In 2016 we hit the delete button on Deadhold and started over. The game is now better than it ever could have been and we are really proud of what we have built over the past year.

Towards the end of 2015 fisj and I slowly came to grips with the reality of where we were at with the Unreal 4 version of the game. UE4 does some things really well but one thing it is not is highly malleable. The UObject framework, networking, and large components of the engine are complex, and interdependent. And UE4 is changing constantly. This made merging time consuming as we had to pull forward custom changes through several versions. For example, fog of war in the UE4 version involved low level networking changes and the IsNetRelevant stuff to stop sending packets for units outside of a clients visible area. At one point in a conversation with Epic they had plans to altogether remove some of the dormancy framework we had modified (they didn't think anyone was using it). There we also a lot of bugs with stuck units with Unreals out-of-the-box pathing, lack of vector field pathing etc.

So we hit the delete button and started over and here we are now: We have excellent pathing, robust networking, and a full implementation of our competitive multiplayer. In every area we are further along now than we were at the beginning of 2016.

We started Open Alpha testing this month and the feedback has been great and it's shown that so far our backend server system is working without any major issues, so we will start piling more people on once Adventure Mode comes together next month.

Adventure Mode is the other half of Deadhold and one of the biggest things that the team and I are excited about. It's geared towards single player or coop play with your friends. It's similar to a raid where you quest through an area fighting encounters with coordinated packs of units, and mini-bosses. You are rewarded with runes and experience. Runes can be slotted into deity's to activate additional effects, and experience is invested into a deity which you choose. You progress through levels in a Deity unlocking new spells which you can use in combat.

Cosmetic items can also drop which you can use to customize the look of your individual units (more of this system in another post).

So yeah 2016 was a good year! Looking forward to what 2017 brings!