jk its not a big deal: more of an update on the current development plan of Cloudome, for internet archiving purposes and also since a few things have changed since the last time I was looking for funding:

• there are fewer things left to do now;
• I am a much faster UE dev now;
• I am ashamed that it took me so long, but I have finally found the perfect middle option between funding the finishing of the game in Unity (yuck) and funding the entire re-development of Cloudome in Unreal, which is funding the development of an Early Access build in Unreal.

It would still take significant time to finish the project, but I no longer need much in terms of outside help and, again, I no longer believe that funding 100% of the development is necessary. All I need is time, and mine isn't particularly expensive, but unfortunately it still needs to be paid for, otherwise I'll go homeless and full-time gamedev will definitely be out of the question for a long-long time. Campaign link. Also, in light of how difficult some of the puzzle in Prototype are, I made a guide / playthru of it: https://youtu.be/3MFRQvSIKGE Thank you. End of transmission.

There isn't anything special about the date itself: just the earliest possible day the soundtrack can be out due to Steam rules (I didn't think to get the soundtrack pre-approved, so we are currently in the middle of the mandatory wait period before it can be released). The whole thing could've been out almost a week ago, but I didn't know that the wait period rule applied to soundtracks: I was too consumed with finishing the music as fast as I could... and now there is nothing to do but wait. Sorry, my bad. Not much else to report at the moment!

• A lot of bugs were fixed since the soundtrack was finished, so even the demo has been updated;
• Oh, you might like this one: after extensive testing, I decided to double the flying speed;
• Achievements were added (I apologize for the quality of their icons). Initially I wanted to put lore into the achievements' descriptions, but after a bit of thinking I reminded myself that Valve will most likely not approve of that (I am 99.9% sure) as soon as they notice what I've done (oh, the crime!). However, to the best of my sneak ability I did put hints and even outright puzzle solutions into the descriptions (if you can identify the correct achievement for the puzzle on which you are working). I, of course, do not recommend this particular "mechanic" as the starting point for puzzle solving :-)

Once again I am sorry, but there are still no news about the fate of the full game. Without funding, it is highly plausible that Prototype could be the end of the road for the foreseeable future. If that is the future into which we are heading, I want to state that I still plan on delivering the second half of the journey, which would be a separate game that doesn't include remaking of Prototype (so, essentially a sequel to it). The need for it to be a separate game comes from the need to switch engines, and the need for the Prototype part of the journey not being remade in the new engine will come from the lack of funding (and the simple fact that without it I wouldn't be able to remake the first half in any way that would be a significant upgrade to Prototype). Delivery times for this "darkest possible timeline" scenario is something I, unfortunately, cannot give even nebulously for I have lost the ability to do gamedev full-time months ago and right now I cannot even highly approximately imagine when and how, without funding, I could go back to it in any capacity necessary to get anything meaningful done. Thank you for your interest in Cloudome!

Hello!

Thank you all for quite a handful of wishlists! I never thought Cloudome would pass 0! The release of Prototype will definitely be before the end of August: cannot give the exact date yet, but I can almost guarantee that it wont take longer than 2 more months (if nothing dramatic happens in my life, of course). The price of Prototype will be $5. For another $5 effectively as a form of tipping there will be available a combo package of hi-res masters for both the Demo OST (which is currently out everywhere) and the Prototype OST (on which I am currently working)*. For those interested in the uncompressed masters of the OSTs (and not the rest of my music), Steam will be the cheapest way to acquire them. The only other place with original masters of my music I cannot name here because Valve doesnt allow artists to self-promote on Steam. * OST is the reason Prototype isnt out yet: I am working as fast as I can, which admittedly isnt very fast for I think I have fried my brain in the recent heat wave. Since on Steam I never explained "why prototype and not just early access?", allow me to quickly go over the main points of the future "non-Prototype" version of Cloudome (for which I am currently looking for a publisher):

• It will be on Unreal Engine 5 instead of Unity. I started working on Cloudome in Unity a while ago, but for ethical reasons I probably dont have to explain I cannot continue. In addition, now that I have pushed Cloudome by myself pretty much as far as I can and require funding to continue one way or the other, I have made the executive decision to stop investing my time into the current Unity build. It will either make the game better for everyone, or (if I never get supported by an investor) at the very worst it will make no difference at all: makes little sense to not do it;
• To start with, the switch to UE will come with an upgraded level of graphical fidelity:
  • the low-poly style will be less aggressive;
  • use of actual textures rather than materials made out of single color;
  • much better lighting and shaders since Prototype is currently using the Unitys standard rendering pipeline which hardly knows what to do with light sources (example), and switching to a different pipeline would break all the light sources and shaders anyway might as well not bother and go straight to UE;
  • UE provides more stable performance for open world games as well as it generally runs intense graphics faster than Unity.
• Weather that affects both the ship and the environment (rains, thunderstorms, intense winds);
• Interactive clouds that respond to both the player ship flying through them and the weather conditions (being lit up by lightning, swirled into storms, blown by winds);
• Cockpit view and new controls for it, as well as general controller support;
• Much better sound design;
• Music from Prototype remixed, plus about the same amount of new music;
• Completely different HUD;
• Savestate kind of save system instead of checkpoints;
• Opening and closing cutscenes;
• A more obvious while simultaneously more organic indication of the areas boundaries (right now I am limited by a rather basic particle system, so the clouds at the edges of areas are not volumetric, which makes them behave not-as-envisioned up close, especially in cloud tunnels);
• And of course, the entire second part of the game.

The 1.0 version will be approximately twice as big as the first Early Access build. The Early Access build will effectively be the Unreal Engine remake of Prototype. If I were allowed to work on it full-time, it wouldn't take longer than 6 months to make. EA/1.0 versions will have no effective language: even in the menu words will be replaced with icons. Thank you for your interest in Cloudome! I apologize for taking so long to release it. Here are some links I may be allowed to share on Steam: twitters: @johnhalpart (most of my stuff is strategically linked in the bio of this one) & @CloudomeGame (news and updates) dev blog: https://www.indiedb.com/games/cloudome