Hey everyone!
Thierry from Team Sauropod here!
Just a brief heads-up to answer the constantly asked question: Y U NO UPDATE?!
Well, the Blog will have most of those answers, but not everyone wants to read each entry we make. And that's totally understandable, and we've probably taken it for granted too.
No, we haven't jumped ship. We haven't run away with the money or taken it to get our toilets gold plated. As has been mentioned before, we're currently in the very long, very painful, mind-numbingly boring process of refactoring the entire code-base. The reason for that is quite simple, really. Adding new content into the current version of the game we have released is incredibly painful and very prone to bugs. The slightest change has repercussions everywhere. During the last year, it took an insane amount of work just to add a couple new features. The refactoring is going to provide us with new tools and a base system that will allow us to create and add new content without destroying everything each time.
A quick and simple example would be modifying or adding a block. At the moment, our artist couldn't implement a new object without the sustained help of one of the core devs, since everything is/was hardcoded, and everything works differently from one block to another. It was very, very easy to mess things up. This is where the factory systems we're implementing into the engine come into play. These will allow Germain to easily modify assets without having to concern himself with any of the code.
There are a multitude of other systems that will help us fix the game that we're implementing. But, unfortunately, we can't add them in gradually to the current version of the game. It simply won't work that way, we have to put them all in together at the same time after they're all done. So, until this refactoring is finally over, it's exceptionally difficult for us to add new content.
In the past, we've added a few bugfixes and elements into the game that didn't cost too much time. We're even testing a little feature that will make it much easier to find out what's inside your barrels that can easily be merged in with the new code. But for anything bigger or more important, it really requires that this refactoring process be done first.
So this is it!