Holiday Update
"We are dead!" "Omg 2019 is almost over!"
The above are probably the short and sweet summation of comments on the forums. The first post comment would be incorrect and the second would be correct. 2019 is almost over, but we are still alive.
So what the heck has happened? Lots...
Last winter/spring we were developing some of the late game features in Lord of Rigel. Including having a functional AI and beginning to get espionage and tactical into place. A few things happened that made us slow down and practically grind to a screeching halt. First was the number of bugs being found by play testers. One of the biggest issues with the Lord of Rigel code base has been developed by numerous coders. Ace and I as the two creators have never been versed in code. We have been reliant on others to implement our vision. The second is that because of this the code base has had lots of fingers and mindsets in it. What became clear last spring is that we did not have code that we felt comfortable in completing and that led to some disillusionment with the project. Additionally we got hit with a second realization. Unity licensing.
Lord of Rigel had been developed in Unity 4 and then upgraded and locked into version 5. Unity has changed their licensing system from being one time pay to a subscription service. After talking with the Unity team about our situation and trying some experimental porting of the game to Unity 2019 it became clear that the game would once again need to be fixed and secondly that we would need subscriptions. Neither was a road we wanted to go down. We have had continued issues with Unity over the years and had grown tired of half implemented and broken features. This has cost us months of work over the years. The other issue was the $600 or more a month in licensing fees we would need to finish the game for a game engine we have spent years fighting with.
For some time Ace and I have looked into developing a side project alternative using the Unreal engine. We really thought that this may be an option for us given Unreal Engine's licensing system, visual effects quality, robustness, and visual scripting. In particular the visual scripting seemed like an interesting feature and I spent a few months looking around the internet at tutorials and wrapping my head around what was possible in Blueprints (Unreal's visual scripting system).
After debating the pros and cons of trying to finish in Unity vs starting new in Unreal we made the call in June 2019 to move to Unreal. That made some waves and we lost of dedicated folks working on the project, but some really possible things have come from this decision.
1. Visual Scripting aka. I can code now
2. Enhanced visuals: Including full 3D colony scenes
3. A better licensing system
4. A far more robust and stable game engine with room for future expansion
All of these things are huge leaps for us. As one of the creators in LoR I have typically been involved in game design and testing but have not been apply to get deep into the code. For the past 6 months I have been learning to develop and have made significant progress in developing the Unreal version of LoR. Ace has also been able to make better visuals and is picking up visual scripting as well. We have far more control of our destiny now that we have ever had before.
So what does that mean for LoR's release? Well for once I truly feel confident that we are going to have a product to ship to you. So far as we have developed the game things are so much more stable and the game behavior consistent in Unreal than our Unity builds. Already we have numerous galaxy generation features implemented in Unreal that were still not implemented in the last version of Unity.
So far we have had an internal Build 1 out to some testers for their feedback and it includes galaxy generation. We are currently working on Build 2 which is a foundational build for the game. It involves player generation and colony management for player homeworlds. We are hoping to have that done by mid January and then move to build 3 which will include ship movement and colony management for other player worlds. We are looking at maintaining a 30 day build cycle for each build and ideally around 10 to 12 builds.
I know for many folks this isn't entirely the news of "game release imminent" that everyone including the development team was wanting. And we do feel like this move to Unreal was a much needed and now after making the leap a very long and overdue change that should have happened 2 years ago.
Below are some in game screenshots. Everything pictured below is running in game and coded with the exception of the last two tactical test scenes. Those are setup scenes are designed to help us test out shaders, map design, etc.They should give some indication as to the base quality of the models, etc. in game.