Hi everyone! uFactory has been in development hell for a while and I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss what happened, what's changing, and what will be coming in the future.

What Happened

The answer to this is complicated and based on a number of factors. Some are very simple (uFactory just never made enough money to be able to reinvest in it). Others are more complex (despite 74% positive reviews, only 33% of the top 6 shown on our store page are positive; the other negative ones describe problems that don't even exist in the current version of the game.) Ultimately, the problem boiled down to two major factors: (1) uFactory wasn't making money and (2) continued development of uFactory had become painful. The first issue is pretty simple. Due to a lack of marketing and initial negative reviews, uFactory simply didn't get the discoverability or momentum an indie game needs. Because of this, the revenue never got to the point where it could support even a single full-time developer, and that's after the many costs of initial development. That meant that uFactory development had to take a back seat to paying the mortgage. The second issue is a bit more complex. Part of it is due to the massive changes made in response to user feedback after the initial Early Access launch of the game. So many fundamental things changed while retaining backwards compatibility that the code base was riddled with tech debt. This was exacerbated by the choice of engine. uFactory was built on Unity, which, since its IPO in 2020, has gotten steadily worse as a platform to develop on. Near the end, it would take literal minutes of waiting after every code change before I was able to test the change. This meant that even the fun parts of development (adding features and content) became and absolute slog, and the less fun parts (like bug fixing and refactoring) were nightmares.

What's Changing

Some of you may have heard the scandal that the Unity engine was recently involved in, regarding royalties demanded of developers. If you haven't heard about it, it's interesting reading, but the short version is this: Unity demanded a new pricing model and tried to force it on all customers, new and old. The backlash was so severe that they not only walked back the scheme, but the CEO was forced to resign. Unfortunately, though, the company lost the trust of indie game developers and might never recover. Given that this scandal seemed to be caused by Unity's merger with an ad/spyware company, that loss of trust may be well-deserved. So, due to the poor management at Unity, as well as the technical issues described above, I've made the difficult decision to move uFactory to a new engine. I tried out about 10 different options to see which would work best for a logistics game such as this. The things I was looking for are: (1) reasonable pricing model or free, (2) unlikely to be screwed over in the future for profit, (3) easy to use and well-documented, and (4) good community for when documentation isn't enough. After reviewing the major high-end engines (like Unreal and CryEngine), I found they failed conditions 1 and 2. So, I started gravitating towards FOSS (or "Free and Open Source Software"). Ultimately, two engines rose to the top of the list: Stride3D and Godot. As a .NET developer at heart, I really liked Stride a little more, but it, unfortunately, has an inscrutable and poorly-documented shader system that was a major roadblock. I look forward to trying it again in a couple years for new projects. But that left us with one: Godot. Godot is a free and open source engine that has become the new home for many ex-Unity developers, and for good reason. The latest versions are very well-done and the engine is slick and lightweight and efficient. Those multi-minute pauses in Unity? So far, they've never broken 10 seconds in Godot. So, the future of uFactory will be built with Godot. That said, however, I have come to believe in the promise of FOSS game engines. As such, Lucid Silence Games has become an official contributor to both the Stride3D and Godot engines. You can find this studio name listed on their respective websites. LSG is a Gold Strider sponsor of Stride3D, and is a Titanium contributor to the Godot Development Fund. You can rest assured that your support of this studio is indirectly supporting the entire FOSS indie gamedev community.

What's Coming

uFactory in Godot is already a work-in-progress. It's less of a port and more of a rewrite designed to fix some of the problems deep in uFactory's original code base. Already, code that was confusing in the previous version has been made simple by having a clearer plan up-front. More importantly, I'm taking a back-to-basics approach. Extraneous features are being cut to make sure the core game is as tight and fun as possible. Tools are being built to help balance the game automatically and speed up the time it takes to add new content. Speaking of content, it's being built, from the start, in a modular way. Yes, modular as in mods. Right out of the gate, the factory scenarios come from simple JSON text files... so you can write your own and add them to the game. That's just the start, though, as the game will also come with built-in placeholder machines and commodity token graphics so you can design your own manufacturing processes without needing artistic skills. There will also be a couple other new features added that truly complement the existing gameplay, like multi-stage factories, where you have to complete one section's goals before you unlock the floor plan and machines for the next section. This will have multiple benefits, but mostly it will make the tutorials more seamless (and less onerous), and will make the mid-game levels feel less overwhelming at first. Plus, it will increase replayability, because once you beat the level once, you can try it again with everything unlocked from the start! So, when will all this be available, you might ask? The goal, not a guarantee, but the goal, is to have a basic demo with a few levels available in a Steam beta branch by December 1. In addition, I'm going to try to make it a point to release a new devlog on the first of each month. If I fail to do so, come yell at me in our Discord server. Also, I occasionally post more frequent updates and videos of WIPs in that Discord server too, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

In Summary

I've always said uFactory *will* be finished, even if I couldn't say when. And I still stand by that. Let's hope Godot continues to be such a pleasure to work with and a new era of regular content and feature updates ensues. Thanks for sticking with uFactory all this time. We'll get out of Early Access someday.

[ 2023-11-01 20:50:46 CET ] [ Original post ]