Fifteen languages and twenty-four new faces
In a single week the game started speaking fifteen languages, got twenty-four creatures of its own and ran on a phone for the first time. All of it reached players in one big update on October 16.
Eleven languages in one day
On October 4 the game spoke English for the first time. The next day eleven more translations appeared: Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Indonesian, Filipino, Vietnamese — and by the morning of the sixth, Ukrainian. That's when we heard: “We need about fifteen languages.” On the sixth Japanese and Arabic were added.
Those two meant teaching the game new tricks. Japanese has its own second font with 3,207 characters: it only loads for those who picked Japanese and costs everyone else not a single byte. Lines there wrap by Japanese rules: a line can't start with a period or comma and can't end with an opening bracket. Arabic is written right to left, and its letters join up and change shape depending on their neighbors. Even the little “►” arrow in Arabic menus pointed away from the text instead of toward it — we had to flip it.
Everything a player reads is translated: menus, windows, hints, server messages and item names — more than ten thousand lines per language. They were translated line by line, reading where each line appears and what it means, without online translators. So that one concept is called by one word everywhere, every language has its own glossary of 418 concepts. You choose the language on a page where each one is named in itself: “Deutsch”, “日本語”, “العربية”. Even commands the player types themselves are understood in their language. The translations will keep improving — if you see a mistake, write to us.
Anarchy only
On October 8 we decided: for now we keep Anarchy alone. Joining takes you straight to the spawn map, and Survival, Islands and Zombie Rush were put away until better times. Put away, not removed: their maps, code, items and players' wallets lie untouched and will come back together with the modes.
Twenty-four new faces
That same day we decided that some of the creatures in the world looked too familiar. We kept their habits and reinvented everything else: name, body, voice and spawn egg. By the morning of October 9 the world had twenty-four creatures of its own. The Powder Keg is a walking oak barrel on two short legs, with a fuse and a smoldering spark. The Mirage is a very tall figure of smoky glass with lilac slits for eyes. The Scarecrow is a straw-stuffed bird in a tattered frock coat, with buttons for eyes and a sewn-on mouth. The Thunderhead is a drifting storm cloud with streams of rain. The Ram is a heavy beast with an armored brow and curled horns. The Draft is a whirlwind of cubes around a pale face.
Names were chosen in rows, like families: the bird folk — Magpie, Shrike and Scarecrow; the bovine kin — Wisent, Wisent Ghoul and Ram; the bandit gang — Marauder, Cutthroat, Summoner and Hornet; the sky — Nightjar, Emberwing, Thunderhead, Draft and Sky Wyrm; the deep — Shock Ray, Ancient Manta, Bellringer and Clamshell; fire and tar — Cinder and Tarblob; mirrors — Mirage and Glintmite. The voices belong to no one: each is built from sound waves and noise to a description like “creaking wood and a hissing fuse” or “muffled thunder”.
Along with the creatures came eight new items. The Echo Coffer is a personal coffer with 27 slots. The Blast Crystal is placed on the ground and explodes when hit, and neighboring crystals detonate in a chain. The Cinder drops an Ash Skull, the Tarblob a Tar Clot, the Mirage a Mirage Shard, the Thunderhead a Storm Tear, the Emberwing an Ember Rod — great fuel for a furnace. And the Nightjar's Night Feather repairs wings.
In villages, instead of traders, seven residents with their own roles moved in: the Farmer, the Blacksmith, the Elder, the Baker, the Wellkeeper, the Wandering Healer and the Watchman. You can't trade with them, but you can talk. The Blacksmith will say: “Amethyst forges strong, iridium even stronger, but it's rare. Dig deeper.” The Elder will warn you: “They say ancient cities sleep underground. Don't wake whoever lives down there.”
The phone that fell to its death
On October 9 the game was built for Android and iPhone for the first time. Since then, on every change, a tester bot launches it on a phone emulator, joins a fresh server, writes in chat, breaks a block and picks it up. Its very first find was almost funny: on a slow phone the player fell to their death a second after joining. The first message about their position carried a temporary “hover” height of two hundred blocks, and the server honestly counted a fall of almost two hundred blocks.
The next day, on the iPhone simulator, something else turned up: the on-screen controls had a joystick, jump, crouch and the hotbar — and no way at all to reach the menu, chat or microphone. “MENU”, “CHAT” and “MIC” buttons appeared on the right edge. The first tap on “MIC” froze the whole app — fixed. And in response to the question “can't it also work vertically?”, the phone learned to play upright: in portrait the view was a narrow slit and the inventory a tiny grid; now the vertical screen has its own field of view and its own big finger-sized slots. Nothing came out in the app stores during these days — that will happen later.
Ideas and bugs — for platinum
On October 10 the “Ideas and bugs” window appeared: in the menu, in the “People” section. There you can suggest an idea, report a bug and see your own messages. The window's field holds about a hundred and twenty letters at a time, so longer text is typed in parts — with the “Add more” button. The text of a bug report is read by the developer outside the game: nobody in the game sees it, not even the staff. And accepted ideas and found bugs are rewarded with platinum.
An evening of four drafts
On the evening of October 11, in just over an hour, drafts of four new features landed at once. Raids on the wild world — three events: an “Explosive Cargo” falling from the sky, which blows up after five minutes along with everything nobody managed to carry off; a “Mystery Ship” run aground with locked barrels; and a “Gold Rush” — a scattering of golden crates where the coins go to whoever lands the last hit. Bidding auctions — with a deposit, extension in the last minute and fair refunds for the outbid. A minimap in the corner of the screen with waypoints you can also see in the world itself. And the “charm farm”: a Summoner from a creature nest very rarely drops a Last breath charm — and all of Anarchy hears about the find.
