We wanted to provide a quick update to our development goals for 2022.
Click here to read the update.
Click here to read the update.
Hello, Flight Rising community!
We're in the final development stages for some really fun stuff (Arlo's Ancient Artifacts, our next Ancient Breed, and more) and can't wait to get those out to you. We also wanted to provide you with a brief update about some development goals we're hoping to achieve in 2022, because we're taking a slightly different approach.
Refactors VS Revamps (For Now)
As many of you know, Flight Rising has been undergoing a code refactor for many years now. Our engineering team has not only been working hard to deliver new features for the game, but also completely rewrite older ones, revamping them in the process (combining popular QOL suggestions from the community and new functional and visual bells and whistles that our team has always wanted to add).
However, for as long as the refactor project has been in progress, it has put the site and our team at somewhat of a disadvantage. Flight Rising is spread across two subdomains and two codebases, which creates a significant amount of extra work and testing every time we want to add a new feature or fix.
For example: If part of a feature revamp touches multiple pages and systems, we very well might need to write code for it two times in two different ways, which drags out not only the development of that revamp, but everything else after it. We also have to write and execute two unique sets of testing, because having redundant code opens us up to more risk for bugs in one or more versions of it.
Internally, having a split codebase also causes logjams for other vital infrastructure work, and can impede Flight Rising from being recognized in the most optimal way in Google searches, etc.
With that in mind, we have made the choice as a team to place revamps on a brief hold and refactor the remaining features as they operate now (i.e. "one to one"), without placing too much time on adding functional improvements to them. Doing straight ports of the remaining features allows us to clean them off our plate far quicker, leading us to wrap up the site refactor sooner, which ultimately enables us to move into working solely on new stuff, which is the most rewarding work for us and for you.
We want to be clear: this does not mean we are ending work on revamping old features, and there may be one or two that still get revamped while they are being refactored (depending on their complexity). We are simply hastening to bring a very long project to a swifter end so that we can move forward with new features and revamps alike.
Because these feature revamps are going to be simply conversions, there likely will be less fanfare surrounding them, but we'll do our best to communicate timetables, and when and if we need some maintenance to deploy them, so that you are prepared.
2022 is going to be a good realignment year for our team, and we're excited to hopefully put a very long, resource-heavy project behind us so that we can really begin on the really fun stuff ahead of us.
EDIT: We've been getting a few questions asking for a little more clarity on just what we're focusing on. While I can't give you major specifics (the nature of project management changes literally day-to-day and hour-to-hour), here are a few of the things that we're hoping to refactor this year, if we can fit them all in alongside new content and new features:
- The Dominance standings page
- Gathering & Gathering Results
- Clan Profile
- Nesting Grounds
Flight Rising Developer
Project Management | Engineering Team Cheerleader | UI Designer
Project Management | Engineering Team Cheerleader | UI Designer
Last edited on Jan 10, 2022 14:40:44 by Xhaztol
let's get things out of the way so we can get that fun stuff >:^)
