MMC Dev Notes: From the Trenches v.0.1.7+ (Google Play), Phase 3 App Status 6/18/2021

[Mini Militia Classic Alpha Force]

Dev Notes: From the Trenches

MMC v.0.1.7+ (Google Play), Phase 3 App Status 6/18/2021

CURRENT STATUS

MMC Development on Hold

Work progress on MMC is paused for this week and into next while an important trademark task needs to be attended to for another Appsomniacs app. It's not as glamorous as getting new game features created, but the app business does require some legal attention to protect our intellectual property. The hold is very temporary and we plan to get right back to MMC work as soon as we get these tasks done. but it does delay our release. The longer we go the more of these we will encounter these tasks we've pushed off to the last minute.

Roadmap Update

It has been decided that the Phase 3 update with Loadouts is going to be split into two releases (Part A & Part B.)  The first release is going to have a static list of "loadout" choices to pick from, lacking the ability to customize every element. The second release will then expand to customizing those choices so that players can make their own combinations. This split will allow us to test out the framework, get feedback, and then incorporate necessary changes into the future releases. We have no time table for how long each release is going to take to develop. 

KNOWN ISSUES

Cheater Mods on YouTube 

We are working with Google to remove videos promoting cheater mods. These videos will be removed from YouTube (and after 3 strikes the channel itself is taken down). If the cheater mods claim to 1) disable ads 2) disable/unlock in app purchase mechanisms, 3) unlock gated access to elements that are tied into monetization they will be taken down for a copyright violation. 

Report violators to testingfeedback at appsomniacs.com

Leaderboards FAQ & Known Issues
- Leaderboards only work in Quick Play and if you are signed in.
- Scores will be wiped clean. This is Alpha. We have two planned score wipes coming up. One at the end of Alpha for certain and one at the end of Beta.
- Searchable? Not yet. Some stats are in your profile. We've received feedback to make searching easier, like creating filters to search by name, self, GID, etc. We need to gather more information about how people want this information and build an interface for it.
- Leaderboard dates are in UTC and not adjusted for local time zone.
- Streak is the best "kill streak" a person gets. It's the most kills made in one life. The best one will be used to determine ranking daily and seasonally.
- Seasons will be talked about more in the coming weeks as we experiment with them. Scrolling through the seasons should no longer throw an error (it shows whatever you had on the screen last) but anything past a certain point should show up blank. Right now seasons are 1 week long 'test' seasons. After 10 weeks we are going to test 'no season' breaks. Currently the list is ordered wrong and is kind of a broken experience right now.
- More leaderboards will be added in time. The next ones will be averages per game. We currently have a few people not seeing themselves in the season cumulative and have to research these issues.
- Rank, skill, and old stat displays were removed to prepare for their revamp and replacement
Added stats to logged in user's profile page, use Avatar button to see those
- Expect stats not to match until we reprocess *every* battle done in previous games before the profile scoring started accumulating. We don't know when we will have a chance to do this (probably after we finish reworking scores.) The reprocessing has to be done mostly by hand. We will start by deleting ALL the previous entries and then reprocess every single battle that is recorded.

WHAT IS NEXT?

A couple of new discussions groups for maps and mods have been started on the Discord Server: https://discord.gg/93DgqsRtfg

Maps Discussion! 

There is a spot for you to submit map related ideas and requests. This is a place to share custom map ideas or make map related requests/discussions. Please keep the posts positive. If you don't like someone's idea, be constructive in your feedback and supportive in how the idea could be even better. Ask questions and offer counter ideas.

Mods Discussion! 

Mod talk is a place to talk about what is an ok mod and what isn't. We don't have a problem with hacking mods, it's the cheating mods we take issue with. Don't confuse making a custom map with cheating. Or a mod that makes changes that EVERYONE playing benefits from. Quick Play and CTF are NOT the place to play with mods. The place to play these mods is in Custom where you can host a room and play with your friends. Be sure that everyone knows that it is a mod that they are playing. 

Here's some guidelines for our Hacker User Agreement:

1) Do no harm, perceived or real, to players and Appsomniacs in ANY way. 

2) Do not enable locked content. The fair exchange is that we withhold the right to make content that we sell/gate via monetization. Do not disable ads, disable/unlock in app purchase mechanisms, or unlock gated access to elements that are tied into monetization. 

3) The mod must be fair and change the rules of engagement for EVERYONE playing, not just one individual or subgroup (i.e., your team.)

4) No playing mods in the restricted areas. Quick Play and CTF are off limits. We'll talk about custom CTF maps later as an exception when we have better guidelines built up.

5) Name your custom room as a mod to let people know it is a mod space.

6) Make sure your mod doesn't masquerade as a legit copy of the app (hiding itself as the official app, signatures, version numbers, etc.)

These are not final, these are just the most we have written down yet. The link in the app to the "End-Hacker Agreement" still only points to the terms of service. But this is the direction we are going.

Our perspective is that you are welcome to mod. At some point Google/Apple might have a problem and Appsomniacs and we may have to say in our own terms: "don't modify our stuff for legal reasons, but we give permission in some cases to re-use our stuff on our systems in specific ways." You always need to link back to the source and can never claim any element we produced as your own. It must be clearly marked as a derivative work. We consider mods that follow our End-Hacker User Agreement to be mostly about Fair Use but we also reserve the right to change these rules at any time if the business landscape changes. We must protect our trademarks and business. We want to give permission for modders to use our stuff so long as they don't steal from us, use our IP outside of the game, or change the game in a way that removes our ability to profit from any element we limit access to. And mods should never swindle users for their private data or use that info to stalk or harm other players.

Armory/Loadout

We're not quite ready to start putting out information about the Armory/Loadout yet because that is going to be a MAJOR talking point with TONS of information. We're still trying to figure out how to talk about it. There is lots of game theory, conversations about game balancing, and really making sure players understand that the game is still in development. When Phase 3 rolls out with these new things there are going to be lots of issues to work through. We are going to need lots of patience and good communication from the players to help us work out the bugs and rebalance the game. 

Updated Roadmap:
Here's the latest updated roadmap:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1XBC18MIQTBpfCBPvhsLK2h4oxuDTJx0m

Its progress, but we got more to do.
The root of our public share if you want to see all the "things" we've shared prior:

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

There we go. Two weeks worth of status barfed into your inbox. 🤮 Did I mention we are making this up as we go along and changing plans almost daily? (ok there is a big picture plan, but we have to bend in the wind to not snap.) Thank you one and all for sticking with us. This wooden boy is about to be real **again**! Call me Geppetto. Or Ishmael... Well, they both [**redacted/spoilers**...] I wonder if my editor will let that last one pass :D [No, No I wont, it was a horrible analogy].

Thanks one and all! I hope to see you all out on the battlefield having some fun. Chad and I will keep an eye on the servers this weekend.

Sincerely,
-Hunter

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