This is my second last post of 2025. As the year winds down, I’ve been reflecting on 2025 and making some plans for 2026 which may be of interest to players.
I’ll cut to the most exciting news: I’ll be working on Archmage Rises full time January and February. I had a small bit of good fortune wrapping up a client project end of the year and it should see me through the next two months.
Unity From the Start
When I first started the project I came from building my own game engine in C++ and releasing two titles to the app store. I needed to decide to continue building out my game engine or switch to one of the popular ones. While I could keep building my engine, I could never keep up with dozens of dedicated engine developers in Denmark or North Carolina. In the end I decided to go with Unity because of the vast asset store, community, and C# - my preferred programming language.
But I needed a lot of help learning this new engine, especially the new UI system they introduced, and so I got a lot of help from an experienced unity dev, Nic. Nic was so helpful that eventually we formalized his help by hiring him fulltime. He would focus on the Unity aspects of the game (scenes, game objects, UI) and I would focus on the simulation and data side.
That division of labor worked well, but it hid a problem: I didn’t have to learn many of Unity’s deeper mechanics because someone else always handled them.
When Nic left to pursue other projects, and I started building out the team to handle increasing client work, the team handled all the details like making an automated build and signing system, UI systems integration, combat system, and map generation.
Kind of like the cruising passengers on the Axiom at the end of WALL-E, in a programming sense, I got flabby because whenever something needed to be done, there was someone to do it.
Solo Dev
When our funding didn’t come through last year, the team couldn’t continue, and the project reverted back to just me. It’s pretty daunting to pick up where four other programmers left off, in an engine I hadn’t touched in a while. Up till that moment I had been working in pure C# building, a research prototype for what will become the dynamic quest system.
Fortunately, starting in late 2024, I picked up some excellent client work. I had to dive head first in and get my hands dirty with things like Right to Left language localization, tricks of the unity UI layout system and prefab variants, rock solid state serialization, parallelization coroutines and tweens, particles, queued server API integration, asset bundles, and mobile shop integration.
In short: It feels like the last year has been a non-stop high-intensity programming workout regiment forcing me to touch practically every major part of Unity.
But there is something else that came from this client work besides just getting into shape.
A Confession
I have been making Archmage Rises for a while now, and it’s just really hard to make: the procedural systems are difficult to work with. I hope it is because there is nothing else like it and we’re forging a new path.
My secret fear is I’m just stupid and suck at game dev. Maybe it is some of both.
It’s hard to describe if you’ve never been through the creative project journey, but there is a dark point of the soul (chart) where, if one is honest, you wonder “Can I really do this?”
The client work has answered this decisively: Yes. Yes I can.
I took the experience and confidence gained from the client work and brought it to the latest update of Hex Events & Resources. I managed to learn and rewrite the resources system in two weeks. It would have taken double or triple that time before.
Looking Forward
I am really excited to work on Archmage for the next 2 months. I still have to learn the combat system, but other than that, I think I’ve touched all the rest of the major systems and can now make significant changes to them.
I hoped the recent changes would be well received – it is hard to tell until release. While writing this update, I was thrilled and really encouraged to see Splattercat felt the game was worth another video. I’m so grateful!
Thank you all for your interest in this project. I’m working hard to bring you something unique in the RPG space. With your help, we’ll get there!