So, here’s the deal with the latest Trello changes…
We’re trying to accurately estimate when a feature will be finished by. We’re giving ourselves a huge time frame so we can accurately hit the deadlines, instead of constantly pushing things back when things ultimately get pushed back. Given that a lot of the game has changed, we’re still designing features. The feature could easily be bumped ahead of schedule, but at this time, it’s far off.
Workshop is something we all want. And we know the demand is high. We’re actually going to be tackling that feature a lot sooner than shown on Trello, but there’s a lot of unknowns to figure out with Workshop. Things we still need to figure out: how players will create workshop items with interactivity, how downloading workshop items will work in-game, setting up the workshop community page, how workshop item icons will work, what are the scope of workshop items, etc. We’ll usually tackle these unknowns in weekly meetings, but we’ve been busy with all the other stuff on our plate currently (like bowling, condo saving, load times, and optimization).
We only have 2 programmers (1 of which is part-time) that could handle the massive task of Steam Workshop. It’s a major feature for the game and something that needs to be designed well, which will take time to figure out. Right now, those 2 programmers are busy working on weapon prediction and other major issues that plague the game.
I’d like to restate, once again, we are a very small team. We have 8 full-time people on our team, 3 of which are programmers and the rest are artists. We are in the process of vetting a new programmer on our team, but he has to learn our systems and our design philosophies first.
I would also like to state that video game development is different for every company. Comparing us to another company would be like trying to compare chocolate to toaster ovens. Also, Fall Out 4 is based on 3 previous games and engines (from 1997 to 2015, 18 years).
Maps do not require the entire team. They require generally one person to make and they do not halt the development of the game. I detailed this recently in a post: Wasn't this game suppose to be done already