Dev Update 2024
My fellow commanders!
From the dev changelog, it has been five years since the last version release of 3.00.20.04 back on 01-02-2019. Yes - time flies.
A lot has happened in those five years, both personally and professionally. But, as you all expect, I am still here. We did lose some of our friends and family along the way, but one day we will see them again.
Back in 2015 when I decided to refresh the UC game via a DLC instead of doing a new Battlecruiser/Universal Combat game, it was supposed to be a relatively easy 12-14 month affair. As these things go, the more that I peeled back the layers of legacy code in a bid to upgrade them for one last dance, the more I discovered dependencies that either couldn't be left untouched or which stifled the implementation of other improvements.
The challenges were further compounded by the fact that I was not only porting updated versions of various code and assets from the All Aspects Engine (in-house game engine used in AAW/AOA) to the legacy engine used in UCCE20, but I was also merging newer 2D/3D game assets as well. You can look through the changelog to see the progress that has been made in that regard.
Lots and lots of things broke. At that point, I decided that it wasn't a good use of my time to keep releasing dev updates (the last one was in 2019) which broke more things.
Last year, I came up with a new and improved plan so that I could get UCCE30 completed inside of 12-14 months. Aside from some crash bugs and anomalies, most of what's left to do is related to various odd anomalies as well as some miscellaneous content creation. Refer to the recently updated Trello dev board for more on this.
My current plan is as follows:
From that point onward, I can then tackle the deferred and maybe some wish list items as part of the improvement process. I have absolutely no idea how long that would take, nor if I will ever be able to complete it all - but I will continue to work on it.
From the dev changelog, it has been five years since the last version release of 3.00.20.04 back on 01-02-2019. Yes - time flies.
A lot has happened in those five years, both personally and professionally. But, as you all expect, I am still here. We did lose some of our friends and family along the way, but one day we will see them again.
Back in 2015 when I decided to refresh the UC game via a DLC instead of doing a new Battlecruiser/Universal Combat game, it was supposed to be a relatively easy 12-14 month affair. As these things go, the more that I peeled back the layers of legacy code in a bid to upgrade them for one last dance, the more I discovered dependencies that either couldn't be left untouched or which stifled the implementation of other improvements.
The challenges were further compounded by the fact that I was not only porting updated versions of various code and assets from the All Aspects Engine (in-house game engine used in AAW/AOA) to the legacy engine used in UCCE20, but I was also merging newer 2D/3D game assets as well. You can look through the changelog to see the progress that has been made in that regard.
Lots and lots of things broke. At that point, I decided that it wasn't a good use of my time to keep releasing dev updates (the last one was in 2019) which broke more things.
Last year, I came up with a new and improved plan so that I could get UCCE30 completed inside of 12-14 months. Aside from some crash bugs and anomalies, most of what's left to do is related to various odd anomalies as well as some miscellaneous content creation. Refer to the recently updated Trello dev board for more on this.
My current plan is as follows:
- Address any/all FATAL crash bugs
- Integrate the completed exported game model assets (from AAW to UCCE30)
- Move the more problematic engine improvements (see Dev Plan in Trello board) to the wish list card
- Final testing of the completed Lyrius Conflict campaign due to the planetary scene revisions in the major 3.00.20 update
- Release a 3.01 build as a point release
From that point onward, I can then tackle the deferred and maybe some wish list items as part of the improvement process. I have absolutely no idea how long that would take, nor if I will ever be able to complete it all - but I will continue to work on it.