Hi everyone,
so thursday say the announce and release of the Demo, and it's been quite overwhelming.


The discord (https://discord.com/invite/falconeer) is now filled with battleships galore (you all seem to really like battleships.:). And with it has come a lot of questions, request and feedback. Now in the demo you will see I slapped the word Evolving on it. This means ,it's only the beginning....

So a few top requests I've seen

• Airships

• A bottle for the ships..

• Paddlewheels

• Symmetry tools

• lots of parts (my favorite : Studding Sails, google those.. awesome). but doors, AA and small caliber guns, more emplacements, etc etc

• Export questions

• options to pan /move the camera

• Save/Load

So let me dive into those.

• Airships.. well this one is logical seeing the Falconeer and Bulwark heritage, but its a slightly bigger request cuz I would then want to do procedural balloons and multi balloons, and then the rigging for that becomes quite a puzzle, as that's a very bespoke system even for the simple rigging on the sails. But clearly I should begin with Spelljammer style flying ships and just add some cool wings and extrusions.... So I will get on those

• Bottles.. hey it's in the logo.. I am already working on this, but agian this is super procedural as every ship needs its own unique bottle shape.. but fuckdammit if it doesn't need this.

• Symmetry tools.. this one is trickier cuz there's some technical debt where I made a choice to make the hull and superstructure symmetrical but certain smaller parts like gun emplacements not symmetrical. Can I change this?? offcourse? is it gonna hurt lika a motha... yup.. It's gonna need some nights sleeping, but I hear ya all. I am also thinking about snapping and such so that making symmetrical guns etc quicker regardless

• Parts. Every time I do coding or designing I relax by making a few parts, no worries here.

• Export... Check out this screenshot I mean as an dev, that's a cool menu.. I am contemplating .obj as well but it doesn't support vertex colors, so its not super useful. But all these formats work, I even exported a model to Sketchfab. Check it out here: https://skfb.ly/pGwsw

• panning the camera, this is already done, and will be on the first update. WASD will pan left right and up/down Q and E will orbit the camera

• Save /Load .. Some smartiers here found the L and S shortcuts for saving and loading. But to be honest that wasn't intended to be in the demo. But that's a nice segway into my question

  here's a screen of the updated interface

So what should be in a demo or not?

God knows I don't know.. Previously I've made demos that where too limited and when I released the limits I got told that the full product isn't a big enough step up from the demo. Talk about damned if you do , damned if you don't. For Ship Shaper I am torn, I cannot bloody wait to get people to try and 3d print some of these things (someone at wired productions (solid mates) is already trying)So should I add save/load/export to the demo permanently and fully. And would anybody get mad if they already spend hours in Shipshaper to then buy and find they've experienced much of it in the demo already. I don't know folks. how about you tell me? I'd love to hear, your opinions. Should I focus on more parts and content, or focus giving the widest possible experience , expand functional features in the demo such as exporting? or maybe you want to mini-test drive your boat in the photomode?

And what do you think is fair for a demo? I mean clearly I need to make a living, people like Benedict (the composer) and the marketing folks need to make a living too. There is always this fight between the fear of not making enough to make a living and not giving away enough to satisfy the players.

For me I want to give everything away, I mean that's why I came up with the idea to put all the ships under a creative commons so you all can homebrew your own games or prints, and even sell em.
But I also really really love making games by myself without a boss.. I fucking love being free to do all of this. So I need to make smart choices, otherwise it's back to the grind..


For now feedback is appreciated and conversation, it's all good,, Wishlists are lovely and a share even lovelier, but all not required. If you want to make a serious support, follow my developer profile on steam
https://store.steampowered.com/developer/TomasSala

I will be making more weird shit for years, (till they put me in the ground most likely)... so best to follow me on this journey.

Anyways,, cool stuff is coming, I am also a bit overworked cuz Nextfest is coming so fast, so might not be super fast on steam, but if you have an urgent request the community on discord can help and there you can dm or ping me.. that's always acceptable.

Cheerio,
Tomas