Hello everyone!

I would like to start by apologizing for “going silent” for so long. Let me get to the big question first: NO the game is NOT cancelled, abandoned, or even on hold. It never has been. Development DID slow down significantly for a while, but at no point did it stop. In fact, part of the problem is that it’s been growing in scope since the beginning. At its start, DD:E was meant to mainly be the quick “Encounter Modes” with a handful of “story scenarios”;  it is meant to be a $1.99 game after all. But thanks to the enthusiastic comments and my own ambitions, it’s grown to be a bit more complicated, with a full story campaign, more ships, etc.

With this post I’d like to do a couple of things: give a candid explanation for the lack of updates and the delay, and to (finally!) show what is coming very, very soon, as well as some of the things coming a little further down the line.

So. What is taking so long?

In truth, it was a few things happening almost at once at the end of last year and early this year. The first is one of those “real life” things: I was laid off from my day job. Now, that job had basically consisted of developing software from my home office; it allowed fairly flexible hours, no commute, etc, and allowed me to make a lot of progress on Darkdawn rather quickly. After getting laid off, I was lucky to find a job very quickly; literally a week or two later. Its a very cool job, making Augmented Reality apps, but it’s a local company, and when they hired me they were in the middle of a *huge* project. So I went from having a good amount of time at home to working long hours and weekends. That's not a complaint! I really like what I do. But it left me with little time for Darkdawn.

At the same time, I ran into a couple of big problems with the game code itself. The first and most serious was that I’d misunderstood (because of my relative inexperience with such things) how Unity handled memory management. As I continued to add complexity to the game, it started to crash on low RAM phones. Worse, the problem was that as I continued to add ships, models, missions and skins, it was going to get to the point that even high-RAM phone were eventually going to start having issues and failing to run the app. So I dove in as best I could with my limited time, and I did manage to greatly stabilize the memory situation. But after all that work, I didn’t really have any visible “updates” to show for it; just the same game, but more stable. Not much later, I ran into a second, similar problem: I had hard-coded too much about how ships were handled. As I tried to make more variations, and “break the mold” a bit, I realized I was going to have to dive in again and make certain sections of code much more modular. I think I’ve got all of *that* resolved too, but again, all that did was fix a limitation of the design, and itstill  didn’t really leave me with much of an “update”.  However, both those issues are now behind me, and the campaign is ready to really start taking shape.

Now, during this whole time, I *have* been making more content. For one thing, I have a master mission list that is locked down and represents what will launch with the 1.00 version. It will be 20 missions… 21 including a quick tutorial. These will be divided into 5 chapters; for each chapter you will command a different class ship (the first time around; most missions will let you replay them with different ships).

I’ve also been working on the campaign mode’s hub: the Captain’s Office. Besides serving as an in-game menu screen, the Office (inspired by a certain bald captain’s “Ready Room”) will serve as a way to interact with the story and world of Darkdawn. You will receive messages and letters from various characters, and, as you play the campaign, the office will be filled bit by bit with objects  and artifacts related to the missions you’ve just played. All of this “flavor” stuff is optional; you can ignore it and launch into the next mission if you prefer, but hopefully for those looking for more of a story it will offer a glimpse into, as they say, “a larger world”.  

Office concept

Office in-game WIP

What comes next?

Soon, within a week or two, I will be releasing a little “apology” update that will add two new playable ships (the Advanced Frigate, and a *playable* Ikha’ari Destroyer) as well a handful of new skins for the existing ships, and possibly a preview of the office. It will also, of course, include all those re-writes and fixes I wrote about above, as well as some slight tweaks to weapon fire and damage effects.

The advanced frigate has built-in engine boosters, allowing you to mount a second equipment item. 

Fly an Ikha'ari Destroyer and fire its unique anti-ship torpedo; but what is with that paint job? Play the campaign to find out... 

And then?

The 1.0 Campaign. Its long overdue and its my primary focus now, at last. In the meantime, I’ll update with whatever I can; with skins, and maybe a preview chapter. I’ll also try to keep this forum more up to date with news and WIPs. There is still a lot of work ahead, but things are moving faster now than they have in a long while, and I hope to be able to hit that magic 1.0 soon.

WIP - Ikha'ari military station

WIP - Station variant - size comparison with Othirion-class cruiser

The Future

The 1.0 will not be the end of Darkdawn by any means. There are some enhancements I'd like to make to the art, graphics, and sound, for free, after the initial release; I just can't keep delaying things for them. Also, there are missions I cut from the list I still want to do, other modes I'd like to try and other ships in the back of my mind; some might come as free upgrades, or there might be some kind of paid expansion if I can generate enough content to justify charging another buck or two; right now I'm trying not to think about that and focus on getting that main campaign finished.

Thank you for your patience; I hope this peek behind the curtain helps shows how dedicated I am to finishing this game.

-Leo

Ship size comparison (I'll update it with the Ikha'ari stations soon)

Ad Astra!