fidzu : mozilla

We are 5 days away from the release of Dawnmaker! It is a time of excitement, of stress of course, but also of regrets as we realize that there are so, so many things that we will not be able to add to our game. Let's introduce today's topic with a short video that is very à propos:

A game is never truly done. There's always the next thing you want to add, the little detail you want to change, the obvious problem you want to solve. But we cannot work on our game forever, because we simply need to sell it at some point and, hopefully, get some money to pay the bills and the foods. Such is the weight of reality on our dreams.

So we had to just make the cut somewhere, and decide on a release date. July 31 it is! Why? We wanted to release earlier, but there was a Steam Next Fest in early June, quickly followed by the Steam Summer Sale in early July, two events during which it is not advised to release a game. We've read that releasing on a Wednesday is a bit better for indies because there are usually less games coming out. So there we ended up! (That sounds easy but it took us a while to find a date that worked well for us… )

In just 5 days, Dawnmaker will be available for all to buy, to play, and to judge. That's a terribly exciting experience, but also a terribly scary one. Because we know that the game is not perfect. We know that it has weak points, that it is lacking in some places. But we have to release it anyway, we have to put it into your hands, and we have to accept that, yes, this is the game we're going to sell.

Believe me: it is truly heartbreaking to see all those things that could have been, all the ways this game could have been better, if only we had had more time, more money, more people… We are going to release a product that is not exactly what we had in mind, but a product that is what we have been able to create in the time we allowed ourselves.

In an attempt to amuse you, and maybe to grieve these features that will never be, let's go through some of the main elements that we wanted to add to Dawnmaker but couldn't.

Scientific research

The science part of the game has always, in our plans, been so much deeper than it currently is. In the game, science can be spent in some buildings to generate Eclairium. That's fairly basic. We had much bigger ambitions for that aspect of the game: we wanted science to be spent to research new technologies. Some scientific buildings were meant to have a scientific line, each step giving a one-off or a permanent bonus. For example, a research would have improved the production of your fields, another would have made harvesting better. Some would have replaced cards in your hand with a better version.

The reason why this never happened was that it required a lot of programming. We needed to change the way the core of the game worked, to add a big layer of complexity allowing to handle these types of effects. It also required some heavy UI work, which was partly done by Agathe when she worked with us, but that we never integrated. Sorry Agathe, it is very unlikely that this work of yours will ever be in the game.

Drafting cards

Deckbuilding is the poor child of Dawnmaker. When you mix two genres like we did, you usually end up favoring one over the other. We definitely did that with the city building part, at the expense of the deckbuilding part. But I have a hunch that we could have made the cards a lot more interesting for a cost that was not too high. Here's what I had in mind, but never had the time to try.

Some buildings in the game give you a card when you build them. That card is always the same, you know what it will be before choosing to buy the building. I wanted to change that, at least on some of the buildings, to instead make them offer you a choice between 3 different cards of the same type and level. So instead of an Exploration post always giving you an Exploration card, it would let you choose a new card from three random level 1, industry cards. Sometime you would get to pick an Exploration, sometimes you'd get an Optimization, and sometimes, rarely, you would find a card that you had never seen before.

From an economical point of view, this would also have allowed us to produce a lot more content for very little cost: since our cards do not have illustrations, adding a new card to the game would just be a matter of designing it. As the game currently stands, adding a new card means adding a new building, which means creating a new graphical asset for it, which is expensive! I sincerely wished I had thought about this much earlier in the development of Dawnmaker, but I did not, and here we are not having this in the game.

Starting characters

Much like in Slay the Spire, we wanted to have a little cast of characters that you could choose from when starting a new game. They would not have been as distinct as in Slay the Spire, but would allow player to start each game with a different deck and roster of buildings. We had plans for 3 different characters, each opening a different way of playing the game.

Nomad buildings

You might have played with the buildings that give you resources when you build something adjacent to them, and thought that they were weak? Well, that's because we made them planning for another kind of buildings: nomads. We wanted to have buildings that could be moved from one tile to another, triggering the adjacent build effects each time. We think it would have added a more puzzle-y element to the game.

Smog effects

When we added the cards to represent the Smog's behavior, we knew we had an opportunity for more than just Luminoil consumption. Basically, anything that a building could do, we could make the Smog do. We wanted to have the Smog give you Curse cards, half your Luminoil stock, destroy or deactivate some buildings, and so on.

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I'm going to stop here because there is a lot more small things that I wished we could have added to Dawnmaker. But the game is what it is, and we're still very proud of all the work we've done over the last 2.5 years!

This piece was initially sent out to the readers of our newsletter. Wanna join in on the fun? Head out to Dawnmaker's presentation page and fill the form. You'll receive regular stories about how we're making this game and the latest news of its development!

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26 Jul 2024 5:24pm GMT

Hello, SUMO community members!

If you contribute to the Knowledge Base in SUMO, please read this blog post carefully as we explain how others can request content from the SUMO team.

Historically, we didn't have a structured workflow for content requests, relying on personal engagement or public groups to act reactively. With a larger content team, establishing a proper workflow is essential for task distribution and transparency within the team.

In general, the content intake workflow can be summarized in 4 steps:

Step 1: Submitting a content request

The process begins with submitting a content request through a Bugzilla form. Typically, feature/product owners make these requests, but anyone with ideas for improving support content can submit, including contributors. Documenting requirements helps us act appropriately.

This is a crucial step, and we require each field in the form to be filled out. Each piece of information helps us determine the necessary steps moving forward. All internal teams must use the Bugzilla form for SUMO content requests, whether for new articles or updates. Exceptions are for minor fixes, which can be submitted directly in the KB article. To learn more about what we consider as minor fixes, please see this.

Step 2: Determining content access restrictions

After submission, the workflow diverges based on the content access restriction chosen:

• Non-confidential: All bugs and drafts within these requests are visible to anyone with a link and can receive comments and suggestions, benefiting from community contributions.
• Confidential: These bugs are restricted and will be handled internally by staff members, due to sensitive information, such as upcoming features yet to be publicly announced, or information related to partnerships or other business strategies.

Step 3: Content creation

Once the necessary information is provided, the content team assigns the bug to a responsible person. This usually involves creating a draft in Google Docs before publishing it as a revision. The content team also creates in-product links if needed. Areas of responsibility for SUMO technical writers are:

• Lucas: Firefox (desktop, Android, and iOS)
• Dayani: Privacy & Security products, Pocket, Firefox Accounts

Step 4: Publishing & resolution

Once the content draft is ready and approved by all parties, the person responsible for it can submit it as a new revision.

How contributors can help

Contributors remain essential to the article creation process. With this update, we're aiming to make sure that the contribution workflow is integrated and aligned with our internal workflow.

For non-confidential content requests, contributors are encouraged to get involved. And here's how you can help:

• Identify a content request: Keep an eye on new content request bugs. When you find one you're interested in, please directly comment on the bug to notify the content team that you want to help out with the request. If you'd like to get notifications on new content requests, consider watching the Knowledge Base Content component on Bugzilla. To do this, go to your Bugzilla profile → Edit Profile & Preferences → Component Watching. Choose support.mozilla.org on the product selection and select Knowledge Base Content for the Component field. And don't forget to click on the Add button to save your changes.
• Get assigned: Wait for the content team to assign the ticket before starting. Please do not work on the actual content creation before the content team assigns the ticket to you.
• Content creation:
  • Review the ticket: Make sure to review the ticket thoroughly and understand the request. Also, ensure you can complete the work by the due date for publication. If anything changes, and you can't finish the content on time, let the content team know as soon as possible.
  • Create a draft: Use Google Docs to start working on the draft. If it's not possible, you can also share the content file as an attachment in Bugzilla for others to review.
• Get Feedback:
  • Share the draft: Post the link to your draft in the Bugzilla ticket for review.
  • Open for comments: Ensure that the Google Docs settings allow for comments.
  • Work with the requester: Collaborate closely with the requester to cover all points in the article. If any information you need to complete the work is missing, don't hesitate to reach out to the requester directly for additional details.
  • Final review: Once the draft is finalized and approved by all parties, including the requester, you can submit the content as a new revision on the actual Knowledge Base article. Once the KB revision is submitted, please also assign the ticket back to the technical writer responsible for the product.
• Publication: The technical writer will review and publish the content.

If you have questions about this update, please submit your comments in this contributor discussion thread!

26 Jul 2024 4:50pm GMT

Some days there's something extra interesting to watch online - a sports event, election coverage, a certain show is leaving Netflix so you gotta binge - but you've got work to do. The Picture-in-Picture feature in Firefox makes multitasking with video content smooth and easy, no window shuffling necessary.

Picture-in-Picture allows a video to be played in a separate, small window, and still be viewable when you switch tabs or away from the Firefox browser.

To use it on videos longer than 45 seconds, hover your mouse over to see a small Picture-in-Picture button. Click the button to pop open a floating window so you can keep watching while working in other tabs.

You can also right-click on a video and select "Watch in Picture-in-Picture." (This will work on shorter videos like the one below.)

Move the video around your screen and drag the corner to shrink or enlarge it. If you need to mute it, just tap the speaker icon on the right.

Check it out. Just don't blame us if you end up with a gold for procrastination instead of getting that monthly report done.

The post Picture-in-Picture lets you watch videos while 'working' appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

26 Jul 2024 4:26pm GMT