The obvious stuff first:
- Steam page is finally public;
- Updated demo is up on both IndieDB —
- — and Steam, available for all three operating systems. If you played the previous demo, this one probably won't offer you much in terms of new content, but it is based on a much later build of the game (i.e. the current one).
Now, to something new and a bit out of nowhere.
What I've been working on for the past year and referring to as the "approximately first 50% of the game Early Access build" I am now calling CLOUDOME: Prototype and it is content-locked. It will be out in a month or two (aka "hopefully before the end of July") when I am done with all the music for it. The price will be $5: half of what I was going to charge for it as an Early Access product.
The actual CLOUDOME, if I am allowed to work on it, will be a separate game re-made from ground up in Unreal Engine. First, by transferring Prototype to it, and then finishing the rest of the game from there. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time, but only recently I have finally found motivation, and dare I say inspiration, to let go of Unity. Until now I’ve been underplaying my desire to transfer CLOUDOME to a different engine: in reality, it’s been on my mind the entire last year, and the only reason I didn't do it until now was because I was working on borrowed time: I knew I had a limited window on opportunity to work on it before I couldn't anymore, so I was afraid of losing progress by starting over and not having as much to show "when the time came".
So what happened? Ultra combo of many thing:
- First of all, it’s now or never. This "Unity prototype” has gotten way too big: it’s time to stop;
- After two weeks of dealing with Steamworks support as a developer, I started fantasizing about how wonderful it would've been if I didn't need Steam. Which of course made me think of Epic Games Store (in my heart in will always be Epic Game Store). Which made me think of potential perks of being on EGS with a game made in Unreal Engine. Which reminded me of how much I seriously should ditch Unity. After a few days of consideration, it became clear to me that Unreal Engine is a win-win-win scenario:
- I won't be screwed by Unity in the long run;
- Game will look better for the players;
- Game will sound juicier for publishers.
- Since I won't be able to resume development past Prototype without funding anyway, there is really nothing to lose by pitching a slightly higher-budget game, while there is potentially everything to lose by pitching a game a tad too minimalistic. Compared to what it would cost me to finish CLOUDOME by myself in Unity, the cost of development in Unreal Engine (and generally turning CLOUDOME into a much bigger game graphically) isn't deal-breakingly higher. Not sure if I should disclose my price here, but suffice it to say I can do it for under $70k yet for over $60k. In other words, keeping the project on Unity past this point makes no sense at all;
- EGS perks from being an UE project, while the only perk of selling on Steam is being *****d in the **s in front of the allegedly larger audience, which somehow is supposed to make it worth it (a statement that is highly questionable, especially when applied to exclusives).
Plan for June:
- Music for Prototype:
- currently 5 out of 7 tracks written, by end of June I should be done with arrangements and working on mixing.
Other than "still working on music" there probably won’t be anything to report next month so I’ll probably just twat it out.
Thanks and take care. It's dangerous to go alone. Try to remember some of the basics of CQC.
