(This is a post about the sequel to Evolved, known as Phoenix : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1038080 )
So, let’s start with the bad news and then unpack it a bit. Managing expectations is one of the most important things you can do with games; and I know I said I’d be doing regular posts, but I’m always worried about annoying people with constant popups. And then people ask me what’s going on, so... here we go!
As I’m beginning to plan the last few months before Early Acess release, I’m quite sure these things won’t be done!
Replacement networking won’t be done.
Old networking will still be in place, and will slowly be replaced piecemeal with Steam Lobbies and Networking
Full visual revamp of the UI won’t be done
The behaviour of the UI has continued to iterate and there’s plenty of new QoL features, but the visual atlas hasn’t changed out.
Progression will be hard-clamped at OET charge.
I’m limiting the scope so I can ensure I’m focussing improvements and polish where they’re needed.
No remappable controls
Yet!
Quit To Title isn’t complete yet
I said implementing this was significantly harder than you might think and I was sadly right.
Dynamic downloading of handbook entries
Dynamic loading of high resolution world textures using Texture Arrays.
I’ve prototyped this, and it’s great, but hasn’t happened yet. It’ll mean dead-easy swapping out of individual textures for modders, as well as improved loading speeds!
Tesselated FarField Rendering
The system is about 90% working, but doesn’t visually hit the target I want. The goal is that everyone will have a 1km draw distance!
A long, long time ago, I decided - foolishly - to ship the game into Early Access on the 10th anniversary of Evolved’s launch onto Steam. That date’s just a few short months away now, and I’m not going to many anywhere near as much as I’d hoped!
So, my focus from now until Early Access release is just to polish the New Player experience, ensure that the onboarding process, initial base setup, tutorial, internal base readouts and everything associated with that is as good as I can get it.
Performance has also been a constant on-going battle. Part of the goal with Phoenix is to have a title I can continue to work on and expand for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years; to that end, the rendering and visual target is very high - for 2025.
Your computer you have today is the slowest one you’ll ever have! I’m allowing users to switch off most of the high-end visuals, but how that looks isn’t something I’ll be spending a lot of time on. I want thick, swirling fog, choking, oppressive underground dirt and dust, sharp, alien sunrays through massive towers of resin.
Much as I’d love to be able to support both volumetric and non-volumetric lighting, it should be made clear (once again) that I am the only developer on this game. Getting endlessly compared to the huge teams and powerhouses that are Factorio, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program is very flattering, but it’s literally just me and my cat here, and quite frankly she’s not as much help as she could be.
So, if the game doesn’t run as well as you’d like, turn the detail down, and come back when you’ve gotten your next video card!
Balance is another tricky one to get right. I’ve been aiming to have the game much much too hard and too slow at launch, as opposed to making everything too easy. One thing I’ve found over the many years is that nerfing something - no matter how justified or necessary - just gets people really complaining. For those of you who have been around long enough, you’ll remember that Evolved launched with Scarce/Scarce as the only difficulty!
Making the game easier and more granular in progression as time goes on is something I’ll be doing with the feedback from testers and EarlyAccessnauts™.
(Is it worth pointing out that the many Early Access posts I see, slamming the game for being unfinished, ending up with “I’ll come back to this review when the game is patched!” - and never coming back - aren’t useful for anyone?)
I am hoping that the Early Access launch goes smoothly - Phoenix is built on the last patch released for Evolved, and as such has hundreds (or thousands!) of hours of gameplay at launch. The initial plan is for a 12 month dev cycle in Early Access, and focussing entirely on the New Player through to Hive Mind eradication.
I will probably not allow players to progress past here during Early Access; everything past then won’t have been particularly looked at, or balanced.
Once we’re out of Early Access, I’ll be doing 1-2 month runs at each successive Chapter, working with Patreons and brave Bleeding Edge players to implement, balance and polish that section of the game before releasing it.
I’ll try and do more of these posts; just to repeat myself from earlier, I’m a 1-man dev, so I need to balance social media posts, development, promotional stuff, discord, forums and sometimes ‘tidying up my office’. I’m swamped!
As ever, the best place (by far!) to keep up to date and to chat with me directly is Discord:
Come say hi.
Absolute TL;DR - Phoenix will launch in a far, far FAR better state than Evolved did, but it’s just the beginning on a very long and very slow road.