We have really BIG news.
We are switching to Source 2.
Why?
The player numbers do not lie. Monarchs Dawn has had less than 10 players on average, while 1000 people signed up for the playtest.
I understand. If you looked at the game and thought it was in a very early state. Maybe you wanted to play when it is more matured.
For those who played, you saw constant jitters, especially for other players.
We still had fun, but it could have been better.
You can be assured that it wasn't better for us devs.
After spending a very long time developing, we are stuck on an old version of Unity that would break if we tried to update to newer versions. The looks can hardly be improved because many of the assets in the store are not high quality enough to, for example, scale up a tree 10x so it would fit the theme of Tainted Pass. The finishing blow and reason for many hours of headache is the networking. It is very complicated, often breaking in strange ways. The worst case is when players health desynchs, making them unkillable.
Enough is enough, we all deserve better.
Why Sandbox?
Recently, a new engine has come to the market. The creators of Garry's Mod have modified Source 2 to make it easy to use and open to the public. The result is all we can ask for.
Sandbox looks beautiful and runs super fast even on low-end hardware. For networking, Sandbox requires nearly no effort. It just works.
It fixes the worst problems we have and improves on basically all aspects. With Source 2 as the basis of Monarchs Dawn I can see that we will have a far superior game in no time.
It is still in development, but I do not think that anyone is asking for tick based servers or some other super high requirement or he cant have fun.
The Way Forward
Progress is rapid. In the last 3 days we have recreated the parkour movement. Jumping, wall jumping, and a new move, the wall grab. In around 2 months, we will have caught up with the old game.
Funny how that is, if you don't need to shiver about networking and fighting the engine.
Its gone be GREAT. I have so many weapons, fully designed, but had fires to put out.
ROAD MAP
Parkour Movement (done)
Movement Tutorial (done)
Menus <- currently
HP and Energy
Abilities
Full Match Mechanics
Minions
Monsters
Items and Itemshop
As soon as we made the main menu we will send a build your way so you can give feedback. The ledge grab was specifically added to let you get up the ledge you just berally missed.
Join us
During GDC I saw so many talented people working on their own cool projects.
It reminds me of how in the olden times, small groups of Carmac's and Romero's created so much so much joy, because they love the craft.
A few people asked if they could join the team at GDC, which made me think that we should reach out to our fans after the switch.
This brings us to today. If you want to make Monarchs Dawn even better, Join us.
To the fans
At the end, I want to turn specifically to the fans.
It has been very hard, putting so much time and effort into the game. Of course there have been a lot of bad days over the years, where I asked myself If I should even continue.
But seeing others have fun. Laughing with friends while we beat the shit out of eachother, has been what made the hole work much easier.
