Hey guys, Gusmanak here to talk about our most successful update yet, Apocalypse Rising v.5.0.0. ZolarKeth and I have been hard at work for the past 11 months, developing improvements for Apoc (sorry, I call it that in short) since its release in July, 2012. When I launched the game, I never thought I’d end up spending so much time on one ROBLOX project. I’m fascinated at Apoc’s popularity–why has this game maintained popularity for such a lengthy period of time? What are the most important factors in development of gameplay? What makes Apocalypse Rising special? With this Developer’s Journal article, I’ll answer these questions.
A Solid Foundation
ZolarKeth and I stood by one rule when developing this title: never add weight to something that can’t stand on its own. If we plan on releasing a big feature that will change the game, we will not expand on that feature until it’s solid, functioning, and stable. You’d be surprised how often developers fall into this trap. They become excited about ideas, and worry less about implementation. These half-baked ideas find their way into games, making for half-finished, unstable features. When developing a game on ROBLOX, problems will arise—the average developer hates troubleshooting these problems. When you’re caught in this cycle, the most exciting part of your day is fixing breaks, which isn’t very gratifying. More often than not, developers never fully finish these fixes, resulting in a broken game that causes frustration among players. Even worse, developers often find that in order to solve problems in their game, the game must be radically altered.
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