Why did I decide the game HAD to come out on the 10th Anniversary...

(This is a post about the sequel to Evolved, known as Phoenix : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1038080)

So, let’s start with the bad news and then unpack it a bit. Managing expectations is one of the most important things you can do with games; and I know I said I’d be doing regular posts, but I’m always worried about annoying people with constant popups. And then people ask me what’s going on, so... here we go!

As I’m beginning to plan the last few months before Early Acess release, I’m quite sure these things won’t be done!

• Replacement networking won’t be done.

  • Old networking will still be in place, and will slowly be replaced piecemeal with Steam Lobbies and Networking

• Full visual revamp of the UI won’t be done

  • The behaviour of the UI has continued to iterate and there’s plenty of new QoL features, but the visual atlas hasn’t changed out.

• Progression will be hard-clamped at OET charge.

  • I’m limiting the scope so I can ensure I’m focussing improvements and polish where they’re needed.

• No remappable controls

  • Yet!

• Quit To Title isn’t complete yet

  • I said implementing this was significantly harder than you might think and I was sadly right.

• Dynamic downloading of handbook entries

• Dynamic loading of high resolution world textures using Texture Arrays.

  • I’ve prototyped this, and it’s great, but hasn’t happened yet. It’ll mean dead-easy swapping out of individual textures for modders, as well as improved loading speeds!

• Tesselated FarField Rendering

  • The system is about 90% working, but doesn’t visually hit the target I want. The goal is that everyone will have a 1km draw distance!

A long, long time ago, I decided - foolishly - to ship the game into Early Access on the 10th anniversary of Evolved’s launch onto Steam. That date’s just a few short months away now, and I’m not going to many anywhere near as much as I’d hoped!

So, my focus from now until Early Access release is just to polish the New Player experience, ensure that the onboarding process, initial base setup, tutorial, internal base readouts and everything associated with that is as good as I can get it.

Performance has also been a constant on-going battle. Part of the goal with Phoenix is to have a title I can continue to work on and expand for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years; to that end, the rendering and visual target is very high - for 2025.

Your computer you have today is the slowest one you’ll ever have! I’m allowing users to switch off most of the high-end visuals, but how that looks isn’t something I’ll be spending a lot of time on. I want thick, swirling fog, choking, oppressive underground dirt and dust, sharp, alien sunrays through massive towers of resin.

Much as I’d love to be able to support both volumetric and non-volumetric lighting, it should be made clear (once again) that I am the only developer on this game. Getting endlessly compared to the huge teams and powerhouses that are Factorio, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program is very flattering, but it’s literally just me and my cat here, and quite frankly she’s not as much help as she could be.

So, if the game doesn’t run as well as you’d like, turn the detail down, and come back when you’ve gotten your next video card!

Balance is another tricky one to get right. I’ve been aiming to have the game much much too hard and too slow at launch, as opposed to