Hello nub heads!


If you haven't met me yet, I go by MogDog and I'm the creator of Nubby's Number Factory!

Welcome to the 4th edition of Weekly Nubby News! The focal point of this weeks newsletter is to cover the specifics of upcoming patches to give you an idea of what to expect in each patch leading up to V1.4.

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But first, a brief statement:
Before I start talking about patches, I want to briefly discuss where I'm at personally in my life, and be completely transparent about the development of Nubby.

To give context, I am a full time student in college, and a full time game developer in my free time (and a boyfriend, and an athlete). Needless to say, I'm a busy guy.

I have worked on Nubby's Number Factory for 1.5-2 years now, usually 5-8 hours every single day. I love the project and it's 100% my passion to make games, but holy heck I'm burnt out. This is why I've been taking it slow these past couple days on the development side.

I'm simply giving myself some time to heal from burnout. I take artistic burnout very seriously, because it can completely kill projects for me. This has happened to me before with previous games, though I've learned from my mistakes and I'm much better at giving myself room to heal. I will absolutely not let artistic burnout ruin Nubby for me. I plan on getting back into full-time development in about a week from now. I apologize for the slow development, but if I plan on continuing work with Nubby, this is 100% necessary for continued growth and success. It's all part of the process!

Thank you to those who have been sending kind words my way. I love the Nubby community and it always brightens my day to meet and converse with you wonderful people. So... thank you!


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News on upcoming patches:

To begin, there will be two patches between now, and the release of V1.4.

Patch V1.3.1:
The first patch is primarily focused on fixing annoying bugs, and improving GUI stuff (see screenshot below). You will also be seeing a total rework to the "Glass Tony" supervisor, to fit the "glass cannon" trope. Additionally, this patch will introduce the "pop-o-meter", which gathers data on pops per round, halves/doubles per round, and item activations per round (specified for each slot). This feature is meant to give you an in-depth look at your factory's performance per round, which gives number nerds an extra opportunity to improve efficiency

Patch V1.3.2
The second patch will be primarily focused on implementing an autosave / load system, which would allow you to exit a run, walk your dog, then come back and finish it. This has been requested by many players, and to be honest I've always known it was necessary and I've been putting it off because its a total pain to implement. Nonetheless, a friend of mine helped me out with some of the technical stuff, and that gave me the motivation to get this one over with. Autosaves are a small change that will improve the quality of the game immensely, so I'm excited to implement this.


Update V1.4:

Update 1.4 will be top priority once both patches are finished. There is info about V1.4 on weekly nubby news #3, but basically this update is going to be focused on adding more meta progression, unlocks, and steam achievements. Probably a good handful of new items and perks too. I'm really excited to work on this one!

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That's it for this week's Nubby News! Thank you for continuing to support me in my creative endeavors! It's a roller coaster with lots of ups and downs, but I'm really grateful and happy with where I'm at in my indie dev journey.

Cheers to more nubby!!!
-Mog

Greetings Nubheads.



Welcome to Weekly Nubby News #3!

In this edition, I'm looking mostly to inform nubby enthusiasts of where Nubby's at in terms of updates and talk about the next big update (V1.4).


So, V1.3 came out last Sunday and so far, things have been going pretty well. For the most part, people seem to be happy with the changes made. Obviously nerfing items isn't something I like doing, but in order for the game to meet my final vision, adjustments must be made. To be frank, the game is in a bit of awkward stage right now. I have some top secret documents that describe "phases" that I'm putting Nubby through. These phases are all working towards my final vision for Nubby, where I could finally be satisfied with the game.

Right now, Nubby is sort of in between phases. While some people are happy with NNF in it's current state, I'm striving for something more. All you need to know is that Nubby hasn't taken its final form yet. We're gonna get there one day.

With that out of the way, I want to talk about the near future of Nubby, address some criticisms I've been receiving, then finally finish off with what's to come for the next big update.


Near future of nubby (patches):
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I have a patch planned for Nubby to fix up some bugs/crashes, and rebalance some things. I assume this will most likely be out some time next week. It's not going to be a big content update, just some tweaks.


Criticisms of V1.3:
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The biggest criticism I've been receiving from V1.3 is that the Nubby physics feel bad. This one actually surprised me a lot. To understand why this surprised me, I'll explain the context of Nubby physics, and why I changed it.

So basically, one of the biggest complaints pre-V1.2 was that Nubby's physics felt too random. I found myself agreeing. Nubby's physics do actually have a small amount of RNG involved. Pre-V1.3, every time nubby bounces, his degree of reflection was offset by (-2 degrees, -1 degrees, 0 degrees, 1 degree, or 2 degrees). I thought, well in that case if its too random, I'll just reduce the maximum offset.

The reason why the large blowback from this surprised me, is that the physics were only changed by 1 degree! In V1.3, Nubby's physics are offset by (-1 degree, 0 degree, or 1 degree). That was the ONLY change made to the physics and I'm astounded that so many players noticed a degree change of just 1! Maybe I just don't play my game enough to notice, but I just cannot, for the life of me, notice a difference.

Usually, I'd listen to my heart and do what I think is right, but considering I can't notice a difference, and the player base is split 50/50 on this, I'm going to provide a compromise. I'm not going to explain exactly how I will compromise, mostly because I haven't figured out a compromise yet. I will eventually stumble upon a solution that pays respect to both opinions. That will be for the next patch. You are heard in the nubby community.




The future / Looking ahead at V1.4
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There's still plenty of work to be done with Nubby! I've got big plans for the next update.

In V1.4, I'm choosing to emphasize QOL systems and progression.

I will divide these two topics and talk about each one separately to give you a vague idea of what to expect in the next update.

V1.4 Quality of Life:
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-Implementing a stat tracker that would allow the true nubheads to closely monitor data such as: Item activations per round, pops/halves/doubles per round, and total activations/pops/doubles/etc. throughout the whole game. If there is a chunk of data that YOU would like to see visually displayed on the stat tracker, leave it in the comments below! (this was originally a feature meant to come out in V1.3, but I didn't think it was comprehensive enough, so I didn't add it in yet)

-Perk stacking (clumps similar perks together so you can actually see what perks you have in the late game instead of seeing a mess)

-Various GUI / UX / visibility improvements

-More explanatory item effects. People often get confused between peg popping and peg halving, and I'd like to explain concepts like these more thoroughly in the game. This is just an example of one of the places that I want to be more descriptive.

-POSSIBLY: The warehouse! This is going to be accessible from the title screen and is adjacent to a "bestiary" or "collections" tab in other games. This is a MAYBE for this update. I'd like to have it done soon because it works with game progression.


V1.4 Progression:
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-The biggest change to progression that I want to make is implementing a game mode called "Promotion mode or Overtime mode" where you will ascend to higher levels upon beating the game, and each level has increased difficulty, maxing out at ~20-30 levels, where you'd beat the final challenge. Ideally, after each level there would be some sort of item/perk unlock. I want to add this mode because I feel like after beating the challenges, there's not much left to do.

-As for steam achievements, I think this is the update that will bring those into the game. They will most likely be scattered throughout the game, rather than focusing on one specific aspect of the game. For example, I will NOT be centering all the achievements on beating challenges.

Additional notes for V1.4
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As for new items/perks, there might be a few, or there might be a lot. I'm more focused on adding new ways to interact with the systems already at play, rather than bloating up the item pool. Though, I think we still have a long way to go before I would consider the item pool "bloated". V1.3 was an improvement on build variety, but I still think we can do more. It will not be the focal point of V1.4, but you will definitely see more items coming in future updates.

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Also, the soundtrack for Nubby is out on bandcamp! Go check it out and support Vinegart. All moneys go directly to him!


That's all for Weekly Nubby News! Thanks for reading and thanks for playing!


-Mog



(Unrelated, but here's a free screenshot of the beta version of Nubby, if you're interested!)