I was wondering what the current "state of the union" is on FL - both the game and the community. I’ve joined a few weeks ago and have enjoyed the game a lot but reading this forum hasn’t given me much immediately intuitive insight into the more meta-aspects of the game and the community. So, apologies if my questions have been asked and please do redirect me as appropriate.
Is the game engine still being improved/developped or is it in a purely support mode? I know that when the StoryNexus platform was discontinued one of the reasons was to devote more resources to FL features but I haven’t seen any major changelog posts since early last year. Are any new features for the engine in the pipeline? Are any features actively discussed/requested by the community (regardless of whether the developpers have commented on them)?
Similar to 1, but more about the content. I still keep seeing a lot of "Impossible" storylets that I recall seeing a couple of years ago when I first attempted to get into the game (one of the cases in the Honey-Addled Detective storylet comes to mind).
Other than this forum, what are the main community haunts? I know there is a reddit and a couple of tumblrs but that’s about it. I also saw a thread about the IRC channel but didn’t quite get it - what is its purpose? Is it for more real time RP interaction? How healthy is the community? Is the player base relatively constant or growing? Just based on skim-reading the forum most discussion is about stories I haven’t come across and therefore I assume are more advanced players discussing the more advanced stories.
And just to clarify - I am by no means complaining and I realise that with the upcoming release of Sunless Sea the developpers are probably focusing on that. This is more so that I can get the bulk of collective knowledge on the subject.
Welcome to the Fallen London community, I and many other forumites will certainly be happy to reply (some in very colorful language I’m sure). Now then, for the questions.
Engine changes to Storynexus are infrequent, it’s relatively stable and capable of running Fallen London effectively. As for third party developers, such as some of the players on the forum who have worked on new worlds, there are some general requests but they have made some interesting projects despite a number of limitations. I know little beyond what I have heard but I am sure there are others who can explain the situation better in that regard.
For the better part of a year the team has been preoccupied with setting up Sunless Sea. To that effect new updates to Fallen London have been intermittent. We recently had two ambitions updated with new content, and many of the holidays have received small upgrades. There are indeed a slew of storylets that have yet to be fully implemented (hence the impossible options).
However, I am confident that Failbetter will use much of the new content from Sunless Sea (locals, people, weapons) in future updates to Fallen London. The Carnelian Coast is especially important in a number of stories in Fallen London lore, and it sounds like a delightful vacation spot.
This forum is the primary gathering place for Fallen Londoners, but you can catch the odd code and news on twitter:
[quote=genesis]I was wondering what the current "state of the union" is on FL - both the game and the community. I’ve joined a few weeks ago and have enjoyed the game a lot but reading this forum hasn’t given me much immediately intuitive insight into the more meta-aspects of the game and the community. So, apologies if my questions have been asked and please do redirect me as appropriate.
Is the game engine still being improved/developped or is it in a purely support mode? I know that when the StoryNexus platform was discontinued one of the reasons was to devote more resources to FL features but I haven’t seen any major changelog posts since early last year. Are any new features for the engine in the pipeline? Are any features actively discussed/requested by the community (regardless of whether the developpers have commented on them)?
Similar to 1, but more about the content. I still keep seeing a lot of "Impossible" storylets that I recall seeing a couple of years ago when I first attempted to get into the game (one of the cases in the Honey-Addled Detective storylet comes to mind).
Other than this forum, what are the main community haunts? I know there is a reddit and a couple of tumblrs but that’s about it. I also saw a thread about the IRC channel but didn’t quite get it - what is its purpose? Is it for more real time RP interaction? How healthy is the community? Is the player base relatively constant or growing? Just based on skim-reading the forum most discussion is about stories I haven’t come across and therefore I assume are more advanced players discussing the more advanced stories.
And just to clarify - I am by no means complaining and I realise that with the upcoming release of Sunless Sea the developpers are probably focusing on that. This is more so that I can get the bulk of collective knowledge on the subject.[/quote]
'ello.
I think most of the work on FL is for content. I don’t think it’s really something that can be spoken of as in support mode or not - as it’s a continually growing thing - but the growth is through content. (But I suspect I’m misunderstanding something here.) They have mentioned the possibility of making it better suited to mobiles, which would be nice.
Yup. It grows and grows. Most is new content - I think the impossibles are just there to taunt us.
IRC is just … for chatting. Either getting fast responses to questions re the game, or talking about whatever. A friendly place for similar minded types who appreciate the game, eh wot?
Since FL is mostly single-player, I suspect only the hard-core/advanced people post here/IRC - there is only a little motivation (via social actions) to find other players.
Edit: I’ve used ‘grow’ a lot. Must get me a thesaurus. edited by babelfishwars on 2/2/2015
New engine features do appear every so often. The Sunless Sea kickstarter campaign involved the creation of Panther Kittens, which exhibit a new feature of being both equipable and usable, for example, and there’s that super-annoying message bar at the top that simply won’t take the hint and go away. So yeah, I think there are still tweaks being done to the engine.
Almost all the new content hasn’t been opening up old impossibilities (apart from the new Ambition stuff), but new stuff entirely. I’m pretty happy about that: far better for the team to be working on stuff that inspires them then picking up old projects that they might not feel invested in.
Thank you, all, for the replies. Very much what I wanted to know
By engine features I did mean things like mobile support and the like. One thing I personally have found lacking is a better journal feature. I wish it were possible to organise the info in the journal a bit better and keep track of the plot of different storylines, as well as keep track of various resources etc. I know some of that is covered by the Wiki but FB content constraints in wiki limit its usefulness somewhat in that regard