After 24 very, very long months, FortressCraft has finally left Early Access.
Is it finished?
No.
Part of the reason for leaving Early Access is the massive change in the Steam landscape since we entered Early Access.
Touted as a place to put unfinished games and get feedback from the community, many games haven't lived up to this expectation, with broken games, abandoned games and 'oh we aren't making enough money to finish it, it's done now!' games. You know who you are ;)
We used to get continual negative reviews and feedback, telling us the game isn't finished - the entire point of Early Access was to be a safe harbour to develop our game in the public eye. Sadly, this isn't the case.
To this end, we've spent the majority of the last 8 weeks focussing heavily on polish and new player experience, and today, the game is ready to unveil to the world!
Is it finished?
No.
FortressCraft is a game with a vast, vast scope, a scope that we've barely scratched.
So you've shipped half a game?
Right now, the game will take a new player between 200 and 300 hours to complete (completion being defined as successfully fending off the mob attacks to the point where the Orbital Power Transmitter is fully charged. Once you've hit the point of automating the Jet Turbines (around 150 hours in), there is a bit of a technology gap; that'll be the first area of focus.
So you've shipped an incomplete game?
I've had the great privilege to work on many high profile, award-winning AAA titles in my time. Not a single one of them was 'complete' - we had a window in which we needed to write and release the game, and at the end of it, it came out. Every single game that every developer ships is not finished. There's always a million and one things that got cut, that one feature that everyone on the team was clamouring for, but there just wasn't time. FortressCraft is no different - but because this is a digital game, not one shipped on a disc on a PS/2, I can continue to patch, tweak and modify the game.
"Games are never finished - they merely escape"
So you're not abandoning it?
I'm a huge believer in 'games as a service' - I want to continue working on FortressCraft for a very long time. Assuming I can afford to, I'd like to work my way through a vast, vast list of new features that I've accumulated over the last half a decade, when I first started the original FortressCraft on the Xbox 360! PCs are also gonna be a lot faster in another half-decade, and I'd very much like to take advantage of that.
So what's next?
I've been avoiding adding in any new tiers of machines in this recent polish phase. One of my initial focuses will be a wider variety of options for the player progression; Coal Enrichment, upgradable SpiderBot modules, and a wider variety of base-harrassing enemies, as well as a shedload of new ideas, feedback and features from a hopefully growing community. I'd also like to really revisit the concept of base threat and TD attacks.
Now the game is out, will you be working on it less?
Over the last 2 years, we've averaged one patch pushed live every 1.8 days. As long as I'm continuing to work on the game, there's no reason to alter the release cycle; Bleeding Edge is basically updated when I've got a working local build, which then moves into Beta after a couple of days with no OH DEAR GOD IT'S BROKEN feedback. One week out of every 4 is generally a feature lockdown, when the patches go into more extensive testing phase. After that, it goes to mainline, I tidy up any little oversights on my part, and the cycle starts again.
These are the currently planned features. There's at least a couple of years' work here...
- Dedicated servers with headless support, remote admin and Linux.
- Vehicles. Think Mole Machines and you're on the right track.
- Fluid, piping and pumps for water, lava, rocket fuel, etc
- Rocket building and simulation; orbital cargo loading ("Kerbal Lite")
- Space Station building; transport to and from your Space Station
- More Surface Biomes with unique materials
- Multiblock Laser Power Transmitters; lethal to stand in, range of 256+ metres
- Coal Refinery and Enrichment; the first choice in alternatives to the current power progression.
- Geothermal Energy; utilising the heat differential between the surface and the Magma Caverns.
- Nuclear Energy; requires having successfully navigated past the Magma Caverns, almost 2km underground.
- Multiblock Ore Extractors
- Trains, offering high speed, high capacity transport over vast distances.
- More Base-harassing enemies
- Improved Tower-Defence attacks; EMP wasps, better route finding, tunnelling mobs, persistent hive mobs and spawns.
- Higher tiers of Laser Turrets, including larger Multiblock Laser Turrets
- Higher tiers of Missile Turrets
- More ARTHER Upgrades!
- Full SpiderBot upgrade, including movement speed, secondary AA laser turrets and boss-destroying missile systems, and in-field missile reloading bots
- Automated Remote Collection of drops by robots
- Suit upgrade interface
- Entities to support keeping graphics live outside of graphical range (LPTs, Lifts, Builders)
- Dedicated server support and Invite Steam Friends
- Multiple bases with permissions and Friend-Or-Foe settings on turrets
- Growth into fully-fledged Base Vs Base mechanics.
- Workshop support (Mere words cannot express how difficult and un-fun this feature is!)
When are you going to stop working on the game?
This is a question I can't answer. I can tell you WHY I'll stop working on the game, tho.
Ok, fine. WHY will you stop working on the game?
The main reason is money; at the release price of $12, I need to average about 75 sales a day in order to be self-sufficient. Whilst that doesn't really seem like a lot of sales, we've averaged less than half of those numbers to this point, and to be perfectly blunt, I really can't continue to live on that. (For those of you who are good with multiplying, that probably seems like a HUGE amount of money! Once Valve, the publisher and the taxman have taken their cut, I'm left with a terrifingly small pool of cash)
I wish I was in a position to just work on this game forever - I absolutely love FortressCraft, and if it wasn't my own game, I'd absolutely play the shit out of it. However, the harsh reality is that this is my dayjob, not a hobby - FortressCraft hasn't been profitable the entire time it's been in Early Access, and there's a definite window outside of which I'm going to end up on the streets.
I hope you like the game I've put together, and I look forwards to seeing you all on the forums and letting me know what you think of the game!
PS For those of you interested in 'what else I'm doing', then you might like to pop a follow onto : twitter.com/tacticsforever/ - this is what I spend my days off working on!