Status update 2018-08-12
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 4:48 pm
We're preparing the game for the steam beta period. Current goal is to begin the steam beta at the end of this month. It looks like we might be able to pull that off! It depends on what we prioritize for the beta period.
I recently looked up what it would take to integrate the game into Steam Workshop and it's more work than I imagined. I thought it was just to configure a few paths where some content files would be placed but it's a whole API that needs to be integrated into the game and tested - a lot more than I excepted. Steam Workshop will not be integrated into SFD this year, but maybe next year. My vision is that you should be able to subscribe to maps and extension-scripts (and texturepacks?) in the Steam Workshop and they will automatically be updated as the author updates them. But until that's a thing, sites like http://sfdmaps.at.ua/ will be the place to go to.
For you that are waiting for the campaign or wants to know more about it here's a few notes:
We begun experimenting with different ways to construct campaigns in January with a few goals in mind:
1: Provide an solo/coop offline/online experience where you can fight against bots instead of only fighting other players online.
2: Fight against a variety of enemies (enemies with different behaviors), including a few boss fights.
3: Provide a longer sized experience (15-25 minutes-ish) compared to versus games. Campaigns have an end compared to survival mode.
4: Provide a bit of lore into the universe of SFD.
It has been an iterative process to find a somewhat good level of design, gameplay, storytelling, bots/AI and amount of work for the map maker in order to find some sort of sweetspot that we think is a campaign in SFD. This is something that has taken months and months to figure out because it's a lot of small and big parts in the whole picture... and we're still working on this in our spare time!
We intend to create more campaigns but for the steam beta and release version there will be one campaign to begin with.
I recently looked up what it would take to integrate the game into Steam Workshop and it's more work than I imagined. I thought it was just to configure a few paths where some content files would be placed but it's a whole API that needs to be integrated into the game and tested - a lot more than I excepted. Steam Workshop will not be integrated into SFD this year, but maybe next year. My vision is that you should be able to subscribe to maps and extension-scripts (and texturepacks?) in the Steam Workshop and they will automatically be updated as the author updates them. But until that's a thing, sites like http://sfdmaps.at.ua/ will be the place to go to.
For you that are waiting for the campaign or wants to know more about it here's a few notes:
We begun experimenting with different ways to construct campaigns in January with a few goals in mind:
1: Provide an solo/coop offline/online experience where you can fight against bots instead of only fighting other players online.
2: Fight against a variety of enemies (enemies with different behaviors), including a few boss fights.
3: Provide a longer sized experience (15-25 minutes-ish) compared to versus games. Campaigns have an end compared to survival mode.
4: Provide a bit of lore into the universe of SFD.
It has been an iterative process to find a somewhat good level of design, gameplay, storytelling, bots/AI and amount of work for the map maker in order to find some sort of sweetspot that we think is a campaign in SFD. This is something that has taken months and months to figure out because it's a lot of small and big parts in the whole picture... and we're still working on this in our spare time!
We intend to create more campaigns but for the steam beta and release version there will be one campaign to begin with.