The past two weeks have been pretty crazy on this end of the internet. Our lead programmer has found themselves with a sudden and fortunate and sizeable block of time that they were able to allocate to the development of the game and the result has been a boat load of progress being made on the game mechanically as well as the implementation of custom key and axis bindings (FINALLY!!). This has left us with a lot of testing to do. We're also preparing to begin our pre-launch campaign on Kickstarter. As such we've decided to cancel this weeks Friday update so that we can allocate time to test all the new integrations and to prep a new version of the demo.
We've also got a bunch of new artwork being created. This new artwork is being put together as a massive kitbash set that will be used to construct human colonial/industrial settlements across the entirety of the game. One of the key points of creating this new artwork is a massive optimization play to increase the performance consistency across the entire game as well as to allow us to expand level and environment designs in a way that would not have been possible. This new artwork will also allow other members of the team to contribute to the pool of art assets in a way that will keep uniformity of the aesthetic regardless of who is making it.
On the A.I. front progress is coming along amazingly. I can't say too much just yet, but the tool set our lead programmer is working on in an isolated testing and development environment is quite impressive and it is lightyears ahead of what is currently in the game. I personally cannot wait to get it in to the game.
One last thing I would like to bring up is about custom missions/scenarios. Our lead programmer is a long time fan of the ARMA series of games and is using the Zeus toolset as inspiration for our scenario toolset. Currently we're primarily focused on getting everything working for the single player experience first and foremost. We will begin looking at expanding this toolset to multiplayer if and when we can get to implementing multiplayer into the game. We've had a few discussions about how to approach multiplayer and have some ideas about the kind of multiplayer experiences we'd like to have both in terms of Player versus Player and Players versus Environment.
May 1st is the date. The date we intend to launch the latest version of the game and the date we plan to start the Kickstarter pre-launch campaign. There you can get a detailed breakdown of what the future of Frontiers Reach is intended to look like, and join the discussion around that future. While reaching our funding goal is priority, it will not be the end of the games development if we do not reach that goal. While it would be nice to be able to to focus on the game and pay the team for their time and hard work, we all went into this knowing we may never make any money at all and that our primary goal is the creation of an awesome experience that can share with people across various boundaries.
We'll see you in the skies pilots, and fly safe out there!