So the refactor of the code went well, and the wearables system was implemented smoothly! It was great fun to be able to change the look and feel of your character. With some of the different looks we were trying to get in-game we were running into some bugs in Unity (The game engine we’ve been using), and also some unexpected hiccups with some other functionality. A few days after our last blog post the indie game dev community received some big news: Unreal Engine (another program to make games in) is coming out with a new version, with some incredible looking features, next year, and they also changed their licensing model. That may not sound like a big deal to some people, but it made a lot of people, us included, question whether we were using the right tool for the job.
So, after a week of testing Unreal out, I wrote up this summary of my findings for the team: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18THQcCjTq6VKHdAwEL468efuk2ROCX865lP656Nu3tI/edit?usp=sharing Feel free to check it out if you’re interested in a more detailed explanation.
Long story short, we’ve decided that Unreal Engine suits our needs better, and will work better for us in the long run. Implicationally, what this means is production will be slowed for a bit until we get up to speed in the new engine. Art assets can transfer over, and the code from Unity can give us a good solid base to move forward quickly from. The more I learn about Unreal Engine, the more impressed with it I become.
P.S. Join our Discord if you want to stay more involved: https://discord.gg/JEjteYe