As the clement chill of Autumn approaches, I'd like to give an idea of where the studio's at, where we've been, and where we're going.

What's Been Done This Year

• Orbium just got an update.
• Bean Grower got the 1.2 update in May.
• Our proprietary game engine, GAM3, got an update in August and an update in January.
• MonBre doesn't really count, but it did receive its two seasonal updates this year.

Despite these updates, development has been slower than normal. I am, after all, a one-man studio with a rare helper here or there. When I suffer personal slowdowns, the studio does as well. I expected to have started GAM3′s refactoring by August the latest, but I'm actually glad I didn't.

The primary reason for the slowdown is that I bought a house! And I moved 1,000 miles away, from Rhode Island to South Carolina. Packing, unpacking, throwing things out, talking with all these companies: it was exhausting and I underestimated how long it would take to get ourselves set up down here. Furniture building (often to The Sims OST) took over a month and left my back and hands in pain. And sadly, on the 15-hour journey down, our car was struck, causing financial and serious emotional strife. No one was hurt.

Due to the crash and exceeding even our "worst case" furniture/home budget, I had to take on contract work with a web development agency. It was good exposure and money, but it made it difficult to keep up with my own work. I still contract with them, but I'm trying to keep the contracts smaller so that I can focus on tinydark... and more modern web development.

In June, my PC broke down. I took the opportunity to buy a spare while it was repaired. Then finally, my wife was twice-injured this Summer, casting a dark mood over the season and draining what we'd saved up since the move. We have dubbed it our worst Summer ever, but we are over it now, and I have been developing close to the pace I'd like to be. I've settled into my home office and realized how important, after all, it was to have that spare computer.

tinydark's Future

I am very excited for the future.

I really picked myself up in August, coding hard and publishing two teardowns (die2nite) (marosia) for two browser games. Marosia's developer would go on to suddenly kill the game a few weeks into my writing, with all community hubs removed in one fell swoop. I loved the game and was already planning to make something like it, so when it died I decided that I should prioritize the development of a spiritual successor. No one took me seriously (as they shouldn't) until I showed them GAM3. Now I have a small audience - and critically, initial playerbase - anticipating a release.

Before its death, Marosia suddenly locked itself down, for some of us even mid-roleplay, because its developer was having a baby. This was supposed to be a temporary shutdown. More details are in the teardown itself, but it got my head spinning such that I couldn't sleep, and so stayed awake thinking: there has to be some way I can pull this off, I didn't plan for extensive multiplayer in GAM3 but how can I make this work? So I came to realize a few things:

• A GAM3 event requires only one thing in order to be played: the player's ID.
• There is no reason I cannot schedule a job to run every hour, which plays an event for a player. It should be highly performant. "I could even make this a core no-code GAM3 feature!"
• "Who's in a current zone/locale?" Easiest query ever.
• It's time we get NPCs in GAM3. I suspected I needed them for battle-system enemies anyway.

But, as I laid out in the teardown, Marosia was deeply flawed. There were some good reasons to not make another Marosia, so my mind wandered to a game which will die with Flash's death: Die2nite. A game I know people would pay monthly for, which is critical if I'm to grow to do this full-time. So I went throughout most of August imagining how an ethical, modern D2N might play.

Then Marosia die-died. "Not coming back." Almost immediately people began rumbling for a successor because there is simply nothing out there like it, at least not nearly as good. We were in withdrawal. When Motion Twin finally kills Twinoid, plenty of die2nite players may be too.

So, that was a long-winded way of declaring the following:

1. The best path for tinydark to take is to become a necromancer, resurrecting dead web games, modernizing and improving their design in the process, and hoping to absorb some of the old playerbase.
2. Something like Marosia will be the first.
3. I plan to make something like Die2nite after.
4. Fireburner is still planned and even playable, but is not in the pipe for now.

Roadmap

The fun part: where Vael estimates when things will be done and embarrasses himself three months later. But seriously.

Teching Up - Sep & Oct
I need to spend some time improving my development workflow and playing with new technologies. I'm definitely moving to VSCode and I'm planning to try out svelte over React.js. I anticipate learning node.js but I'm fearing it might be overkill for the only reason I need it: real-time chat/roleplay. Bear in mind that throughout tinydark's journey, I still have to keep myself employable, because until I live off tinydark, "I am a web developer first."

GAM3 Frontend Refactor - Oct & Nov
The player's view may look okay and even feel good now, but it's built on jQuery. Playing an event spawns too many subsequent requests just to keep the UI updated. Going forward, GAM3′s going to start getting hungrier for resources, and in the modern web (game?) arena, I need every advantage I can get.

With the complete rebuild of the frontend, I'll be keeping in mind GAM3′s new goals. I started building the engine in 2013, where it aspired to little more than StoryNexus's "story game" style. The price of that is some patchy UI work that I'll be happy to get rid of, as well as opening its UI to generally be more modular and flexible.

I expect it to take anywhere from 80-100 hours, but I've got a week off in October, so :}

Marosian Components - Nov and Beyond
Three components need to be made: multiplayer, NPCs, open world.

Multiplayer: player profiles, chat, character description

Open World: dropping objects (GAM3 has no "ground" yet), object decay, and vehicles

NPCs: the taming system requires animals and animals will be NPCs. Since they're real living objects that are planned to copy player functionality, they'll be able to do everything a player can... like go on a boat and populate lands with new fauna.

"Myrosia" MVP - Q1 2020

A small closed beta in which all systems except NPC are going to be tested. NPCs are required for release but will be one of the last features made. The UI will not be styled and the game will be rough in many areas.

"Myrosia" Open Beta - Q2 2020
All systems in place, will likely be on its own domain at this point. From here we will just see how long it takes to finish certain features like magic and pickpocketing.

Orbium Summer Update - Summer 2020
Orbium needs a little more love before I'm comfortable with it resting quietly in cyberspace. I expect to develop Myrosia features in tandem.

Die2nite MVP - End of 2020
No new systems, no special styling, just raw content creation to see if the base game is fun. 

Note: I've referenced opening GAM3 up to the public for almost two years now; there are no plans for such anymore, but it is an inevitability for the studio.

In Conclusion

I'm finally returning to form, enjoying the benefits of my home office and the time saved by working remotely. I feel like I'm on the right path, even though it's going to require me delving deep into tech again like I said I wouldn't.

Love,
Vael