Hello! Another new build over on itch, earlier than normal ’cause I didn’t want to wait to get these two things live: a public Modkit for hacking the game & a programmer job posting for bugfixing support.
Modkit
The release two months ago added official mod support. Since then, 36 mods have been uploaded, adding many of the 1st party supplemental frames and talents, totally new homebrew mechs, new assets, and rules tweaks. I’ve been astonished at how fast modders have been getting these out.
Until now, to get the modkit you had to ask for access to a locked channel on the Discord. I wanted to get it into folks’ hands as fast as possible but also protect ourselves, so that was the easiest way to do both. Now that we’ve had some time to batten down our hatches with a lawyer-approved EULA and do some light source & asset watermarking, we’re now able to offer the full source of Lancer Tactics in a modkit alongside the game on itch.io.
Bugfixing Programming role
At time of writing, Trello backlog for Lancer Tactics is currently sitting at 207 bug tickets and 202 UI improvement tickets. That’s a lot! Most of the last two updates have been almost entirely consisted of bugfixes!
As such, we’re looking for a GDscript programmer to join the team as a part-time contractor to help stay on top of these and work through the backlog. If you or someone you know is fluent in Godot, comfortable wading into an in-progress project, and experienced with QA processes we want to hear from you!
You can find the full job posting here.
Zooming out a bit: I think the reason that we’re seeing this many bugs is because we opened up such a huge surface area by offering in-game editors, and it’s only expanded with the addition of modding. The number of straight Lancer-mechanics bugs we’re seeing is a relatively small porportion overall. There are SO many edge cases that we’d never hit if we were only authoring content ourselves through Godot. Additionally, I have hella automated tests that simulate and run through a lot of in-game mechanical situations to make sure they continue working, but it’s a lot harder to write these sorts of tests for user UI like the editor.
Having a map editor is a core part of LT’s appeal so it’s here to stay, but there’s a lesson to be learned here about how deceptively much that is to bite off to chew. I’m not sure what I would change if I was starting over… perhaps spend even more time standardizing my UI toolbox and establishing a shared pipeline that all data changes went through using that toolbox.
Changelog for v1.3.3
