Vault of the Void is coming to Mobile and Switch!
Hey folks! I’ve got some super exciting news to share today (maybe the worst kept secret)! Some of you may have seen me hinting at this on Reddit or in the Discord, but I can finally officially announce the good news! With good news however, there is often some less than great news to follow. Same case here, but I wanted to at least make my intentions and plans public so you all know what the Roadmap is going to look like moving forward.
But first -- kitty update!
We haven’t seen any photos of Kiri or Yuki for a while now -- so here's a kitty update! Both are doing good and getting bigger. Might have to squeeze these into Vault at some stage. Maybe a kitty deckback!
[h2]Good News[/h2]
So the good news -- as you can tell by the title, Vault of the Void is officially coming to Mobile and Switch! I know a lot of people have been asking for this for a long time, so I’m finally excited to be able to confirm it!
I’ve had goals to port Vault since the beginning -- however logistically it's never really lined up. There's been many offers from companies over the years to handle all this for me, but I really wanted to be the one to do it, and to make sure I did it right. After some discussions earlier this year, I finally decided to take the plunge. I applied to Nintendo to ask if I could bring Vault to Switch at the sametime, and have since been all approved!
So -- what's the Bad News?
[h2]Bad News[/h2]
The bad news is -- when I started making Vault back in 2018 or so, I had no idea how to program. I barely was able to get it onto the PC -- let alone a mobile device. I had no idea the game would be as popular as it is -- so things like porting etc were a completely disregarded.
Fast forward to now -- Gamemaker has moved a long way, as has a lot of the plugins I use (especially the text rendering engine!). I was unable to upgrade a lot of this because Vault was coded the way it was.
The bottom line is -- for Vault to move to be multi-platform, it means almost a full rewrite of the core code base. This is one of the reasons that held me back from doing it for so long.
However, I've already started on this process! I've been working hard over the past 6 weeks or so (between my fulltime job) to get the core of things in place, and its actually going really well! What does make things problematic though -- is the fact that whilst I'm doing this upgrade, updates to the old version of the game make the process a little trickier.
Obviously -- the Daughter of the Void was due for her balance and content update. This is still happening, but I'm just trying to see where this sits in the pipeline. I can either leave the current porting and version upgrade for now, jump back to the old code base and get that update done. The other option is to get this full upgrade done, and bundle the Daughter patch in as the first update.
This is where I wanted to come to you all -- the playerbase -- to be transparent about my plans here. As usual, I'm still learning on the fly, and before I commit to either plan, I'd like to take the rest of May if possible please, to just see if I can get a firmer idea on how long this upgrade is going to take. I'm deep in the trenches, and feeling like with a lot of the core parts done now, I should get a firmer grasp of time soon.
Ideally, if I priortise the upgrade first, the new version (which I'm calling 2.0 interally) will launch on PC first, brining the PC client up to this latest version. So lets talk about the benefits:
Also -- with the re-write, I'll be able to tend to the 2-3 issues keeping Vault from a "Certified" rating on Steam Deck!
So in terms of a rough timeline, the rollout will look something like :
The reason I need to stage things out like this, is purely because I'm only one person. I can't stay across all fronts in a way that I'd be happy with if I launched all at the same time. The decision to push Android first is based purely off how simplier the deployment is. I'm unsure about the time gap between each, although I can't imagine the time betwen Android and iOS to be more than a few weeks. If Android launches well, I'll push the go-live on iOS sooner.
As you may be able to tell, I'm very excited! Althought I do ask if you could please give me just a bit more time to plug away here, before I decide on where the Daughter patch will land. Its 100% coming, just trying to decide which is best.
[h2]Tacticon 2023[/h2]
As you may have noticed, Vault of the Void has been included in Tacticon 2023! Its a huge honor to be included with so many amazing games. To celebrate, Vault is also on Sale right now for 25% off!
Thank you everyone for being part of this journey so far! There is much more to come, and I'm really excited about the future!
If I end up focusing on the upgrade first, I'll try to push out fortnightly Dev Posts to Steam, showing progress and keeping you all in the loop on how things are going!
All for now!
- Josh
But first -- kitty update!
We haven’t seen any photos of Kiri or Yuki for a while now -- so here's a kitty update! Both are doing good and getting bigger. Might have to squeeze these into Vault at some stage. Maybe a kitty deckback!
[h2]Good News[/h2]
So the good news -- as you can tell by the title, Vault of the Void is officially coming to Mobile and Switch! I know a lot of people have been asking for this for a long time, so I’m finally excited to be able to confirm it!
I’ve had goals to port Vault since the beginning -- however logistically it's never really lined up. There's been many offers from companies over the years to handle all this for me, but I really wanted to be the one to do it, and to make sure I did it right. After some discussions earlier this year, I finally decided to take the plunge. I applied to Nintendo to ask if I could bring Vault to Switch at the sametime, and have since been all approved!
So -- what's the Bad News?
[h2]Bad News[/h2]
The bad news is -- when I started making Vault back in 2018 or so, I had no idea how to program. I barely was able to get it onto the PC -- let alone a mobile device. I had no idea the game would be as popular as it is -- so things like porting etc were a completely disregarded.
Fast forward to now -- Gamemaker has moved a long way, as has a lot of the plugins I use (especially the text rendering engine!). I was unable to upgrade a lot of this because Vault was coded the way it was.
The bottom line is -- for Vault to move to be multi-platform, it means almost a full rewrite of the core code base. This is one of the reasons that held me back from doing it for so long.
However, I've already started on this process! I've been working hard over the past 6 weeks or so (between my fulltime job) to get the core of things in place, and its actually going really well! What does make things problematic though -- is the fact that whilst I'm doing this upgrade, updates to the old version of the game make the process a little trickier.
Obviously -- the Daughter of the Void was due for her balance and content update. This is still happening, but I'm just trying to see where this sits in the pipeline. I can either leave the current porting and version upgrade for now, jump back to the old code base and get that update done. The other option is to get this full upgrade done, and bundle the Daughter patch in as the first update.
This is where I wanted to come to you all -- the playerbase -- to be transparent about my plans here. As usual, I'm still learning on the fly, and before I commit to either plan, I'd like to take the rest of May if possible please, to just see if I can get a firmer idea on how long this upgrade is going to take. I'm deep in the trenches, and feeling like with a lot of the core parts done now, I should get a firmer grasp of time soon.
Ideally, if I priortise the upgrade first, the new version (which I'm calling 2.0 interally) will launch on PC first, brining the PC client up to this latest version. So lets talk about the benefits:
- Huge optimsation tweaks. The game runs, and is coded, so much better. Much higher FPS and better support for low end machines.
- Full UI scaling options and better Ultra Wide support. There is now a slider that correctly scales the UI to the users liking, alongside also the Large Font option.
- Fully updated Save system to fix all those annoying save game issues that show up from time to time. Everything has move to .json and been standised. With the new system you'll be able to pass save files between players for speedrun events as well.
- Greatly improved workflow when it comes to adding new Classes and Cosmetics. Expect much more in both these areas.
- Link Code setup, meaning you are able to sync your progress (I+ Levels, cosmetics, Mastery, Challenge Coins etc) between Mobile, PC, Switch etc. 100% crossplay is being investgated as well!
- Cross system Leaderboards for Daily Draft.
- Full re-write of the seeding and level generation to make things more accessible for the speed runners and competition gamers.
Also -- with the re-write, I'll be able to tend to the 2-3 issues keeping Vault from a "Certified" rating on Steam Deck!
So in terms of a rough timeline, the rollout will look something like :
- PC version gets update to 2.0 client. Bug testing and mass user testing happens here on Beta, then synced to Live (with the Daughter update).
- At this stage, Android Beta testing will have started, and be ongoing. iOS potentially as well.
- Android Launch
- iOS Launch
- Switch Launch
The reason I need to stage things out like this, is purely because I'm only one person. I can't stay across all fronts in a way that I'd be happy with if I launched all at the same time. The decision to push Android first is based purely off how simplier the deployment is. I'm unsure about the time gap between each, although I can't imagine the time betwen Android and iOS to be more than a few weeks. If Android launches well, I'll push the go-live on iOS sooner.
As you may be able to tell, I'm very excited! Althought I do ask if you could please give me just a bit more time to plug away here, before I decide on where the Daughter patch will land. Its 100% coming, just trying to decide which is best.
[h2]Tacticon 2023[/h2]
As you may have noticed, Vault of the Void has been included in Tacticon 2023! Its a huge honor to be included with so many amazing games. To celebrate, Vault is also on Sale right now for 25% off!
Thank you everyone for being part of this journey so far! There is much more to come, and I'm really excited about the future!
If I end up focusing on the upgrade first, I'll try to push out fortnightly Dev Posts to Steam, showing progress and keeping you all in the loop on how things are going!
All for now!
- Josh