Dear fellow survivors,
The end of the year is here, and the time has come for an end of the year project status report!
Exactly 12 months have now passed since we announced the game in January with our first trailer (which anyone that has just joined the community recently can follow up on here).
So let’s break things down, reflect on the whole year and answer some frequently asked questions in the process.
Release date
Since January we’ve been working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day to make the game become a reality. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to release the early access version on Steam by the end of 2018 as we thought we could. This is partly due to some members of the team having to take time of work due to unforeseen medical issues which have since thank God passed *knock on wood*; but also because certain freelancers that we hired didn’t keep up on time. For example, the gentleman working on the Dr. Ivan 3D model ran so late we had to let him go recently, and also because we slightly underestimated the effort it would take, and let’s be honest, we made a few mistakes here and there now that we look back at the year; this is our first ever commercial project after all and none of us have ever dealt with anything like this before.
Why is it taking so long!?
As was said, this is our first commercial project and we have to acknowledge that many lessons have been learned on our part over the year, not only management wise, but in the way we hire people, the way we plan, basically in every part of the company and our personal lives. Not only that, but we’ve also tremendously improved our skills in terms of programming and 3D modelling which is evident when we compare our first screenshots to the most recent ones. If we look back now, in January we were just a bunch of guys and girls trying to put something together, whereas now at the end of December, we’ve turned in to young CEOs, managers, professional programmers and 3D modellers that run like a Swiss clock.
Despite the slight setback, we’ve managed to finish things we didn’t even plan like the Scrap Buggy, and we look at anything that didn’t go according to plan positively because we learned a lot of valuable lessons from those situations that nobody except experience will teach you. Thanks to that we have been able to expand our team from 4, to 12 highly talented, motivated and loyal people (if we don’t count the tens of freelancers we’ve also worked with) who create awesome content and guarantee that the game will turn out great! Because behind every great company and product stand great people!
When will testing with the Patrons begin?
As you know, we planned to begin testing with the Patrons by the end of December, but it turns out that in order to begin stable testing we need a master server provided by Steam. To get that we need to have a Steam page, and to get that we have to ‘connect’ our company with Steam which involves a lot of legal paper work between us and Steam, and also with the U.S. government because we’re not based in the U.S. but Steam is, so additional paper work is needed for taxes etc… So we decided that running around the lawyers isn’t the best thing right before the holidays, plus many laws will also change in 2019 and we’d have to run around the lawyers again in January. Basically, it made more sense not to rush it, so first thing after the New Year; we will begin dealing with the legal side of things and keep you guys informed on the progress.
What’s the plan for 2019?
First things first, we have to get the paperwork in order, set up the Steam page and begin testing with the Patrons, which we will do in modules to make debugging easier. This means that we will start with a very basic version of the game and slowly connect more features. After we’ve done that we will focus on finishing the remaining content, which involves some buildings and some programming, and then we will quickly run through the content we made for the first trailer and improve it with the new skills we’ve learnt. We will also release game play footage and we will hopefully release the early access version publicly sometime this spring. Once we start generating income from Steam we will meet up with the team which is currently all around the world and we will focus on making patches for the game and promoting the game through streamers, YouTubers, websites etc… to grow the community. We also have many goodies planned for Patreon which we will let you guys know about later.
Milestones
Here is a brief summary of the main mile stones we’ve passed and some main features that still need to be finished in 2019:
Done
- Day/Night cycle
- Volumetric clouds
- Inventory
- Database
- Bullets ballistics
- Player status (damage, blood, food, water, stamina)
- Zombies
- Shooting
- Weapon, vehicle, loot, furniture, misc., fence, animal, statue rock, tree, plant, clothes models
- Landscape
- UI
To do in 2019:
- Interaction with world
- Finish programming the animals
- Vehicle driving
- Base Building
- Finish buildings and a few misc. 3D models
- Retouch old building models from last year
To keep you guys updated we will look in to creating a public Trello board where you will be able to keep track of certain tasks that need to be finished.
Patreon & Donations
Last but not least, we’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who supported us on Patreon over the year, you guys believed in us from day one, your donations allowed us to hire and build the great team we did, your support kept us motivated and going forward even in times when it seemed as if everything is going wrong and we would not have been able to achieve what we did without you.
Much love, and much respect to you guys, we are very grateful for the support you’ve shown us!
With all that being said, we wish you all a happy new year, we hope that just as our dreams are being fulfilled, that you may fulfill yours in 2019 and we will keep you guys updated.
Until next time,
- The Taviana The Origins Dev Team