The Great 2023 Retrospective, Unreal Engine, TTPP, The Present and The Future.

Damn what a tittle.

This might be a long post. If it's not I'll delete this part and nobody will know. (It's long)

Before we begin, I hope you all had a great end of the year and wish you an amazing 2024.

2023 was an overall fantastic year for me. Learned a lot of new things. And some big positive changes happened. So all in all no complaints.

Unreal Engine. Honestly pretty good. It wasn't as hard as I originally thought it'd be. It looks a lot more intimidating than it is. The start was a little rough but now that I'm over that beginner hump it feels pretty good to use. I'll continue using it for some time. For now my plans include finishing TTPP and then at least one more game in UE5.

TTPP. I'm having some thoughts regarding the direction and what I want to do with it. I'll most likely rewrite the story a bit and change some things. The stuff I've already made will stay mostly the same but the rest of the game will change quite a bit from what I originally planned.

This change comes from a lack of interest in the original story, so I'm changing it. Hopefully for the better. The overall feel and atmosphere won't change much though. I still want it to be a spooky, slightly horror-y game. Just the story and location of said story.

These are the growing pains of a game that gets developed and released at more or less the same time. Never ending tinkering to make the best possible game means changing things here and there.

I've also read a lot of the complaints and feedback regarding the demo and I'll work to fix some of those.

For me TTPP is a way to learn unreal engine in a "safe" environment. An easy project that shouldn't take too long to finish with some simple game play and ideas.

The Present and The Future. I'm taking a break. At least January. Part of the big positive changes is that I'm moving houses. For various reasons this is good. Anyone that's moved knows that it's a pain in the ass and very time consuming. So, I take break.

My immediate plans are to finish statues and release it on steam. I got a bunch of plans for what I want the final version of the game to have, so once I've decided and ready I'll make a post talking about what to expect in 1.0. 

I've also been thinking about finances and whether or not I'll release 1.0 for free or for a few bucks. Haven't decided yet. (I'll probably make a post talking about finances, how much I've made so far, etc at some point) (With that said I still very much enjoy doing this)

I'd also like to do some small quick updates to TTPP. Something like a scene or something small once a month. Sadly the best way to be a patreon dev is to make tons of small updates to get more exposure. Personally I think this leads to bad games in the long term but it may be a necessary evil if I want to make this work. Regardless I'm never going to prioritize quantity over quality. So we'll see how that turns out and whether or not is even possible.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand with that. Happy 2024.

PS: Wanted to make this post sooner, but I was tired. Happy new year on the 8th of January I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯