Letter from the Director - Development Update
Everyone, I know all of you have been excited for this game and now I feel I need to take some time to explain exactly what is going on and why things have been quiet. To ease any concerns; the game is not cancelled or the like; just things are going slowly. TL;DR - I am sorry fo
Everyone, I know all of you have been excited for this game and now I feel I need to take some time to explain exactly what is going on and why things have been quiet. To ease any concerns; the game is not cancelled or the like; just things are going slowly.
TL;DR - I am sorry for the lack of updates; the game has went from a team to one man and I failed to prioritize the game like I should have been. The game is finished from a programming standpoint and needs content like items and quests added, which has been a slow process. I improved my workflow so that while I may work slower when I'm occupied, I can still make progress. I will work harder to keep you in the loop on progress. Testing is within the near future, but still too far out; the game just doesn't have enough content to warrant opening up for testing. If you do want to test in this early state, let me know. Otherwise, I'll have to wait until I can get at least a few more zones fully populated. Thank you for your continued interest and please feel free to ask more questions about the game or join the Discord server.
What's going on behind the scenes?
When The Fallen started development, there were 3 of us; a UI designer, a programmer (myself), and an artist. However, life happens and for various reasons, there is now just one of us; myself. For roughly the last year, the game has been lead on by a one man army and that one man has a full time job that has been getting in the way of progress due to staff shortages.
This means that I could only dedicate a few hours a week to the game and really being the only one means that when I can't work on the game, progress is halted. Time had come at a premium. Because of this, I have had to chip away at work very slowly. This is a failure on my part; I failed to prioritize the game despite saying that I was able to and I am sorry to let you down with no development updates, no testing builds, no screenshots, nothing.
What is the current state of the game?
You deserve an exact status breakdown of the game. This can get pretty lengthy so here we go.
The game is programmatically finished. There are some features such as account creation, marketplace, glamour, etc that are not fully finished so all non-essential programming has been pushed back. However, the ability to play, fight, train, trade, do quests, is all in. That means I'm at the state of adding content like equipment, quests, models, and populate the world. Even dungeons are finished for the most part.
Very slowly, the world is coming together. There are some issues, for example, not every tree is harvestable, but I have plans for that. There are also a lot of greyboxed locations and objects left and it's been a process to slowly replace those.
I also very recently got full NPC AI finished. This AI change will make the game a little more alive as the AI can also be applied to monsters.
Combat is still getting some work. Currently, melee is finished, ranged is missing abilities, and magic is missing a lot of equipment. Magic got held back by issues with the design and implementation of magic equipment as well as how to craft it. However, all spells are implemented and just need some balance and tuning. There are some issues with combat flow where I personally feel like it gets a little clunky, but I may wait to open up for testing to see how you feel about it.
Long story short, the game has a lot of features programmed and ready but now the challenge comes design and implementation. Combat is programmed, but it is missing quite a few monsters and abilities. Quests are programmed, but there's not a lot implemented right now, even though quite a few are written. So we're in that stage; getting actual content in the game.
If the game is finished from a programming standpoint, why are you not testing?
This is a question I get a lot, next to "are you still working on it?". The short answer is because there's nothing to test.
The long answer is that while the game has everything programmed, there's not enough content to warrant opening the game up to the public yet. I am planning on doing playtests soon, but I also said that February last year and June 2019. Essentially, once you complete the tutorial, the world is empty with few further quests to take and locations to go to. There's not a lot to test once you get through the tutorial.
I'm hoping to get that done somewhere really soon, but that's up in the air. If you guys are okay with getting into the game at that state, let me know and I'll look into opening the playtests. I can say that if the game is opened up, you'll get to see a lot of the progress I'm making on the game over time, so I really would love to open it up.
I can say that while the game theoretically has a level cap of 100 for all skills, testing will be limited to level 30. Over the course of testing and as I add new tiers and content, this cap will go up. But until then, 30 is max level.
Is there a way to get the game out faster?
A rushed game is forever bad. At this point, I have found away around my availability to continue to work on the game while I'm otherwise occupied. However, that's at a lower productivity; I'll have to do what I normally do on 3 monitors and do it on 1 monitor. But, progress is progress, no matter how slow.
Right now, just keep in the loop. Hopefully, there will come a time when I can focus on the game full time, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, your continued interest and support is plenty to keep me going.
Conclusion
In essence, I am sorry that I have failed to prioritize the game properly and failed to update you. It is a failure on my part and I lost sight that the important part of this game is you and without you, the game won't be anywhere. I will try harder to keep you in the loop and I will keep an open door to any and all questions. Thank you for continuing to follow the game this whole time and being patient with me; I don't deserve it with how things are going and it's very humbling that even after all this time, I still get asked about the game's progress; it tells me you guys care.
I am sorry, and thank you. If there is anything I have not addressed, please let me know by commenting. You can also join my Discord server if you wish to chat with me directly; I will keep an open door and answer any questions I can.
Michael "Arylos" Cox