Hi everyone! I just posted a Kickstarter announcement, and since it's related to FRONTIERS' development I figured I'd post it for you as well. I've had to cut some sections for space so if you want to read the complete update CLICK HERE. Time for a big announcement. Before you get excited: No, the game isn't finished. That's actually what I want to talk about. You all know that the original pre-Kickstarter release date was January 2014 (LOL). Once we hit all the stretch goals this was immediately pushed to Q2 2014, but it became clear that was a farce and I decided that Early Access plus a 'when it's done' approach was the best way to move forward. I've been plugging away ever since & stretch goals have been getting implemented one by one. But here's the thing: development is still taking TOO DAMN LONG. Why? Because I'm still the ONLY PROGRAMMER WORKING ON IT. I'm stuck in a cycle of slow development, which I've conveniently illustrated for you:
The main problem is the sheer size of the project. There was a time early on when any helpful programmer with a dash of Unity experience could say, 'Why don't I hop onto the project and fix some bits & bobs until it's tickety-boo? Tally ho!' There was at least a chance of that person accomplishing something in a few days or weeks (despite being inexplicably British) but those days are long gone. Nowadays help requires nothing less than a full-time commitment for at least two months, not to mention advanced Unity know-how. That all adds up to $$$, which means - well, you saw the graphic. After months of being stuck in this loop I started thinking: This is nutbar. I need to do something different and break the cycle. But what? I have moral problems with the two most obvious solutions - there's no way I'm running another Kickstarter because that would just be gross, and I can't justify aggressively advertising FRONTIERS yet because it's simply not finished. I briefly looked into taking on a few VFX jobs for some quick cash, but one glance at that shell-blasted no man's land of an industry had me backing away slowly - believe it or not, the hours and the pay has gotten even worse since I left. ALL WAS LOST. But as I was polishing my seppuku blade I had an idea. A good idea. Who says I have to do this myself? Right now I'm sitting on a mountain of game assets, half of which are unused / not used to their fullest potential. My rolodex is stuffed to bursting with programmers, artists & writers. Why not assemble a team and let them develop some tiny ultra-low-budget, super-inventive games while I continue to focus on FRONTIERS? Tiny games which require little to no time from ME, but which also won't require endless months of time from THEM? Games which (if even modestly successful) could help FRONTIERS break free of this cycle of slow development? I've illustrated this brilliant concept with perfect objectivity:
Wow! I mean really, is there even a choice here? QUICKLY all the way, please! The next questions are obvious: Who's going to make these games? (Cause I'm a little busy, remember) Who's going to want these games? And what will these games be like?

Who wants tiny little games, anyway?

Mobile users, that's who! And guess what? There is NO WAY IN HELL I'm getting into mobile games, because that market is tougher than boot leather. I have mad respect for anyone with the courage to try, but I just don't have the stomach to watch six months of work sink to the bottom of a 1000 page queue and yield pennies on the dollar. Thankfully there's an alternative - an emerging medium that's hungry for tiny little games, one which I'm deeply excited about.
Virtual Reality is turning out to be a weird new medium. It's not what most people expect it to be, which is 2D video games plus immersion - my implementation of Oculus support in FRONTIERS was a lesson on that score. No, it's something entirely new. Trying the tech demos for the VIVE prototype is what really convinced me of this. There's a massive design space out there waiting to be explored, and each new idea will have to be implemented simply & on a small scale. Perfect for our purposes - and the best part is there's absolutely no risk of these games failing! Just kidding it's risky as hell. But it can't possibly be worse than mobile, and even failures have a decent chance of breaking new ground. The upsides of diving into a new medium are self-evident. The downsides are numerous, and the biggest downside of all - namely that the number of people playing VR games is currently tiny and will stay that way for a while - is obviously at odds with the goal to support FRONTIERS. So for a while it would be wise to choose ideas that are playable without VR until those numbers can support exclusivity. Other downsides include the strict requirements for simple controls and near-perfect performance / optimization, but this has a silver lining: simple controls means simple gameplay, and that plus good performance makes VR games contenders for post-conversion to mobile devices. (So I guess in the long run I may end up dipping my toe into mobile games after all...)

Who's going to make them?

There's obviously no way I could be project lead on another game regardless of how tiny it is - the point of this whole endeavor is to support FRONTIERS, not bleed it dry by stretching my time even thinner. So I need a project runner who can supervise the day-to-day of development and help me to limit my own contribution to the bare essentials. Enter Ryan Span. You all remember Ryan. Of all the people who've worked on FRONTIERS, Ryan has devoted the most time to it apart from myself - not only did he write the whole story and all the game's dialog, he's also been patching up dialog in response to playtesting for over a year now, and that's on top of writing his latest novel. In short, Ryan is a busy bee, so it's no surprise that he jumped at the chance to develop these games - and with his focus on storytelling he's the perfect antidote to the tendency for VR games to be little more than glorified tech demos.

Introducing Alpha Wave's first three games

Alpha Wave is AAD Productions' new VR department, and they will be be producing three games to start with. If those go well, they'll continue to make more - if they don't, we'll write the whole thing off as a fun failed experiment and find some other way to support FRONTIERS.

How far along is this first set of games?

Euclidean is getting close to finished (85+%), Ariadnes' Maze is in early development and The Everton Experiment is in the prototype phase. (No release dates yet.) On Euclidean the team consists of Ryan (writer / design lead), Nathan Jensen (programmer) and Curtis Rochelle (artist / level designer). For my part I'm contributing some tools, some know-how and a lifetime of HP Lovecraft enthusiasm. Want to see some screenshots? Yeah you do:
(Note: I had to cut the update down for space - CLICK HERE for the rest.)

And now back to FRONTIERS:

Lots is going on - expect another KS update sometime this month - I'm working on a new Focus Update called You Are Not Alone, and it's going to be a fun one. Here's a teaser screenshot:
Until then, - L

[ 2015-06-01 16:16:12 CET ] [ Original post ]