Hi all! My name is John - I am the developer behind Rise of Piracy. As this is my first steam announcement, let me first thank you all for following along with the development so far! Over the past year we have hit a number of major milestones. We started working with a publisher, added a tonne of features, refactored and cleaned up basically every aspect of the code base, and filled in some missing mechanics. Rise of Piracy is on its 3rd development iteration and is in a very good position now. We are in a closed testing phase with thousands of issues/bugs and suggestions being actioned in 2023. Ideally I put out a major patch every 2-3 months, packed with improvements to the base game and QOL. I will try to put out a steam announcement with each of these patches in the future. As Rise of Piracy now enters its 5th year of development - I am excited to see it coming closer to an Early Access release. Here are some of the major elements we have worked on in 2023: [list] [*] The Ships and Characters AI has all been worked on heavily. Changes and improvements to these systems are much easier now. [*] We have added a new pipeline for adding and improving ships within the game. Our publisher is cleaning up our pool of ships and creating beautiful models for you to hire and command in Rise of Piracy. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/6ed13186b96cc5f2dd6957282cb697d29401a383.png[/img] [*] Our animations for the soldiers have all been redone. The system that was in place initially was clunky and difficult to change/manage, so that has all been completely revamped. I'm very happy with where that is now. I feel like the soldiers and civilians move in a much more convincing way. There is still a lot of improvement possible with these animations but for now I feel its in a great spot. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/5c05330d4e8f0f3d7a9595ff94d7c26e6adfdf51.png[/img] [*] We have redone some illustrations within the game, improving the UI across the board. We have also started to clean up the legacy parts of the code & modernizing the UI so that everything is presented in a more user-friendly way. [*] We have fixed hundreds of issues every iteration, thanks to our testers. [*] Interactions with Mayors of Islands and captains of other fleets has been redone completely. Special missions and options are available to allow for cleaner action/reaction and consequence driven mechanisms. [*] I am constantly improving on the Audio aspect of the game and trying to make real ground on that in the coming months. [/list] Many of the mechanics and features within the game have been crafted in part by the community feedback, so please do let me know what you think of the current progress, and the updates you receive. I have tried to keep the community across a number of social media platforms up to date with everything going on and have neglected steam quite a bit. It is something I am trying to improve upon this year across the board. Please do feel free to reach out any time to me on Discord, or by creating a steam discussion post with any questions you may have. As mentioned, the testing is closed at the moment but I do hope to include more members of the community into the testing in the coming months. Remember, you can follow along with the development live @8PM GMT daily @twitch.tv/irishjohngames Thank you all again for your support. - Irish John