Progress report - Vehicle editor screenshots, new vehicles

Hi everyone, It’s been a long time since Switchcars was last updated, so I want to let you know the current situation.

Beta update in development:

As many of you know already, the upcoming beta update has been in the works since late 2016. Some of its features and fixes were released in updates 13, 14 and 15, and the most difficult part of it (for me at least) was the integration of Steam API to the Switchcars engine. Being made in Pygame, this actually required some work that no other Pygame game ever did. That work was done by Damir, a friend of mine, over a year ago. One of the update’s major new features are many new vehicles, but also something that was kept a secret until recently - Switchcars will have a vehicle editor as well as Steam Workshop available from within the game! This will allow you to create and share your own Switchcars vehicles, making those original 1000 seem like a joke!

Some of the many new upcoming vehicles

Reasons for the super-delay:

While planning the beta back in 2016 it was already apparent that Switchcars was not making enough money to sustain development far in the future. In order to continue working on Switchcars I needed to look for an alternative source of income, which I wrote about in December 2016. If you haven’t, please read that news post. Stretched between looking for a side job, or starting another project prematurely, I was pressured to make a definitive decision. The whole basis of founding Altfuture and creating Switchcars was a stepping stone to creating revolutionary games that improve the gaming industry, and I wanted to stick to that plan. With a couple of friends we went for the most difficult ambition - develop the second Altfuture game and make it the best of its kind in the world. That game, which lets you drive trains in virtual reality, has been two years in development, known as Derail Valley. When development of Derail Valley began, for nearly a year I was able to work on both games in parallel with no downsides. Switchcars updates 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 were all made during that period. However, when our team unexpectedly shrank to two, higher involvement from my side became necessary. Then in the summer of 2017 an opportunity to get Derail Valley funded came around, but at the cost of taking literally all of my time devoted to Switchcars. There I was, after just having invested the last bits of money into Switchcars Steam API implementation, suddenly having to decide whether one game or the other will live.

First glimpse of the new vehicle editor It’s difficult to put into words how it felt at the time, but making the choice of which game to end was devastating. Any choice would define a different path for the rest of my (and not only my) life. The decision eventually boiled down to understanding that Derail Valley’s funding would definitely allow for the future of Switchcars, whereas Switchcars’ income wouldn’t definitely allow for the future of Derail Valley. A cut had to be made, and finally it was that Switchcars update was to be postponed, but I had no intentions of abandoning the game. Months later, after a lot of sweating, lack of sleep and nerve-wrecking decisions, Derail Valley made it to the top 10% of applied projects to the Serbian Innovation Fund,