Hello Folks. It has been a year now since Endciv was released and it was a great experience to develop this game. But this is not the full truth, it was quite depressing from time to time either and the game is far from where it was intended to be now. In the past I attended other jobs in order to get some income which is one of the reasons why development was paused in-between. The game was planned to be developed by a team of people and it started as such. As I then continued on my own and hired freelancers I was always optimistic that it will turn out as it should. When I start a business I want it to be sustainable all the time and the risk I was willing to take was still not enough to go all-in on this project. Endciv is a complex project which requires a lot of work for individual features. My expertise is technical art so I wanted to have nice graphical features and content in the game, the downside is that all of this has to be produced by artists which are capable of doing it. Especially the people in the game are an issue. They should be modular which requires a more complex rigging process. Also each animation must be created and managed in code each time a new feature would be added. These are all things that either require time or additional workforce. Not that this is not doable but keeping all the other things in mind especially the countless debugging turned this game into a burden. If you want to do a professional project then you require a professional environment and this is the part where I failed.

How is it going on?

You might be asking, no the game is not cancelled. Features such as savegames are still in the pipeline and will be provided. The price of the game has been reduced (this might take time to update on the shop). I definitely want to work on the Core-Features as described, so mainly building and economy features and a bit of budget is still reserved which is going to be invested in game models. But I will attend a new day job in March and my business as a self employed developer has ended. I will be less available for the first few months as I wont be home often and have to relocate then. Yet in the weekends I do have time to finish the savegame feature first. To be honest in terms of time spent for development it might not have that much of an impact. Its not that it takes x months to develop certain feature but it is the constant pressure and other obligations that held me back, and yes sometimes the lack of motivation. My new job is not very stressful and going home without having to worry about my future is a big help. Even though I plan to balance my life I will have time to continue. Endciv now is a hobby project again. Some of you might be angry now but you did definitely contribute to the project and I am sorry if you feel that I used your trust. It is not completely over but it is fair to say that the future of the project is limited now. As I said earlier the core features are still planned to be developed and I need to see for myself how the next few weeks will turn out. TLDR; savegames are still coming. Thanks and sorry for all of you supporting the game.

[ 2017-02-25 16:31:19 CET ] [ Original post ]