Our One Month Anniversary

It was one month ago today that we launched. Phew! It’s been all crazy! Before The Big Day we imagined that we’d spend the first month just handling the growth, fixing what breaks and generally not getting much new stuff in while we made the oft-exhausting adjustment to 24/7 operation.

But it didn’t turn out that way: instead, we’re a bit proud that we’ve actually been able to keep up the old pace of development, releasing about a dozen new features, big and small, along with a hundred or two little tweaks, fixes and refinements (causing our list-crossing-off department to scramble for stronger pens).

(For the nerds among you: since launch, we’ve had 4,909 (!) revisions checked in to our source control system by 23 contributors — a net of 31,353 new lines of code (46,581 added and 15,228 removed). More to the point, we’ve deployed new code onto running production servers an eyebrow-crunching 1,015 times. And all the while, players zoom around constantly changing the state of the world, which persists as intended, even as underlying reality shifts.)

If you’d like to follow along, we now have the @glitchlog Twitter account set up for posting changes live as they happen (the dozen most recent entries show up in a sidebar in the forums, so you don’t have to be all Twitter-y to see them). And, starting with this entry, we’ll be posting weekly roundups of what’s new in Glitch, right here on the blog. Finally, over the next few weeks we’ll also be posting a bit about what’s in development and what’s planned for the future.

What’s New Since Launch

Since the whole list is way too long, what follows are some of the highlights. (If you want something more comprehensive, most changes that a player could notice are on the log.)

Party Spaces: we’ve long had a “Party Chat” feature for messaging ad-hoc groups of players, but we never gave it the love and nourishment it deserved. So we raised the maximum size from 7 players to 71 and introduced a whole new way of partying in the game: Party Packs (like this one) are now available from the Toy Vendors. Once “activated”, they create a new, whacky, short-lived private locations into which Party members can teleport and share some cheer.

Though they are expensive, the Party Spaces come with a lot of (respawning) resources. So all the hosting needs are taken care of and it’s easy to justify asking some friends to kick in to cover the costs (any Party member can contribute the currants to keep it going too). More details in this forum thread.

Status updates inside the game: Players can now write, read and respond to status updates from within the game itself in the new “Updates” channel. Since the same feed also flows to the Home page and iPhone app simultaneously, players can carry on conversations with their in-game friends seamlessly whether they’re frolicking around Ur, surreptitiously peeking in from work or in the dentist’s waiting room (true story).

Camera mode & Eyeballery: Press ‘C’ in the game and you’ll have activated the new Camera mode which lets you pan ‘n’ scan around your current level without moving an inch. The super-oglers can learn the new Eyeballery skill to expand their field of vision and scope out the entire level from corner to corner.

And once you’ve got that down, the Snapshotting skill lets you save screenshots straight to your hard drive without having to mess around with other software to do the screenshot or cropping of UI elements and overlays out of the frame. (Note: you’ll also need a Camera!)

Emblem spending & Icons of the Giants: If you are the kind to donate a lot to shrines, you’ll appreciate the fact that excess emblems can now be put to good use: individual emblems can be “spent” (once the first related skill has been unlocked) to speed up learning times by a value equivalent to 1,000 favor points. Or, you can save up eleven of one type of emblem to create a valuable Icon of the related Giant: eleven Emblems of Cosma, for example, can be turned into an Icon of Cosma.

Triple Jump: If you can jump … then-land-then-jump … then-land-then-jump juuuuuust right, you will now woo-hoo with additional height: if your timing is precise and you’re moving pretty fast, you’ll get so high up there you’ll wonder if you activated some spinach without noticing it. This introduces both new sources of challenge in races and new sources of delight in everyday travel around the world.

A better interface: The quantity picker now allows for free-form entry of the number you need to get the job done; both the friends online section of the home page and the pages for individual status updates are beautiful-er and more useful; a menu built into each chat pane allows for useful features like copying messages to your clipboard; you can see which items you already own when browsing through a vendor’s wares and there’s now a chat feature built right into the trade window to make negotiations easier.

And in order to not make this list go on forever, A Whole Bunch of Other Stuff: To give you some peace of mind when stopping to organize your bags, items you drop on the ground are now temporarily “locked” to you so they don’t get yoinked by passers-by. Gift subscriptions are now available. The Emotional Bear now has a new verb ‘Anthropomorphize’, which you can use once per game day to boost your mood.

Energy adjustments, nerfs, and balancing tweaks have been performed on dozens of items: some things now flow more freely (like musicblocks and Gameshow Tickets) while others harder to come by (the Rube has started limiting number of trade offers he’ll make before disappearing in a huff). Several exploits were closed off (sorry cheese-agers and noodle makers!)

We’ve added two new regions to the game (Callopee and Pollokoo) and over 100 new items to the Wardrobe plus five new hairstyles in the Vanity. Several quests have been simplified or completely revamped, had their instructions tuned up or otherwise improved. There are now Community Guidelines! Prices have changed on many items at the vendors and many more are now completely unavailable from vendors: as the first part of the switch to a freer economy, they must be obtained from other players. And, of course … much more!

What’s Coming Next

Now that we’re back on our feet, the focus has switched back to the bigger picture changes. We’ll outline some of them here and give you more details over the coming weeks and months.

We’re now hard at work on locations which groups can build and develop on their own — a much more ambitious and highly customizable version of what we previewed just before the end of beta. Many new skills will be added in order to support the magical aspects of patch creation, garden building or rock summoning (like potion making, enchanting and crystal casting). We don’t do dates (so don’t ask!), but it’s likely that this will be the first of the big new features to make it into the game.

The tutorial is being completely overhauled and the early levels re-organized so that new players can better get the basic concepts of the game during the first 30 minutes of play (right now it is both overwhelming in some respects and completely lacking in others). This will lead to some big changes in how new players enter the world (and the opportunities you old hands have to, uh, “indoctrinate” them).

A bit further down the road we’ll be making it possible to completely customize your house (from furnishings and wallpaper to shelving and lights). Depending on the house’s basic plan, you may also be able to upgrade and expand, adding rooms or new floors. And all the land-development features coming up for the group locations will also apply to your back yard.

As the developer program matures and more tools are available, you can expect to see Glitch make its way to your phones and tablets in the forms of games and other apps which let you advance your character, challenge friends and interact with the Giant’s imagination wherever you are.

Finally, we’ll be progressively removing the scaffolding from the economy— trade offers will be introduced with the return of market locations, non-player vendors will be completely overhauled and their economic importance de-emphasized while much larger goals will be made available to individual players and groups.

All of this will take time, of course. And on along the way we’ll continue with the little tweaks and refinements, improving existing stuff and adding new locations, items, skills and quests (including plenty of the whacky, weird and whimsical things you’ve come to expect — look for some of that tomorrow).

Thanks for playing with us in the first month. It’s only the very beginning of a long and wonderful journey. Despite the exhaustion and lack of sleep, we’re stupid with glee for the things to come. And it’d all be nothing without you. So, really: thank you.

[This blog post has a corresponding thread for feedback in the forums.]

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