Hello Everyone,
This might be a long post so I will conclude everything in short here itself:
1. DesktopMascotEngine project is not dead, however, this project turned more ambitious than I initially thought or planned for (I am a one man army, no team here) and unfortunately its early access sales itself couldn't cover much of our/my working costs.
2. By November 2018 end, I had fallen to pressure of our hype and feeling the need to ship large updates asap, succumbed to it and fall into months of procrastination. By December 2018 I started losing motivation to work on it and within a few months, I stopped game development all together. What followed up were a series of lazy months doing nothing.
3. A month or so back, started working on a small side-game for christmas to raise my motivation again and get back in form. I hope to resume development on DME after release of this game as I hope taking my mind off to something new will freshen me up and let me think anew.
I am themeing it for christmas with elements of RTS, IO, MMORPG, Necromancy. Not sure how it will be received by gamers, but I am enjoying working on it.
4. On resuming development on DME, I plan to either rebuild it from scratch again or do a more modular approach to everything and work on fixing existing issues rather than new features. I think if I focused on my initial vision from the very start instead of new features from community discussions, and instead worked on them one after another with stable client, we wouldn't be in this slump.
5. Contrary to my previous comments in various topics, WINDOWS 7/8/8.1 is not compatible with the new rendering system. Even if I make it work with old rendering system, it will not be able to make use of the AI assistant and more modern features of DME.
As such, from now on we will have 2 versions of DME (both included in same purchase/client), one will be Legacy version to just support the Mascot Engine on Windows 7/8/8.1 and the other will be the future/modern version for Windows 10+ which will include all other AI, assistant and modern features.
6. 2D will need to be removed for now, there are issues in it currently and clearly its not as good as what people wanted or expected from it. Once the 3D system is more stable and upto date, I will rebuild 2D from scratch too.
I am also exploring the option of rendering 3D models as more 2D/pixel arts instead. Worst case scenario, 2D will need to be a version of itself too. Currently the lack of artists or anyone expert in 2D field disables me on working and updating it right now.
7. 3D workshop and support for custom 3D models will be my #1 priority right away, thats also the reason for removing 2D support for now.
8. Unlike before, I will focus on small changes and updates regularly rather than big updates at once. I have setup a Trello board and discord channel so I can engage better with the community on fixing issues first, then small updates and then big features.
9. I am trying to setup livestreaming on steam/twitch so I can be more active and committed and have the fans see progress on what I am working on.
This way, I can enjoy my work more and get more feedback in realtime while working, and I think people who have been following this project since long would be able to see whats cooking.
10. Once back on track, I want to do a small Kickstarter campaign to raise some funds to hire more people and speed up the development.
^^Well, that wasn't really short but whatever.
If anyone wants to follow the progress of what I am working on and stuff, the best way right now is Discord or Twitch below. Trello board link will only be provided via discord to keep it private.
Discord - https://discord.gg/m3XkvFA
Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/gamerzdan
Twitter - https://twitter.com/GamerzDan
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/gamerzdancom
----------------------------------
Sorry that everyone had to wait so long and I couldn't fulfill a number of our promises related to updates. This project was so hyped up when released that I think the initial hype, its pressure and me thinking that I need to keep shipping big updates after updates got to me and I succumbed to it by end of November 2018.
This project turned more ambitious than I initially thought or planned for (I am a one man army, no team here) and unfortunately its early access sales itself couldn't cover much of our/my working costs.
As a result (that and some taxation issues causing us a huge penalty of money), I had to put this project on hold last year and start working as a Freelancer to cover my expenses and build up enough funds for myself to focus back on this project.
I even had plans to raise a kickstarter campaign to hire more developers last year, but plans remain plans.
Unfortunately, I am still not at a stage where I can resume work on this project, not just due to lack of money, but also motivation. I have not been able to make myself work on this or any of my other projects/prototypes ever since.
I am currently working on a small game slated for christmas, its both for some revenue and to get myself out of slump and procrastination.
I have had a list of plans and tasks scheduled for DME since December 2018, and I hope I can get back to working on it soon enough.
Please do know that I am a single/solo developer and sometimes working alone has its own disadvantages, mainly the pressure and lack of motivation.
I will update you right away on one technical aspect though, although the initial build of DME supported Windows 7, 8 and 10 and 32/64bit, it had huge CPU/GPU usage.
The new render system I created during mid-August updates fixed resource usage but was not compatible with Windows 7 or 32 bit.
Not just that, but for the plans I have develop DME into an AI/assistant, it will not be possible for Windows 7/8.1 (only Windows 10 provides inbuilt speech recognition and optimized rendering).
As such, whenever I update DME, there will be 2 versions.
A legacy version with just the Mascot/Character system for all Windows version (7/8.1/10 and x32/x64 bit)
and
A stable version, with the AI and assistant kit, which will be updated and continued development on in future, but will only work with Windows 10 (or newer).