Link Hi, friends. Today is one of those diaries in which we won't publish the gameplay video and wont release the game again. Again we wont cure all runny noses in the world, wont finish A song of Ice and Fire and, obviously, wont return the kindness to the Internet. But theres still something to talk about. A good half of the questions in the community about when to release, why so long and how can we dare to delay ourselves in the first place?! Let's try today to understand the conditions of work on Soldiers: Arena, and to hold a small retrospective of past years and delays. Let's talk about development and developers, about why two years are not many, and why two, not three, and even if three, it is still not too long. We will have a diary that can be referenced by seeing the next Release date?!, and you will have screenshots and answers.

Arena development is a miniature eternity Ralph Waldo Emerson

On the Steam forums and in the comments is very easy to find lots of folks solidary with Emerson, but it's just not serious. Do we develop the game long? - Hell no! Do you wait for it long? - Probably, yes. The fact is that the time from the announcement of the game to its release does not equal the development time. In most cases, users will learn that a game is being developed when it is almost ready. Firstly, because at the final stage it is easier to correctly determine the remaining time for development, and secondly, because players do not have to become tired of waiting. After all, there is no shortage of games, and in 2017 alone, almost 7,000 came out on Steam. Keeping a players interest for several years of development is incredibly difficult (well, we are well aware of this), so the time of pre-release activity is usually not more than six months. Game development often takes from 2 to 5 years depending on the complexity of the project. And there is an astounding number of factors capable of increasing the originally planned period. In the case of Soldiers: Arena, these factors were: the cancellation of Nuclear Union and limited resources, the relocation of the studio to another city, the remake turned into a full-fledged game, the search for a new gameplay style, the overall complexity of the project, a small number of employees (less than twenty) and a number of other factors which we do not even want to remember. Oh, friend, we have gone through so much and have done so much for these two years, having so little that talk about way-too-long development and the jokes about the release in 2031 due to the sheer bewilderment. Below we will restore the chronology of events in making of Soldiers: Arena and try to explain why everything is as it is and why it is good.

Development will last long after Khayyam's fame Has passed away, yea, and his very name; Aforetime we were not, and none did heed. When we are dead and gone, devblogll be published same. Omar Khayyam

The Steam store page was created in December 2015 and we immediately decided to keep in touch with the community all the way to the release. Moreover, this release has to happen in three months. In those days, Soldiers: Arena was supposed to be a remake of a multiplayer (and only this) part of Men of War, with steam features support and replacement of some models. Most of our team didn't even work on it but provided support for games from third-party developers using GEM: Battle of Empires, Gates of Hell, Draft Wars, and several others.
Link Already in the first month, it became obvious that after such a long silence you expect something more than a remake from the Best Way. We already got used to the relocation, resumed the processes and, in general, also wanted to do something more. So the whole first and second quarter of 2016, we tried different options, thought over the list of new features, chose the version of the engine, but still, there was no talk about the new game. It was rather a more advanced version of the remake. It was so until the fall of 2016 when a new gameplay began to appear through the list of new mechanics and technical improvements. More precisely its sketch. It was different from the MoW and was both promising and controversial, and so far existed only on paper. The whole team started working on the game exclusively by the fall of 2016. It is this time that should be considered the beginning of work on the Arena-game. Frankly, we could go into silence for the next couple of years and return only to the stage of pre-release activity, which was written above (these 3-6 months). But again we didnt want to disappear, and we thought, why not take a chance to maintain a dialogue with the community from the first days of development? The great perspectives of regular diaries and the most early closed alpha test attracted us with constant feedback and warm motivating words of support from players. And we warmly welcomed these promising perspectives. And they gave us the opportunity to test and refute theories at the earliest stages, correct the mistakes that you find and get rid of what you are not very interested in. Remember that every comment you leave can improve the final game! Huge power in your hands, do not waste it all on Releasedates?!.
Link The time from autumn 2016 to summer 2017 was the hardest. It was then that we tried to understand what the game should be and were looking for core gameplay. Time is interesting but often painful. Soldiers: Arena then looked like a fishing hut, to which we were trying to attach a medium-sized castle. It looked weird and often annoying. There was a lot of unnecessary and temporary, a lot of things that are added to the game, only to make it obvious that they are not needed in it. We tried a lot and refused a lot. By the way, all this can be avoided if you make a sequel or clone of something. In this case, the development is reduced to the replacement of models, animations and the creation of a pair of new campaigns. With such a project it is easy to calculate the time for development and meet the deadlines. It's pretty simple when you do not need to invent a new gaming experience, but we wanted to develop the series, and not treading water. It was at this stage that the basic principles of the new project were formed:

• Variability of gameplay. Make an army managing a mini-game in which there are no one hundred percent correct or incorrect decisions. So even the craziest set of units had a chance.
• The primacy of tactics. Proper use of units should be more important than the fastest hand in the whole wild west.
• Role component. Give the player the opportunity to play his favorite units and encourage him to play the role.
• Epicness. The battle should consist of a series of epic moments, and not of a sequence of identical actions like: accumulated points on your favorite tank, went on the attack, get wasted, accumulate again or ragequit. Session must be in suspense from the first to the last seconds.
• Readability battle. If you are killed, you should at least approximately understand by who, why, and how to get revenge.
• Team play. Cooperation with other players should be maximally encouraged and be the pillar of gameplay.
• Lots of content. Scope and possibilities! A huge selection of units, perks, and customizations for them, many commanders of various specialties, tons of cooperative. Later, a single-player component was added too, which was not originally in the plans, and which was influenced by you, guys!
• A continuous fight against useless units. With the development and receipt of new units, the old ones should not become useless. The gameplay of each should be considered a set of mechanic and sometimes mini-games.

Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but Arena development is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity. Oscar Wilde

But it is one thing to formulate, and quite another to implement these principles. After all, the end result is so abstract, and the terms are so approximate! Basically, everything has to be tested empirically. In a readable language: it was necessary to iteratively improve and modify. For example, we now have the fourth revision of HE-shells in our work. Fourth! In most cases, you just cant predict and take everything for granted. Make, test, rework.
Link In the second year of development, the first reports about the waay-too-long development have already appeared! The game at that time was not very stable and poorly optimized, but quite playable and it was already possible to go into Early Access then (in the end, alpha testers have been playing for more than six months already). But we decided that you should not be misled by the lack of interfaces, low fps, drafted models of vehicles and unfaceted gameplay. Yielding to persuasion in June 2017, we named the date - the first quarter of 2018. The development went on, the scale increased, the number of units, commanders and new mechanics grew. From the initial calculation of 60-70 units for each nation, we came to 100+ (and this figure continues to grow).
Link The core gameplay was ready, and most of the features were implemented, work began on the interface, which is still going on to this day. It is worth saying that words like interfaces, optimization or balance, of course, do not convey the number of works behind them. Interface hell, optimization swamp and balancing infinity would be better suited. Make, test, rework. In March, after the publication of the first videos, we saw that most of the community was not ready for fps drawdowns and lags. We were seriously surprised by this because all this time we were talking about getting into Early Access, which does not imply a ready-made, optimized and devoid of bugs game, as water does not imply soup. As in any beta version of the game, there will be bugs and imbalances in it. Ok, its probably worth doing optimization and network code before entering Early Access, we thought and changed the date to the second quarter of 2018. At the same time, we started several tasks from those same themes that were impossible to perform on the GEM engine. It is because of the complexity of these tasks that we had to postpone the release once again to the autumn of 2018. And here we are. The core gameplay is ready, two playable nations too (we will most likely finish the USA after entering the EA), the impossible has become possible, and you can play without a slideshow even from mediocre PCs. Now we are a bit late with interfaces and network code. But in the next month we hope to catch up with it, but the plans, as before, are approximate. As mentioned above, Early Access is just the beginning and each delay makes this beginning more likely. It makes the game better, we become better prepared, and the players who paid their hard-earned money will become happier. Perhaps, we will first release a limited number of keys in order to simultaneously receive support from our most devoted fans, who are ready to treat problems and bugs with understanding and at the same time limit the number of users and keep up with support. Thanks to everyone who supported us on this way, helped with advice and inspired with comments. Guys, you're the best! Release date?!

[ 2018-11-03 19:17:41 CET ] [ Original post ]