My Steam review and concerns

[macdguy]

@vtipoman

-Fishing (started, stopped, started over from scratch, stopped, started)

I have explained the reasoning behind Fishing here:

@macdguy

Fishing was delayed due to the Steam Inventory changes that Valve required us to make. We had to put everything on hold for a couple weeks to solve this inventory issue before Fishing could continue because Fishing heavily uses the inventory for its functionality.

After that delay, Halloween came up. It’s a serious of events that just unfortunately delayed it. I am currently (and most likely for the future) the only programmer working on Fishing. Foohy helped me out with the inventory side of things, but the gameplay is all me. So I’ve been doing prototypes here and there, and solving the issues. I’ve actually been asking our artists to finish up some more of the Fishing items, so it’s not really that far off from being completed. Krionikal also needs to finish up the weapon animations as well (which he got some solid progress on).

Things like this happen in game development and we try to avoid it.

To expand on it for you, it got delayed because of an unforseen requirement that Valve put on us, which came during a time where we planned to make a holiday event. The Halloween event was a test of multiple upcoming planned features (cooking, fishing, metal detector, minigame/event system, dialogue system, seasonal events).

Fishing has been put back on full development for the past month now, if you read my daily logs. I am working as fast as I can on it. However, keep in mind that we also just had to update to the latest Unreal engine version, which has kinda put my focus on fixing regression bugs that came up. We upgraded the engine to solve several commonly reported bugs such as: D3D crashes (the most common crash report), 1/4 screen issues with Condo, media player FPS, Minigolf physics issues, and several other issues.

The gameplay that was previously being worked on was scrapped for very good reasons. It was: dull, boring, and not fun. It was not up to our standards and I spent a lot of time prototyping to find gameplay that is exciting, interesting, and most of all, fun. I would say scrapping what we had was the best thing for Fishing.

@vtipoman

-The rollercoaster (Literally a one-time gimmick. You sit in it and watch your character have fun. The head dev claims it had to be made due to it being an Indiegogo promise, but there are many other such promises that don’t get worked on)

I have explained this to you in the past, but I’ll repost it.

@macdguy

I would like to explain the Roller Coaster. The Roller Coaster was an Indiegogo promised feature (literally the first thing we promised to add) and we don’t want to break any promises. We knew the Roller Coaster was not going to bring in a lot of players when making it (which is why it was so low priority). I do plan on adding a minigame aspect to it one day.

However, going back to what I was explaining earlier, the Roller Coaster was completed several months before it was actually released. We just sat on it for awhile because there was a major bug with the seat system that greatly effected the Roller Coaster (basically you couldn’t sit in the seats at all so there was no point in releasing it), but everything else with the Roller Coaster was done. Since it was lower priority than everything else, it was just stuck like that while the seat system was upgraded and improved. After several debugging builds (each take 4-5 hours), Foohy figured out the problem and then Roller Coaster was quickly finished off.

To sum it up, it was NEVER a focus nor did it slow down progress of any other feature. It was simply just finished off because we solved a seat bug (a bug that needed to be solved anyways).

@vtipoman

-The laser projector (One of these “personal projects” I mentioned. It’s a programmable laser projector. You can do really cool stuff with it, but it’s something almost no-one uses. One of the programmers worked on it for quite some time, too.)

The laser projector could have waited, but the work done on it was done by a part time programmer. It also was a test of systems Zak was working on for Arcade and Condo IO.

@vtipoman

-Project 39 (A “community condo” map. It was blocked out and left at that.)

That’s kinda how it has to be right now. Lifeless and Johanna have been busy with plaza events and fixing up the current Plaza map, along with developing other maps for Zombie Massacre. They can only really take up so many projects at one time. I do wish things can just be made quicker, but these things take time and that’s really gonna be a factor here. There has been more work on this than just a block out.

@vtipoman

-Planet Panic (A crappy, unfinished gamemode that I to this day think got released only to have the promised 4 gameworls “ready” for early access.)

Planet Panic was my mistake for keeping it in the dark for so long. I have been trying to balance as much as I can, but I run out of time in the day (hell, I worked Thanksgiving just to get stuff done on Fishing). I will be returning to this game world soon after the Winter events.

@vtipoman

-Containership (A map for a gameworld that’s not even started development)

This is how game development works. We need blockouts of maps and ideas to start developing gameplay for it. We’re using Container Ship to establish the art style, gameplay style, and mood of SDNL.

@vtipoman

-Virus weapons (A number of weapons for a gamemode called “Virus”. About three are very high-quality, about two are ok and the rest are crap. They only get worked on when a dev feels like going back and remodelling one, so the arsenal’s in this weird development limbo.)

Krionikal has been working on animations for the weapons still. Matt and Johanna are nearly done with all the weapon models. Weapons take a lot of time to model and animate, unfortunately, and when you combine that with other things coming up, it tends to be less prioritized. We do have an internal deadline for the Virus weapons, though.

@vtipoman

-Weather affecting surfaces (Like snow covering the ground, or rain making everything wet. This was shown on a development stream quite a while ago, but it never got implemented.)

This was taken off development because it is a lot of work and not something that is super important right now. I mean I’m going through this list you’ve posted and there’s already like tons of other more important features that we could be spending time on. That’s why it’s not implemented.

@vtipoman

-The Arcade (One of the most anticipated features, according to votes on the official Trello page. Again, it only gets worked on when someone feels like it, which is not enough for such a big feature)

We’re finishing up smaller stuff that lead into the Arcade development. We decided to get Zombie Massacre out before Arcade. Arcade is a very large project that will require complete focus on. Thus, Fishing needs to be done and out of the way before Arcade development can begin. Another major factor is Arcade development will slow down updates to a grinding halt as we gotta focus on this one. Johanna has finished most of the models for the cabinets, Zak has put a lot of work into the 2D API and it’s nearly there, and I have put a lot of work into the 3D gameplay backend,

So it’s not like we’ve forgotten or don’t put any thought into the Arcade. Everyone on the team knows it’s one of the most anticipated features, which is why we’re taking our time with it and making sure it’ll meet the expectations.

@vtipoman

The monorail (A small train that goes between two points of the main plaza. Literally no-one uses or cares about it.)

The monorail was not a very difficult feature to finish, but it was a feature promised and finished so we can get it out of the way. It also added some life to the Plaza. The monorail was also the same code used for the rollercoaster.

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I think the main thing I can take from this is that we’re not doing a good enough job at explaining why we’re focusing on this feature instead of that other feature for you. It’s easy for us to look at the game and plan out the best course and direction to go in terms of game development, but it’s not clear to the public sometimes.

That’s what the daily logs were designed to help with. They are there to inform the public what we are working on. It is not entirely clear why we are working on the things we post on the log, which is the disconnect I’m seeing here.

In the past, I posted bi-weekly summaries of development progress, but I stopped as it ended up taking more time out of my development day than I anticipated. Maybe that’s what we can take from this. Instead of doing daily logs, we can combine the daily logs into a weekly (or bi-weekly) summary that explains why we’re working on this feature instead of that feature.