Sidenius

No grant

Added 2025-07-06 22:44:25 +0000 UTC

Unfortunately, we did not get the Epic MegaGrant that I applied for around 3 months ago. Since they get a lot of submissions they don't provide individual justifications, so one can only guess as to why this one didn't go through. I think it's either because the project isn't far enough along yet (they prefer to fund in the later stages of development), or because they don't approve of the particular use case for the funding, which was to buy the license for the new physics engine we've been testing. The grant sponsor is the company developing the game engine we use and they would probably prefer if we use the physics engine they provide instead of swapping it for a third party engine, especially if they were to fund the license. The final nail in the coffin is that the company mission with the grant was to give out a specified amount over a few years, and allegedly they are nearly out of money now and got very picky with who gets funded lately. In discussions with other developers, some have speculated that they barely fund games anymore and instead focus on funding tools and open source projects.

Either way, it means we may delay acquiring the license until after the next version is out. It's also possible to apply for the grant again later this year, but then I might specify it'll be used for something else in case the physics engine use case was the issue. Since the main focus for the next version is the dragon creator, it's not a huge issue to use the current physics engine for it. It's mostly relevant for destruction and environmental physics interactions for the physics based dragon, so those things could get pushed until after the license is acquired.

Overall it doesn't fundamentally change anything if we get the license now or later, the physics engine is a drop in replacement and would mostly require tweaking a few things to get good results once we do get it (which is still the goal). So it's not a major setback, but it would've been a nice bonus if we did get the grant.