As the New Year approaches we often take time to reflect on the year that has passed, and set goals for the year to come. Setting and refining goals for Solace Crafting however is something I do every week. Instead I am preparing to enter a new phase of development for 2020. I want to share what I mean by that, and make clear the roadmap I'm following towards version 1.0.
Sales
Financially I had some pretty hard times this year. In March it was looking like I would have to take on a part time job to help cover bills. In May it was made clear to me, thanks to a fellow developer, that I wasn't using one of the more obscure features of Steam that plays heavily into recommending similar games to subscribers. After improving that, and coupled with a short sale, I was able to get back to making enough per month to stay full-time. November then saw the best sales in a month since the initial release in January 2018, and that record has since been entirely demolished by the ongoing Steam Winter Sale.
The influx of sales these past two weeks has seen a large enough number of new players, to the point that I have fallen behind on answering questions directly and I can't stress enough how thankful I am for everyone in our community that takes time to help out beginners with questions and concerns. It's a weird mix of stress, with so many things I want to do and that need my attention, but also joy, that I can not only keep working on my passion full-time, but take development into the long anticipated next phase.
Outsourcing
In September I made a post on our Patreon about setting up goals to start outsourcing contracts for original content. I contacted a freelance 3D artist for new building pieces, and an audio team that had been following us since early access release. Pixel Noise, the audio team, has been great to work with. They are very active, kind, and understanding. The 3D artist I contacted unfortunately went months over our original contracted timeframe, and once again has not contacted me in over a month. I gave up on him and contacted a second artist, who was likewise very eager to work with me, and now likewise has not contacted me in over a month. I think though, those experiences are to be taken as lessons.
I am now in the process of contacting outsourcing companies, not freelancers, whose profession as a corporate entity is to do just that, create original content for paying game developers. Outsourcing is intended to help get the ball rolling even faster, as we are in sore need of more building pieces, better facility models, animations, and code. The next goal beyond outsourcing is of course the acquisition of actual full-time staff, though a term-based paid "partnership" with an experienced studio is not out of the question either. The more common alternative is to seek a publisher, who you then pay a percentage of earnings, and generally have to do as you're told to some degree. I set out to create and operate Big Kitty Games as an independent entity from day one, to ensure that Solace Crafting and any other titles I may be fortunate enough to work on in the future remain 100% under my guidance, and are never pushed into marketing scams, or quite frankly poor design.
Optimization
Mentioning "poor design" might seem in "poor taste" to some, as Solace Crafting is not a highly optimized AAA game, with a fine-tuned interface and wonderful user experience. When I speak about design, I mean more to mention "game design," as opposed to layout or graphics. Not everyone knows that I started out with no formal training, no funding, no experience. I've always only wanted to make a better model for a crafting RPG, and with the distance based leveling and variable based crafting I believe I have opened up new avenues in our genre that will hopefully flower into even greater things from here on. I have grown tremendously as a programmer over these past two years, but that doesn't mean all of the code that I wrote in 2017 or 2018 has magically leveled up along with me. There is still a lot that can be done both to speed up world generation and frame rate, as well as increase the quality of visuals, animation, audio, and more. This too plays heavily into the subject of outsourcing, as developing a game of this scale is simply not something anyone should be doing on their own.
I am looking to set aside a week or two in January or February to work on speeding world generation up, as the current system is getting slower with each new monster, animal, and resource I add.
Things not on the roadmap
With the recent upgrades to support multiplayer, there have been a number of small, mostly cosmetic bugs that have crept in. I always have a feverish urge to move on to the next step on the roadmap, and have already started working on fishing, but it is important that I polish up what's already in-game, and to some degree I've neglected that truth a bit too much recently. Currently we have buildings that don't actually do anything, menus that don't actually offer anything, and resources that can't yet be used. I'd like to push fishing and cooking back a bit further and ensure I get more crafting recipes, building pieces, enchants, and some other things in first. The roadmap below outlines the greater "features" that things like recipes and quests are built on top of, but without an abundance of items, recipe, and places to find them, the drives to travel and explore are lost.
Some more general things that I want to get in:
- Many more building pieces
- Colorable buildings
- Customizable lights (color/distance/brightness)
- Steam Workshop support
- Mod support (recipes, items, textures, 3D models, pre-made buildings, etc.)
- Emotes
- Partying
- Custom map labels
- World map (large scale map)
- Resource "sensing" skills
- More everything: enchants, resources, biomes, monsters, animals, equipment, potions, etc.
- Multi-lingual support (wip)
Roadmap
This is the current roadmap to version 1.0, but do understand that 1.0 is not "the end". The real goal of releasing a bug-free, polished, and content-rich 1.0 is to hopefully make enough money to have a small team of full-time staff continue to create content, as the procedural nature of the game was designed to support, for years to come.
Version 0.6
- Crafting material system (iron -> steel) (90% working)
- Temperature zones & underwear (90% working)
- Fishing
- Cooking & nutrition
- Farming improvements & breeding
Version 0.7
- NPC villages & trading
- Villagers (recruitable NPCs with skills)
- Quests
- Solace upgrades & research
- Solace defense improvements
- Obelisks
Version 0.8
- Combat rework
- Monster skills
- Skill system rework
- Job and class skill trees
Version 0.9
- Optimizations
All in all we've got a great start to the "tools" required to let players enjoy an endless and limitless game. I really believe the greatest power in modern gaming is the players. Supporting the creativity of gamers around the world, and giving them the ability to add custom content, whether it's an epic quest chain or an interdimensional dungeon, is what really makes a community grow and last. That's why the biome system, that's why everything procedural, that's why unlimited levels. When all of our systems are in and working, we can work as a community to create quests, rewards, and encounters across countless locations and levels, be they difficult, easy, relaxed, or intense.
I hope the New Year finds you and your loved ones in good health and good spirits!
I'm very much looking forward to 2020 and can't thank everyone enough for joining me in early access!
Kyle Postlewait
aka Malkere
Big Kitty Games