Dev Blog #5 – New servers, new foundations
This past week has easily been one of the wildest weeks of Morndale so far. In terms of visible game content, it might not look like a huge leap, but behind the scenes it was massive. Most of my time went into moving everything over to the new server, prepping the infrastructure, and making sure Morndale has a solid foundation to grow on.
New development hub and FAQ
I’ve added a Development Hub and FAQ to the main site to make it easier to:
- Follow progress: See what I’m actively working on and what’s coming up.
- Stay up to date: Keep track of changes, patches, and dev blogs.
- Answer common questions: Help new and returning players get oriented quickly.
I’ve been reading and absorbing a ton of feedback this week, and it’s already shaping the priorities for what comes next.
Late-night experiments with SSE
I spent most of tonight experimenting with converting some of Morndale’s systems to use Server-Sent Events (SSE) for front-end updates. I wanted to see if it could improve how the game communicates changes and feedback to you as you play.
Right now, there are still some issues with how feedback is delivered to players when they perform certain actions. I’m going to keep tweaking those areas, but the test I ran tonight using SSE for skills just didn’t feel worth the complexity. It has its benefits, but for that particular system, it didn’t make sense. I’d rather focus on more targeted optimizations and clearer feedback loops elsewhere.
Bug and suggestion triage
I’ve gone through and pulled together a full list of all the suggestions and bugs that have come in. The plan for this coming week is to spend a big chunk of time knocking as many of those out as possible.
As many of you have noticed, Morndale’s biggest weakness right now is content. Most of the last six months have been spent on core systems and backend work. The good news is: content is actually very easy to add now. The game runs on a dashboard that lets me manage and create content quickly.
That said, I don’t want to just flood Morndale with “gather X item” style tasks, or fill the world with random NPC and shopkeeper names that don’t mean anything. I want the town and its people to feel intentional.
Help shape Morndale’s characters
To make Morndale feel more alive and personal, I’ve set up a Google Form where you can submit ideas for a character you’d like to see in the game. It could be a townsfolk, a shopkeeper, a traveler, or something weirder—just someone who feels like they belong in Morndale.
Submit a character idea here:
https://forms.gle/7YqgzazjUwQr77WZ7
This week’s changes
- World items: Finished adding items around the map of Morndale (all gatherable items are now locked to locations).
- Crafting UI: Crafting details now show equipment stats and bonuses.
- Auction House: Added sale history, a new “list item” page, and better item detail views.
- Main site: Updated the homepage.
- Site polish: Fixed styling issues on main site subpages.
- Profiles: Added profile settings.
Looking ahead
This next week is going to be a big push. With the server move mostly behind us and the suggestions/bugs list in front of me, I’m aiming to turn a lot of that feedback into tangible improvements—and start leaning more into actual content.
So much amazing feedback came in this week, and it genuinely helps guide where Morndale goes next. I can’t wait to see what we build from here.
