[Progress Report] Engine Changes, Events, & Upcoming Updates

Hail Witanlore Fans! Wanted to post an update on how things are progressing just to keep everyone in the loop on what to expect next and what we're up to. We'll try to do these more frequently, to be honest the last few weeks have been a little crazy for the Druid team. ːsteamhappyː

Engine Update

For those who followed our progress through Greenlight you may recall that updating Unreal Engine 4 tends to cause some major growing pains for Dreamtime. The game's structure, to manage all the detailed levels of data, is quite complex and whenever the engine authors make major changes the impact tends to ripple outward for us. After our last update here we upgraded the engine to the latest version 4.15 to take advantage of improvements that would reduce some of the hitching and lag issues folks have encountered. It's taken some time to set everything right again, but we're hoping this will be the last engine update for Dreamtime. Unless some major engine level bug crops up requiring a patch or update in the future we plan to stick with 4.15 moving forward to prevent any more update delays.

Coming in the Next Update

We have a lot of new content coming out across the next two updates. We have added additional locations and discovery markers, we should see the skill system rolled in and functioning so you can level up your avatars, we also have map improvements, combat improvements, along with new lighting and effects, just to name a few. The biggest update coming soon will roll in the Dreamworld stages of the main quest which doubles the size of the playable game. It's with the Dreamworld update that Dreamtime will see it's first price increase to $9.99 USD, so if you're thinking of picking up your copy, don't wait! Grab it at the low start price of $6.99 while it lasts! We're also really excited to be rolling out Achievements, Badges, and Trading Cards with the next update for those of you who dig the Steam social scene and want to get your Witanlore on!

Upcoming Events

In the coming weeks Druid Gameworks will be running an IndieGoGo campaign to raise some support for the team and to gain some more exposure for the project. The current sales on Early Access have not been enough to cover basic development costs, let alone pay the developers and this has left several members of our team in quite dire financial straits. We need to invigorate the project budget enough to pay the developers a minimum wage to stave off student loans and mortgage lenders for the next 6 months. Several members of the team have already been forced to take part time jobs to pay bills, and that means fewer hands working on Dreamtime. Fewer hands means longer waits between updates too so hopefully we can find some new funding to help us get the game to completion on schedule! How can you help? Watch for our IndieGoGo announcement and consider buying your copy of the game through the campaign page! Or if you already have a copy of the game, pledge for one of our other tier rewards! If you can't afford to pledge you can still help by sharing our page links and helping us get the word out about how much fun Witanlore Dreamtime is! Help us keep the lights on long enough to get Dreamtime's core game completed and on the marketplace! We'll make the announcement here when the campaign is live! OrlandoiX 2017 is coming up at the end of the summer and we'll be returning! This time we'll be showcasing the core game so if you live in the Orlando area or plan to be in town that weekend stop by and say hey, meet members of the dev team, and pick up some swag you can only get from our event table! ----- That's it for this update! We should be updating next around the time of the IndieGoGo launch so keep following and checking back for news on new content. If you encounter bugs please keep reporting, those of you taking the time to hit the forums, your help has been invaluable. We love reading your comments and listening to your critiques and ideas to make Dreamtime the best she can be so please keep sharing! If you have applied for a press key please be patient, we were quite flooded with requests and it's taking some time to vet and respond to all of them, but keys are coming! Till Next Time, Happy Gaming!