Eight months since the last update, and things have not gone as planned: in a very good way. Current roadmap is here. It was last updated today, September 4th.
Raigen
I've mentioned Raigen before. He'd done some work to improve the Hub and tinydark.com in 2023. This year, he was brought on in a part-time capacity to help with the studio while still under my mentorship. The result has been life-changing for me. I never thought I'd see anyone else contributing code directly to GAM3 (our game engine), but here we are six months after he got access and he's taken so much off the list, including things I wanted but didn't have time for, such as accessibility. Mini-profiles, the Character Codex, encumbrance, level-based icons, and improvements to our sound implementation are among his biggest contributions.
The work process goes as follows: I write a spec, he submits the code, then I review it and clean it up if necessary. This has meant that I personally don't get as much time to code as I normally would, but we're still knocking things out at a pace I could only have hoped for.
Black Crown: Exhumed
Spent time in February getting it actually working: the game is playable. It still gets tripped up at times, however, and that's my immediate priority. I have confidence that Black Crown will launch mid-late October 2024. It will be only a web release, not app store. This will be my first launched game since 2018's Bean Grower.
Licensing
Someone wants to use GAM3 to build a cantrlike (which I'll officially be defining soon). After determining project requirements, I realized how close the engine is to being useful for other non-Tinydark developers. I told them $50/mo and to expect something workable in December. Check out the Palin discord server here to get a glimpse of what they'll be building.
I want to make cool, memorable, enriching games, but I also want to enable other people to do so. It has always been my intention to do Tinydark full-time and I hadn't seriously entertained hosting some installations for profit until this person came to me asking about GAM3. If anyone's interested in building something with the engine, find me on Discord or send me an old-fashioned email at vael@tinydark.com
Following Black Crown's release, we'll be spending the rest of the year improving the engine in various ways that are supportive of multiple games, as well as standalone (non-Hub/Tinydark) games.
URPG
We've seen some big features so far this year: notably Area Stats, which allowed me to make a farming mechanic where players improve the farmland, and the Codex, which brought memories with it. I recently also made some UI improvements, though more quality passes are needed to reach my goal of "feeling like a Steam game."
Regarding a release date: URPG, still the Untitled Roleplaying Game awaiting its perfect title, released into alpha on December 26th, 2020. We're nearly 4 years into what I dubbed an alpha playtest. I know it's taken very long, but great things take a while. If I were only remaking Marosia with modern technology, I would have been done two years ago. The more time I put into URPG, the more imperative it becomes that it is a financial success, and the more likely that will be true. Still there's the plain fact that games such as these need to sit for a while to build a playerbase.
I wish I could say release was coming next year. It's entirely possible that we will see beta in Q4 2025. More likely is 2026, but take a look at the roadmap to see what all that time is for. There's also the reality of releasing and supporting a multiplayer game; marketing; stress-testing. I will also begin to quietly market the engine and I don't know what that could mean for my time commitments.
URPG-specific work will slow until next January, but allow me to build some hype. 2025 is the year we get NPCs. The year you will be able to hunt an animal, use Death Magic to resurrect it, then inhabit it, and roleplay as you would any other character on your account. It's the year of real-time travel in a true open world, not the facade we have now. The year of custom battle skills that you design yourself, FF7-materia-style. All of that is definitely coming.
Back to work.
Vael Victus