I think UA:D devs should take a page from Uboat dev's playbook.

[BobRoss0902]

Not nessisarily releasing an update with every announcement, rather releasing info on the next update more often.

For example, for the upcoming Uboat update, here is a list of their most recent update announcements/content announcements.

August 7th

Hello Community!

During the last two weeks, developers were reworking the in-game map. There were major technical improvements done in this area and the map looks better. There are now three distinct skins to choose from and mod support to add more. Kriegsmarine grid system on the map is now more faithfully reproduced with full support for the sub-square division. There are dynamic country names on the map and mod support to add custom map elements. The default map style is now very different with a more paper-like look and a top-down view for better readability.

Aside from that, there were some small improvements done all around like automatic path plotting to leave the port after undocking. Probably most of the work went into the new tutorial missions. Most of the tutorial content is now done, but still, there is some more left to be done.

Have a wonderful weekend! ❤️

Deep Water/PlayWay Team

August 10th.

Hello UBOAT community!

During the last two weeks, developers were intensively working on the new tutorial and the new help interface. The tutorial is no longer separated into its own game mode, but instead, there are various training missions integrated into the general scenarios of the game. They explain various parts of the game and can be started at any time after docking in a port.

There was also more work done to optimize the game and push it towards the desired look, performance and stability for the Final Release. There is a new effect implemented called raycasted contact shadows. Performance of the rendering was improved. There are also many upgrades related to how the game guides the player through missions, to make it more polished and satisfying.

Work on the tutorial is going to be continued for some time in the closest future, but there are various ideas on what to do next. We will update you later once the picture becomes more clear.

Best,
Deep Water/PlayWay

August 21st

Dear Community!

During the last two weeks many areas of the game have seen improvements:

- There are now dynamic country borders on the in-game map.

- AI is now much better at navigating around port structures and can avoid colliding with the other ships.

- Automatic paths generated after clicking a right mouse button now go around the port structures and avoid entering land areas. It's no longer needed to ensure these things manually.

- Encounters with NPC u-boats are now much faster as they no longer trigger a land generation and don't block the highest time compression from being used.

- Patrol assignments are now performed on the smaller Kriegsmarine map squares.

Aside from that, you guessed it, tons of work went into the tutorial missions. Our current ETA for this version is 2 to 3 weeks. It still needs some work before a release.

Yours,
Deep Water/PlayWay Team

Okay so now back to what I was talking about.

Both Uboat and UA:D are in similar stages of development, and both are made by small teams. However as you can see from the notes, Uboat devs rather than releasing one dump of info, release it as it is being developed, I think this is the better way to go about releasing update info, as it allows the community to be involved, it builds hype for the next update, and overall is better at keeping interest rather than hearing nothing from the devs for a month straight and then getting an info dump. Additionally you can see that Deep Water tends to have a bit more of a "friendly" approach to its announcements, rather than a matter of fact info dump. This is a better way to engage with the community and I think it would be an overall benifit to the devs to take a page from their playbook. 

TL:DR- Deepwater does small announcements about the content they have worked on over the week or so, and then when it is about to release has a recap on all of their previous announcements. I think this is the better way to go about things.

 

Also I think dev diarys would be an easy but very helpful thing for community engagement.

Edited August 25, 2020 by BobRoss0902

[Cptbarney]

Yeah, i agree with this although if the devs need time to do stuff between each update or they run into issues then thats fine as well. Also we as the community would also have to be decent as well. I'd rather this not turn into warthunder or world of warships/tanks communities (although knowing humans this is an inevitability).

Also any screenshots would be very bloody noice indeed.

Edited August 25, 2020 by Cptbarney

[1MajorKoenig]

Agree - the lack of information is really not ideal. Even if there was half a year of standstill, now that the team seems to be set up again it would be good to get some information and updates. 

[BuckleUpBones]

Wait… Nick posted on Friday and you’re complaining on Tuesday! damn there’s some hard taskmasters here.

[Bluishdoor76]

Kind of what War Thunder does on the weeks prior to a major release.

[bwc153]

I bought Project Zomboid way back in the day, probably 9 years ago at this point, and one thing the devs do there is try to release a weekly dev log about what's going on, even mentioning difficulties.  M&B2: Bannerlord's devs did the same, but bi-weekly, however in both cases the game was in development for exceedingly long time periods, so the devblogs were sort of there to tell people 'Hey, we're still alive!" - so if the UA:D devs made a devblog they could get away with one every 3-4 weeks or so too.

[Tycondero]

Devblogs are nice, but I often wonder whether they also distract too much. In various game projects I have seen many much larger dev teams struggle with them in that they say A en do B later because of reason Y with the consequence of an community outrage why they didn't do A.

The UA team is rather small. I think that we are all served better with getting the work done and release patches regularly to which we can provide input. Again, I like dev interaction a lot but if I had to choose between a faster dev cycle or having devs devote time to write lengthy blogs with a lot of information (otherwise it is rather a pointless exercise anyway if you do not do it well) I choose the fast dev cycle. Just my two cents on this.

[1MajorKoenig]

1 hour ago, Tycondero said:

Devblogs are nice, but I often wonder whether they also distract too much. In various game projects I have seen many much larger dev teams struggle with them in that they say A en do B later because of reason Y with the consequence of an community outrage why they didn't do A.

The UA team is rather small. I think that we are all served better with getting the work done and release patches regularly to which we can provide input. Again, I like dev interaction a lot but if I had to choose between a faster dev cycle or having devs devote time to write lengthy blogs with a lot of information (otherwise it is rather a pointless exercise anyway if you do not do it well) I choose the fast dev cycle. Just my two cents on this.

Of course that’s a risk. On the other hand - as you say - the community here is quite small. Maybe it would engage people more if they share more of what’s happening.