Update on the first build

In this week's post, I want to give an update on the progress towards the early access release (a.k.a the first build).

To recap, the initial plan was to have a kind of closed testing build available for tier 3+ patrons released before the end of the year. This would be a very barebones version without the polish and functionality necessary for public viewing, and thus would require an NDA. This plan was later replaced with a new plan where additional work is put into making the build a more polished and comprehensive experience, and then there would be no NDA and all patrons get access to the build (with higher tiers getting earlier access). Of course this requires a lot more work before it can ship, so I flagged that it might get delayed to a later date but still aimed for the original goal of before the end of the year.

Now that we have entered the last month of the year, I think it would be best to let the game bake in the oven for a little longer instead of rushing it out the door before Christmas. I could technically release it right now as it's fully playable, but there are still a lot of things I would want to include that wouldn't make it in time. These are mostly small quality of life improvements, details or fixes, things you may not even think about until they're absent. Satisfying UI sounds, button animations, game settings and other non-gameplay features that elevate the experience. There are also two bigger things - a new landscape with a more advanced material, as well as the new dragon model that has been in the works for months. The landscape would be made using a new pipeline for producing regions that me and a collaborator have been exploring recently, and the new dragon model is nearing completion but will need some more time to be integrated into the game and work with the animation system since it will use a different so called skeleton. If there's time over, I might even throw in some customization options that can be toggled while flying (with a dedicated dragon creator mode coming later).

So what's the new timeline? I think most of this can be done by the end of January, so let's aim for that. I might skip the custom launcher and patcher if there isn't enough time for it, because the download size of the game is pretty small at this stage (1-2 GB) so it can just be re downloaded when there's a new version instead of patching. In that case, it would likely be hosted on the indie game platform Itch.