Well, a bunch of stuff to talk about, but I'm going to try to be brief.
As you all know, I've been having a bunch of trouble in the development of MMORPG Tycoon's 1.1 version, mostly stemming from trying to bolt a bunch of new features onto the old v1.0 codebase. My plan had been to get 1.1 out the door, and then move on to 2.0 (or perhaps "Deluxe"), where MMORPG Tycoon would get a major rewrite to support continuing development.
But as it turns out, I've hit enough major issues that I really need to develop some new tech, and need to do the rewrite now rather than struggling on with the rapidly-developed codebase I used back in version 1.0.
I'm not going to talk a whole lot about development plans for 2.0, except to mention that the core changes involve making the game more palatable to a mainstream audience, and that means that there'll be (amongst other things) a major graphical overhaul, and a complete revamp of the core MMORPG simulation engine which will utterly remove subscriber caps and will dramatically improve game performance with large MMORPGs.
In days past and future, you'll probably be seeing screenshots of new engine features on the VectorStorm blog homepage, and you'll be wondering, "Gosh, I wonder if he's adding that for use in MMORPG Tycoon?"
The answer is, and will continue to be, "yes". :)
My current plan is to work on a four-week cycle; two weeks of MMORPG Tycoon, one week of break, one week of "Game in a Week", then repeat. I'm going to stop posting day-by-day accounts of development activity.. but I'll keep occasionally posting a screenshot or a video, or asking for people's opinions when I reach a game design quandry.
I see this as a positive move; it means that it's going to be longer before the next official MMORPG Tycoon release, but it also means that when it does get here, it's going to be far more awesome, and won't need any excuses to be made for it when it's shown to people.
