Hello there everyone, Alex Poysky here.
I want to take a moment to let you know that after much deliberation, we will be taking your advice to heart and postponing Pixel Piracy's launch for a brief amount of time.
We had initially wanted to launch the 1.0 version of the game on the Fifth of July, and we were making great time of it until around a month ago when my mother became quite ill. She needed an urgent triple bypass, and my family required absolutely all hands on deck.
I dropped everything and stayed with them for 21 days. As such, the development cycle took a hit. It's not the same for a dev team to stay completely focused on a single objective or series of objectives if someone isn't pushing an efficient workflow onto their plates, and for that I apologize profusely. I don't regret it, any of you would have done the same, work is work and family comes first, ALWAYS.
As such, while I AM very sorry, I am also very happy, as my mother is making a speedy recovery from something that looked quite dire and had it's fair share of terminal risks.
I know you will all understand, you always do, and for that we at Quadro Delta are thankful.
I was away for exactly 21 days, give or take a week while adjusting back or forth from the move to their home and back to my office, so if I were to give a new estimate it would be around a month, but don't hold me to it. When it becomes clear how close we are we will announce a new date. At the speed Vitali works it could be even less (he goes into tazmanian devil mode sometimes and codes up a storm in a few short hours). Mikko's help is INVALUABLE as well, as he is dedicated soley to bug squashing, and current builds are showing a great deal of evolution.
THIS DOES NOT AFFECT THE DEV CYCLE. You will continue to see patches coming out at lightning speed, I simply don't want to rush the game out due to a promise and then get slammed by the media due to there being critical gamebreaking bugs out of my own hubris.
That's what it all comes down to. Do I launch on the day I promised even though I know that unforseen circumstances caused a delay? Do I try and squeak by with a lie to our fans and the media that the game is 100% in a state we are comfortable with. Or do I man up and admit that it's not where it SHOULD be, give a proper explanation and then take the criticism on the chin.
A minor setback is much better than releasing a rushed, bug ridden 1.0 that will end up harming the game.
I opt for the latter, so please, by all means. Leave your comments below. I WILL answer them.
As always, my twitter is @alexpoysky , my personal e-mail for criticism is [email protected] and I am open to it.