Big Update
Apparently, the game developer community has won. In an open letter, Unity management has announced to roll back their controversial changes in most regards. In some regards, the announced new terms are even better for small developers (like myself) than before. If they put what they announced into legally binding language, even though my p***ed off level is still close to 9000, I am willing to forgive (and just by the way save many years of work) and go on with developing CPW in Unity. Stay tuned for more news.
The Original Post
Hello everyone!
Today I bring some news that I am both sad and angry about.
The plan for Casual Pro Wrestling was to release into Early Access around Christmas 2023, that's in 3 months. This is after I already had to postpone it from 2022 due to personal reasons. Development is looking good, but I'm afraid I have to postpone again. This time, the reasons are not too much personal but a move I feel very necessary.
Casual Pro Wrestling has been built on the Unity game engine, which is undoubtedly one of the most accessible game engines that has been used in countless games, some of which have gained extreme popularity and acclaim. When I started working on CPW in 2017, the choice for Unity was done for myriad reasons, the main one being that I had over 5 years of experience in using it and could just start.
However, you may have taken note of recent events regarding Unity. In brief, their management decided to announce a pricing plan that is beyond any understanding or even technical capability, and - much much worse - they decided to apply it retroactively to already released titles, completely trashing all trust with a vast majority of its user base EVERYONE. Their failure to clearly and meainingfully communicate until today, two weeks after the announcement (let alone prior to it) speaks volumes about the direction they seem to be taking.
Many things have been going in questionable directions regarding Unity in recent years and there were always many good reasons to turn away, but this has been the final straw for me and many many others. Even though I do not expect to hit any relevant numbers regarding their new pricing plans, I cannot support Unity any longer. By releasing CPW in its current state, however, I would be supporting Unity, putting me in quite a predicament.
I have decided to port CPW to a different engine.
And this was a very tough decision to make, as CPW is many years into development. However, it is not yet released, and so I would like to take this chance and fix this now rather than later.
CPW it is also far from being a complete wrestling game. I made the decision to release into Early Access in its current state to aid further development. Since I am developing it mostly solo, player feedback, at some point, will be essential to be able to decide what happens next. Everybody wins: you get something already really fun to play with, and I get feedback and financial support to develop it further.
This plan to go into Early Access does not change.
However, porting will be quite a big task and take a yet unforeseeable amount of time. The destination is Unreal Engine, which I also have plenty of experience with and which has many features out of the box that I tediously had to implement for CPW by myself, using Unity as a mere interface. This, and the fact that most of the game's assets should be easy to port, will ease the process a lot. Still, all of this will not be possible within the 3 months left to the planned EA release.
So to address the most important question:
When will CPW release into Early Access? Sadly, I don't know. ːsteamsadː I am very sorry to disappoint those that have been eagerly awaiting CPW, but I also ask for your understanding given the situation.
What's most important, though:
CPW is not dead. Not at all. If anything, it will probably benefit from being ported to a superior engine.
Please stay tuned for further news on this. More frequent updates than here are posted at @CasProWrestling on TwitterX. As soon as I can confidently give an estimated time frame as to when CPW can release, I will do so.
Cheers!