Transcendence Update

Since the release of Transcendence 1.0 last month, the attention the game has gotten has been great! Derek Yu (of Spelunky fame) wrote about it on TIGSource, and Reddit picked it up, neatly spiking my traffic to crazy levels.

All in all, more than 10,000 people have download the game (which means that the number of people who've reached Heretic without resurrect has probably increased by one or two).

Of course, new releases always come with new bugs, and this one is no exception. With the help of the community, I've fixed a handful of important bugs and put together a 1.01 release. The full version history is here.

Looking forward, I expect to work on the following things:

• Changing ships: Some of my plans for 2.0 will require this, but I want to get in the support for it sooner rather than later. Although the capability will not yet be used, the support will be there for mods to take advantage of it. This will probably show up in version 1.1.
• Game stats: One feature of sandbox games that I want to add to Transcendence is a more detailed set of statistics. For example, the game should track things like the amount of profit the player has made in trading; the number of slaves rescued; perhaps even the number of civilians killed. At the end of the game, the player can get a listing and compare their performance against others. This will probably show up in version 1.1.
• Transcendence server: Ultimately, people should be able to share their stats with others. The Transcendence game server would keep game records in a central place so that players can share their stats. I would also use this server to automatically capture crash information (Debug.log) and game-play information (e.g., how many people reach St. Katharine's star?). This probably will not show up until 1.2 or beyond.
• 2.0: Finally, I plan on spending a lot of time designing the post-Heretic game. I already have a lot of ideas, but I can always use more. Sometime in the 1.1 time-frame I will begin sharing some of my plans on the forums. I can't wait for your feedback!

As always, thanks for your support!