Update on The Frontier's Development Status

Some of you may have seen me comment about this over in the forums, but one of the reasons for a lack of updates is that I ran out of money shortly after releasing the game, and had to go back to working full-time (which I had been doing until earlier this year, more on that later). However, working a full-time job was really only part of the problem. The biggest issue was the terrible state/quality of the game's source code.

Those of you that have been following The Frontier since its early days may be aware that I started this project as a way to practice and learn how to program in Java. I had no previous programming experience at the time, but after going over a few online tutorials I decided that actually working on making a game would be a more effective way to learn. It certainly was effective, and what I gained from that was The Frontier that we currently have and the programming job I had been working over these past three years.

However, as you could probably guess, learning how to program as I go results in not the greatest of code. I didn't know any better at the time, but I was building a mess of code that broke pretty much every best practice rule. This was manageable while the source code was small, but as it grew it became worse and worse, until I was left with terrible code that was extremely difficult to make changes to. My job as a programmer also taught me a lot and pulled me away from the old, bad code I used to write. So the combination of code that's difficult to change, and not enough time each week to really understand what my bad code was actually doing, led to a situation where any time I spent on developing The Frontier resulted in very little progress. In fact, the game had been mostly broken (negative progress?) for these past several years.

I'm sorry for the long explanation, but I hope this helps explain what's been going on during this long period of silence. I know from the outside it looked like I had simply stopped working on the game, and I apologize for that, but do know that certainly wasn't the case. It's just that any work I did do, I had nothing really to show for it. I don't mean for this to serve as an excuse though, just an explanation, so I don't think it's unfair to still be angry and disappointed about the lack of progress. Again, I apologize for that.

Now, having touched on the past years for a bit, I'd like to focus next on what's been going on with The Frontier recently, and what's down the road for it. As you probably figured, this isn't just a post for me to apologize and then go back into hiding; I do have some more stuff I'd like to share.

So as I mentioned above, I had been working a full-time job as a programmer until earlier this year. I have since switched to being a freelance programmer, and although it hasn't been going as well as I had hoped, it does afford me more time than my previous work arrangement. I have also had periods of time in-between work that I have been using to refactor some of The Frontier's source code. In addition to refactoring, I have been mainly building my own ECS (entity component system) framework over these past few months to use for my game. The ECS approach to game (code) design is something I have been experimenting with over these years as a potential solution to my terrible code, and I'm quite satisfied with the framework I've built up so far. I've gotten the game close to the state it was (before I broke it), with parts of it running in the new framework/engine.

From the player's standpoint I know this isn't much progress at all, but the new framework will play a significant role in The Frontier's development going forward (as well as future games I make). Using what I've learned over these past 3 years, I'm building the framework in a way that will allow the source code to be changed and added to with a lot more ease. It'll still take a while to convert over the old code (some of it I may even leave as is), but the new framework will make development on the game much easier and quicker. Although it'll be a small update, I have already started working on the next change, which will remove the separate equipment slots on the left-side of the screen (which I think was a confusing mechanic for a lot of players).

So as for the future, progress is being made on the new framework/engine, as well as the next update. I am also planning to launch a Patreon account in the coming months for anyone who might be interested in supporting The Frontier's development. I have some plans to try to make this as worthwhile and appealing to supporters as possible, and hopefully as support grows I can shift more and more of my time towards game development. I should be making a post about this next month, so please keep an eye out for that if you're interested.

Well, sorry for the really long essay, but hopefully this update gives everyone a pretty good idea about The Frontier's status. I appreciate you taking the time to read this, and I really appreciate the continued interest in this game over such a long period of time.

I hope everyone keeps safe. Nikku