We apologize for releasing this 6-month project status report a little later than usual. Unfortunately, our lead designer fell ill towards the end of June, and as they are the only English-speaking member of our team, we had to wait until they got better.
Moved to UE 4.27.2
As mentioned in the previous 6-month project status report, we've moved over to Unreal Engine 4.27.2, the latest (and probably final) version of UE 4. Since then, UE 5 has been released. We will not be moving over to UE 5 for the time being, if you are interested in why - check out our two-part Dev Vlog about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_GjoXzrBTI
https://youtu.be/l7GLoxC9wio
The Office
As also mentioned in the previous 6-month project status report, we also got an office that had to be fixed up before it could be used. We have since fixed some of the walls, painted them, and installed a new floor. We also found a broken water pipe under the floor which had to be fixed and that held the pace up a little bit.
Steam Page
We've made some significant progress with Steam in the first half of this year. We've fully integrated Steam into the game and we now have fully functional test servers running on Steam's platform. Unfortunately, Steam's platform works a little differently than traditional game servers to which users connect using an IP address and port. Instead, Steam uses game sessions that do not make the server's IP address public and thus make DDOSing the server difficult. As a consequence of this, we've had to redesign some of the functionality in the main menu and we have yet to figure out how server passwords and whitelists should work.
As mentioned in Dev Vlog #3, setting up the Steam page requires our lead designer to visit Spain (where our studio is based) in person. Unfortunately, that was not possible in quarter 1 of this year due to restrictions associated with COVID-19, so the trip was scheduled for June. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, our lead designer unexpectedly fell ill in June, and the trip had to be canceled. It has now been rescheduled for late August or September. More information about this will be released in an upcoming Dev Vlog.
Documentary About Why the Game Was Delayed
In our previous 6-month project status report we mentioned that we plan on making a documentary about why the game was delayed. If you're interested in checking that out, please follow this link: https://youtu.be/to3NuZI8Mq4
What’s Planned for the Next 6 Months?
As already mentioned, the Steam page is #1 on the priority list. Besides the Steam page, we will continue focusing all our efforts on catching up with the programming part of the game, as well as the animations.
We also plan to add the city of Branibor to the map, begin working on the rest of the islands, and further improve the graphical fidelity of the game in any areas that we can.
Thanks to everyone for the continued support, we look forward to seeing you in our upcoming Dev Vlogs!
Dev Team
2022 Development Roadmap (Updated as of July 2022)
