Greetings, Heroes!
In anticipation of Hero's Story's Early Access, I'd like to share with you some fresh details about the game's development.
Since the last announcement, a lot has happened - the process of switching to a new engine has continued, a small prototype has been made and closed testing has begun. But everything in order.
In 2013, when I first started developing Hero's Story, I used the Unity engine. The main advantages of Unity at that time were free and relatively easy to learn. There were also disadvantages - for example, a few years ago, the documentation of the engine was less complete, and the errors were much more. I thought it would work - it didn't.
Over time, I began to think more and more about switching to another engine - one of the main reasons was the need to render large open spaces in real time. Unity is a good engine and C# is a great programming language, but my project needed something different.
Soon a new engine was chosen - it was Unreal Engine, which became free in 2015! An added bonus of UE is softer lighting and powerful built-in editing tools.
Starting to slowly master Unreal, I began to transfer the old demo to the new engine. Of course, most of the materials of the game at the same time became irrelevant - program code, levels, game objects, materials for the build and so on. Some of the materials were transferred without loss or quickly restored - for example, dialogues, quests, 3D models.
Despite the fact that the "move" took some time, I believe that the transition to a different engine went to the benefit of the game - however, it is the players to decide, as always.
I recently announced the start of closed testing of the game, and it paid off! Several people who played in the Pre Alpha version of the Hero's Story found out that the original build could not start at all for some users, and some basic functions did not work at all. Many critical bugs have been fixed (e.g. a broken volume setting). In the next update of the test version will also be fixed character animations.
Of the new mechanics-character Stamina characteristics, which is spent on a variety of combat techniques and running. There is still a lot of work to do after the release of Early Access.
I remind you that the launch Of early Access Hero's Story is scheduled for October 21!
Be strong. Sincerely, Silentplaygames.