Development Update 10

As we’re ramping up for the early access release, we’ve got a bunch of news, dates and events around the game to announce this update! Keep reading for the latest on our Next Fest participation, the roadmap for the coming months, and the steps we’ll need to take before going into early access.

Next Fest

After the unsuccessful attempt to take part in the Steam Next Fest, past June, we’re currently aiming (and on track!) for taking part in the festival's upcoming edition, which will take place from October 9th to 16th! We’ll only release a limited demo version of the game, and it will probably only be available for a limited time during and around Next Fest, so be sure to check it out! While we still have some work to complete before we’re ready, we feel confident that we’ll be able to showcase a version of the game with most features present, though they might not be entirely fleshed out yet, more on what you can expect in the final part of this update.

Roadmap

The past weeks, behind the scenes, much work was done to perform some major updates to some parts of the game which aren’t really visible to players - we performed some good old’ updates. Most notably, we updated from Unity 2020 to Unity 2022, the most recent version for production use (LTS). This now allows us to start really “finishing” game components, as we know Unity won’t surprise with any major breaking changes for the foreseeable future. While this was an intensive and at times frustrating process, it had to be done, and now that it has been, we can start adding the final features and start fixing bugs in the game so far. Up till now, there wasn’t much opportunity to do that, without risking having to fix them again at a later stage.

Of course, the recent developments around Unity and their runtime haven’t gone unnoticed, and are one of the reasons this update is a few weeks late, as it was intended to be released the second week of september. Overall, the runtime fee should not form a problem for the release of Festivals - Headliners as planned in any way, however for projects and updates to the final game after full release might be impacted by the fall-out of these changes, as many studios are now actively dropping Unity, causing uncertainty about the future of the community, a community I as a solo developer am highly dependent upon.

WIth all that said, this is what we expect the coming months, until the early access release, to look like:

If all goes according to plan, we should be able to announce the early access release date DURING Next Fest, so stay tuned for that.

New Content

While all this is going on, we’ve also been hard at work to create and gather awesome content to put in the game. From 3D models of stages and other placeables, to music for performances, and many other sorts of creative content you can use to design unique and amazing festival experiences. Some examples of the new Foodtrucks to be included with the Demo and Early Access versions of the game:

Due to some unforeseen side effects of the Unity upgrade, we also had to update the trees and other foliage which have been included during playtesting these past months. For now only trees have been added to the existing map, but more details like shrubs and grass will be added soon after the Next Fest Demo.

While not entirely planned, this update also allows us to start work on a much, much larger map, which is to be included with the early access release. Also, these trees are much more already optimized for performance, so a significant improvement in overall performance and framerate is noticeable as well.

Luckily we’ve also been able to license some awesome music to be included with the game, which will be used to create some amazing performances you can book and plan during your productions. We’re currently working on creating custom (light) shows around these performances, and hope to be able to show you these, and all the other new content outlined above, during Next Fest in less than 2 weeks! That’s it for this update, keep an eye out for our Next Livestreams, which will be announced next week, and hopefully you’ll be able to enjoy playing the Festivals - Headliners demo very very soon!