. First we started moving away from AWS databases and started to use SAV files on the host’s machine for things they customized and data stores shipped with the game for things that don’t change. This will make things faster for the player, as well as, save us money because we will now longer need to have an AWS database hub for all our game players and have recurring monthly costs when they access the AWS database while they were playing the game. This process of moving to SAV files will take at least 3 sprints of which this sprint was the first.
The second major change was that we have completely abandoned the way we host and join games. We no longer use the old menu system and have completely adopted the new game flow using Region and Venue menus introduced a couple of sprints ago. In order to make this work, we have decided that you will invite your Steam friends to play a game with you rather than creating a public Steam Lobby which anyone could join. We may eventually offer a public lobby option but it will be in addition to the Invite your Steam Friends approach to having events. Here is a video showing this new process of how to have a game by inviting your Steam Friends to an Event:
We also added the ability for multiple custom levels that you can edit and hold events in for each Venue you choose. For example, you could pick the Rave Cave and customize it with props, lights, etc any number of times and hold events in it. This allows game players to have a lot more choices in what they want to build in the game. Also, we standardized all the existing “base” venues to work the same in terms of DJ lights and customization features such as adding new props, lights, cameras, etc.
Going forward, as the game is maturing we will try to build at least a couple of new Venues per sprint. This sprint we took the Stage Equipment Store and put all the Stage Equipment props in an abandoned Warehouse instead of just sitting in an empty level.
Lastly we added a new Dance Club as a Venue. Here is a video of the new Dance Club:
