Hey there, Creostriders!
Yes, it's me, the sole developer behind Creo God Simulator. To get things cleared up, the development of Creo is indeed in progress. There certainly has been a large gap of time from the previous update, and I wanted to thank you, and the over 50,000 Creostriders, for your patience, suggestions, and reviews of the game so far.
The purpose of this first dev diary is to help bring you all up to speed on the progress I've made with Creo, on the upcoming large content update, and on the future release of the game, so let's hop right into it!
Where have you been?
I wanted to get this question out of the way first. As many of you know, I graduated from university earlier this year. Shortly after graduating, I was extremely fortunate to get a stable job as a product manager at an AI startup. I've got a wife, several children, and a tail-less cat to help take care of.
My job has proven to be extremely demanding, and though I've learned a tremendous amount in the space of project management, AI, and innovation, my time to dedicate to Creo has been very limited.
I'll be honest with you all, during these times when I haven't worked much on Creo, a deep part of my mind was troubled: it's as if an integral part of my being was neglected. Call it what you will, but for me, Creo has been my creative outlet, and is certainly the magnum opus of my life. I've been working on Creo for 5 years, and have spent thousands of hours on the game.
In recent months, I couldn't neglect this part of my life any longer, and taking much of what I've learned in my job in regards to project and engineering management, I'm trying my best to establish a regular pattern of work on Creo in the late evenings, when my kids are in bed and I've got a few hours of freetime.
I'll be working on Creo using a new sprint structure: meaning every few weeks (2-3), I will try to release a game update or at least a progress update if the content is too much for one sprint. I'm hoping doing this will create a more regular pattern of progress, and will help you all feel more informed as to what's in the pipes for our little game.
The Future Release of Creo God Simulator
As I've resumed work on Creo for a few months now, I've explored the possibility of re-releasing the game for purchase on Steam. I would like to hire a few individuals to help with the development of the game, but need to have the game generating revenue in order to fund faster development of Creo, so that it can be finished in a reasonable amount of time.
Unfortunately, I recently realized that I had made a mistake when I made the game free while in Early Access on Steam. According to Steam developer guidelines, once made free, an Early Access game cannot charge for purchase until it's out of Early Access and fully released.
This means that I need to fully release Creo God Simulator, out of Early Access.
The full release will not be the finished version, rather, it will be a solid base for continued development. Here are a few notes surrounding the future full release of Creo God Simulator:
- Though I'm not certain of the date yet, I would like to put a rough estimate of re-release in Q4 of 2024, perhaps around October or November.
- I'm thinking of a US$ 11.99 price for the full release version of the game.
- The full release of Creo will have significant improvements to the game, including Steam achievements and trading cards, additional god powers, quests, and disasters, and a clear path to "beat" the game.
- My biggest focus on Creo will simply be making it more fun, and making it more satisfying to play. This means I'll be working on improving the gameplay loop, and adding in more mechanics to make your average play session more fun.
Progress Update - What's Being Added
As you can see in the GIF above, I've been making some pretty significant updates to the game. I'll list some of the large updates being built out during this sprint, which should be pretty significant:
- Added Physics-Enabled 3D Villagers
While I was playtesting my game, I felt that previous 2D pixel-art villagers—while certainly being charming—were really lacking a certain "oomph" when it came to their presence in the game world. Previously, destroying them simply made them disappear. I fixed this by replacing the 2D villagers with 3D ones. This allows me to make them have much more realistic physics applied to them, and I'm talking about destruction physics. Additionally, replacing them with 3D villagers added a slight performance improvement to the game as well.
- Added New Building Construction System
As seen above on the right, there is a new Construction Workshop building which is necessary in your city in order to build structures. Your skilled builders will get right to work building any new structure you've placed in your city, and there will be upgrades you can unlock that speed up construction of your new buildings.
- Various Bug Fixes and Small Changes
In addition to the several significant changes I'm making to Creo, there's been numerous bug fixes and smaller updates made to the game. Here's a selection of changes from my long list of updates which will be released in the next update:
- Updated build/effect area projection method to not project on terrain mesh - improved performance dramatically when many projectors are active.
- Upgraded saving/loading system in game, which should make adding new buildings types/building functionality much easier in the future. *This breaks all prior saves unfortunately*
- Improved navmesh accuracy for all building models.
- Added explosive force physics to the meteor and lightning god power.
- Fixed bug where prayer icon collision shape was too small to click.
- Added work area projector to water well, which was missing for some reason.
- Fixed Spawn Trees god power not spawning trees in exact position player selects.
Building the World of Creo - Step by Step
Progress on Creo continues, and now in a more organized and regular fashion. I'm looking forward to communicating better in the future to keep everyone in the loop.
I really want to thank you for your patience while I've been building Creo God Simulator. I'm not a perfect developer, and I make mistakes, but I really do want to build something awesome and fun. So please, continue to build your cities, smite your villagers, and share Creo with your friends as we continue building out the Creoverse together.
All the best,
Esteban