Hi everyone and welcome back! Since I started this development blog, time seems to fly much faster than before. These monthly updates really feel like a ticking clock!
What’s up?
My overall situation is slowly improving since the last blog post. A couple of matters are finally deescalating, but I still can’t find a rent- that is taking a ridiculously long amount of time. So I’m still not at full capacity, but I’m doing my best to get back on track with DTC development. On a side note, I will finally take a short vacation from October 27th to November 2nd, I really need a proper break! I think I haven’t been on a week long pause for more than two years.
A few words on the release date
2022 is almost over, and given my current situation, I have to accept there is no way I will be able to complete DTC before the end of the year. I was sure I could do that and I never wanted to give false hopes, but to prevent further misjudgement and to avoid stressing and pressuring myself over a deadline that technically doesn’t exist, I will ditch any hint of a release date and go with a much more efficient estimate: it’s ready when it’s done. I know well I cannot afford to take forever to develop DTC, but I also want to make sure that nobody is bummed if I need some more time- myself included. I’m not stopping working on DTC, after all.
General development
My current task is to prepare an Alpha version of DTC with partial content that can be played without issues from start to finish: it will be useful for private/internal testing on the different platforms the game will release on. I don’t have much new visual progress to show since last month, also because the artist has been really busy with work, but I’ve done a lot of updates to the underlying game code, to the cross-platform code, and to some shaders. Lots of menu pages have been updated and now the Driving Tips menu is a full fledged Driving Guide with lots of explanations and tips. Not sure I mentioned this before in the blog, but there will also be a quick driving tutorial for getting started.
Talking about cross-platform, recently there’s been some major changes to security requirements that Meta asks to developers. These requirements are now very strict and affect usage of data taken from Meta and used in 3rd party services. There is a good chance I will need to roll out a custom login solution in order to keep the game fully cross-platform, like for example having players register a free Commuter Games account, but this is still under research so I hope to have better news soon.
I’m still aware of the leaderboard issues with Pico and iQiyi versions, and in fact I was already preparing an update for all V-Speedway versions, but it’s still not complete since I gave full priority to DTC. There’s some more time to wait for this update, and I’ll make sure to include proper changes for Quest Pro and Pico 4 too.
Wrapping up
This was another overall dull month, I know. Honestly I’m really looking forward to my vacation so I can recharge a bit my own batteries and hopefully come back fresher and ready to resume the work at full force.
Danjel Ricci “SkyArcher”