Synopsis:
- What has been going on?
- Progress is still being made!
- Where do we go from here?
Hello Everyone!
Thank you all for your amazing patience with us since our last update. Over the last few months we have been dealing with a few minor internal issues and one large one that ultimately began to effect production. We are happy to say that these issues have been solved and the future of EoE is looking brighter than ever. One of our goals with running this Kickstarter was to be very forward and translucent to our backers, so below we will discuss our issues with development and our solution for going forward.
What has been going on?:
That is a question some of you may be asking yourselves and this update is specifically for answering that question.
About a month after being funded, we choose to move to a custom built engine in order to escape the limitations of the RPGMaker game engine. While at the time, we knew this choice would extend development time, there were other issues which we could not anticipate. Namely, our primary programmer was having trouble meeting his financial obligations. As a result his work on the engine suffered. Given this, we've made the decision to part ways, and are happy to announce that we are working with a more experienced programmer, able to devote the majority of his time to the project.
However with a change in direction comes additional costs.
As I'm sure you can imagine, programmers don't come cheap. Since we could not have foreseen this cost in our original budget, many of our team members have had to take on extra work to afford him, thus taking away some of their time from development. While we don't require your assistance - you've already done more than enough to exhibit your support - it would be greatly beneficial to us if we could alleviate the financial burden away from our teammates to ensure the can spend that time on development. We announced a way to donate via PayPal in our last update by visiting our website, www.eoegames.com, so spreading knowledge of that will be a great assistance. (All digital rewards are still available.)
Progress is still being made!:
By what you just read, you might assume that no progress on EoE has been made since our last update. Let us assure you that is not the case! In fact, much progress has been made!
We used this down time to look at our story as a whole, picking each and every scene apart. We found better ways to streamline the story and conversations so that the player will always stay engaged and attentive. We also used this time to fill any holes we found in the story, ensuring a solid narrative throughout. Although we would have liked to spend this time building the literal game, we are happy that it led to a more solid game narrative (And we are positive you will be too!).
Our graphic production also continued and almost all departments are nearing completion! We have prepared a short, still framed cinematic for our trailer that we are very excited to share when the time comes! It's been so exciting seeing our work materialize and the game as a whole develop visually.
We have also made some minor improvements to our battle system to keep things interesting and speedy. We also spent some time tightening up the stats for the characters and monsters to ensure a limited need for "grinding."
Finally, we were able to complete a for more areas of the game world are about to begin building the next big dungeon! We will have screenshots featuring these areas soon.
Where do we go from here?:
As mentioned in our first topic, we were able to secure a new programmer to replace our old one. While he does not start officially until February 1st, he has already begun working on the engine out of sheer enthusiasm and has completed more in 1 week than our old programmer could do in a single month! We are very optimistic about our new programmer and what he will bring to our development team!
So, going forward, our game engine is to be completed in 5 months. During this time, our game engine will be completed by our new programmer to allow our team to finish production of Echoes of Eternea. Even though the engine wont be done for 5 months, we will still be able to begin coding the game (In fact, we already have been for months!) albeit at a slower rate than if the engine and all features needed were done. We still don't want to put any specific date out for a release, but we are positive that we will have that information soon.
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We thank you again for your patience with us during this stumbling block. We will be back much sooner than usual for a more meaty update, so please look forward to that! Also, please leave any questions you have for us in the comments and we will get to them ASAP!
