Phew, long thread to read through
My turn. Looks like the Con Kit camp is alive and kicking, and I appreciate it must be very frustrating to patiently wait for something, and for it never to materialize, and worse have sneak peeks of this mysterious component, only to have it snatched away at the last minute. I hope you understand we did not do this deliberately to wind you up. All I can say is that I had a few hundred reasons for working on other parts of the software and each item was green lit as a priority item. I am happy to assemble the list for you from the last 12 months, but I am sure you want me coding rather than gathering together a 'completed items' list form the last year, but rest assured it's a very long list of critical fixes and functional additions that allows the core work properly.
I can categorically say that Character Creator and Con Kit are on hold until we are happy with the core mechanics of the main software. Right now the software is suffering death by a hundred cuts, little niggles that detract from a great editing and playing experience for all, and I am assuming you prefer to see these sorted before we launch into developing additional modules. I just checked my task list for next week and I am due to fix such issues as solving why Game Guru crashes when some virus checkers are active, random crash after 30 seconds on a GTX 980, mouse and graphic misalignment on larger resolution displays, player getting stuck in specific terrain arrangements, saving obstacle data for faster loading, entity bound box selection for mass movement and deletion, player footfalls not synced when change player speed, some Zombies sliding along floor instead of animating, multi-texture entities turn invisible after light-mapping, and so on. This is just a fraction of the items, and you will agree pretty dry and boring stuff, but would you chose a shiny feature over any of the above? One thing we (slowly) learned when developing FPSC and DBP was that adding new stuff without first ensuring the existing stuff is solid often leads to misery later on, and this time we're trying very hard to heed those lessons. It's VERY tempting to jump into some new code and throw out new toys to play with, it's great fun making fresh code and trying new things but I'm aiming to do things in a sensible order. This means getting performance solid, compatibility solid, basic core functionality rounded and complete, smoothing off the rough edges that snag at you 10 minutes into using the software.
During the last two years, we definitely did put a LOT of time into creating the Con Kit prototype, going through several iterations, and ultimately concluding that it needed yet more development time, and time we simply did not have left. This is the hard truth and the nature of research and development, you have an idea and you create something you think might work. It fails, and you have to throw it away and start again. You clean out the lab, destroy the old samples, keep some of the notes and build a new lab for the next round of experiments. It's expensive, time consuming and on some days it can drive you to despair, but it's all worth it when you emerge with a successful recipe to share with the world. On this occasion it tasted funny, and so we pressed the reset button and started again. If we had a larger team I could assign someone to work on this 100% but the reality is that whoever codes it would need paying, and that's when business dynamics play a part. I am of course happy for someone to email me, willing to work for free and create the Con Kit for us, but alas it's just little old me right now and on my list right now are niggles, then game logic elements, then more LUA commands and camera/editing controls, then the Character Creator, and then if nothing gets in the way between now and then, a new and improved Con Kit. I think I mentioned the idea of an 'entity snap' mode in relation to how the Con Kit might work, but until we create a design and a prototype to try it out we won't know how long it will take to complete, or when we can release it. Not what you want to hear if you've been waiting for this one thing for the last two years, and I am at a complete loss how I can make the situation any more palatable. If there is something I should be doing, that fits in with the development and business realities of where we are right now, please do post your ideas and make sure you email me the link. I'm here to please as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time, not always an easy task and regrettably means someone is going to be disappointed along the way. A quote I find rather apt goes like this: "You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time". Over the last thirty years of coding and selling software, I find the quote unshakably accurate.
Also, just to keep you clued in on the internal struggles of our small team, we currently have Ravey who is 100% working on multiplayer and Steam integration and me, who works 100% on the single player and overall software integration. Apart from some auxiliary help with the community forums, website, art and management, that's our entire compliment right now which when added up represents more than 80% of the entire resources of TGC, focused on one product, Game Guru. Our decision to stay small has both positive and negative consequences. Staying small has meant we've been able to deliver game making products and support since 1999 (15 years) while newer brighter stars have been born, burned bright and died out during our long tenure. It's a formula that works for us and ensures we're around years from now to help you when you need it.
As you can imagine the downside is that a small team takes longer to create something, and that can be frustrating if you're comparing us like for like against a company with many people on hand to turn things around quickly. It was never my intention to create the impression that we could compete against these much larger forces. We could certainly win a few battles here and there, score the surprise win against a looming leviathan from time to time, but I hope my enthusiasm for the craft of game creation did not translate into the message that I was preparing to topple giants
Perhaps in a decade or so, but not overnight, and not without a lot of pain along the way. For those who've been with us for the entire journey, you've been dragged through the broken glass of alpha and beta cycles, yanked through the barbed wire fence of an Early Access launch and are now enduring the fire and brimstone of a hundred falling meteors as you doggedly march your way along this very rocky path towards our mutual goal of a great game maker.
I am here to tell you that this was just the warm up lap! As Game Guru expands to more than just the FPS genre, you will be enduring the inevitable torture of waiting for even more game perspectives, game styles, engine features, add-on modules, crafting tools, a universe of content and a mountain of ideas pouring in daily from an ever expanding community of game makers. What will drive you absolutely potty is the size of the team responsible for delivering all this goodness, and the cruel truth that there is only so much two overworked UK coders can actually achieve before they keel over and succumb to the inevitable industry 'burnout'. It is our fond hope that a move to Steam will increase the resources available to hire more coders and artists, and realize the full potential of this simple idea; making game creation easy, fun and rewarding.
Back in the dawn of time, I called my first company Dark Basic Software, using the word Dark to illustrate the fact I was a lone wolf coder, a 'dark horse' and clearly the underdog with little chance of victory. Roll the clock forward to the present day, for all my personal progress I still feel very much the underdog, cobbling together bits of this and part of that to produce something unique in the world and hoping a few people will like it. I don't have all the answers, I don't have a crystal ball or a lottery number IQ, just a few programming and entrepreneurial skills and a desire to create software that makes me happy, and I hope, others too.
All I can do is listen, understand, make some good decisions, work hard and hope for the best (and write shorter forum posts)
PC SPECS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Intel Core i7 920 (PASSMARK:5008), NVIDIA Geforce 9600 GT GPU (PASSMARK:752) , 6GB RAM
