Beyond the Demo: Spaced Out Scope and the Removal of the Release Date

So yeah, I know I missed last week's update, and I'm sure you wonderful early adopters you are wondering whether or not the demo is finished.

In short... yes?

I have all the art assets complete and the demo kind of exists and is kind of playable. But the whole point of the demo was to be a foundation from which to build off of, and it's not that yet. So I'm in the current process of cleaning my code cuz it's all over the place right now. It was probably a mistake to dive back into developing with a major project like this to get me back in the right mind set. And that brings us to today's topic of scope.

Honestly Spaced Out isn't the most technical thing I've ever programmed but what makes Spaced Out special to me is what it represents and the journey I have to take to accomplish it. It's meant to get me out the door. It's very content based once the initial engine is built which is what I want it to be. Right now the demo I've constructed contains a lot of the main mechanics but doesn't represent what the final product is supposed to encapsulate.

So is the demo finished? No. However I'm going to try and clean up what I've got right now and get that to you in the next week or so for those that want it but the public demo is not done in terms of representation. We'll call this demo "Demo 0.1". I can't stress to you enough how little it will be in terms of gameplay when compared to what "Demo 0.2" will look like.

Demo 0.2 is going to require much more work and will come later than I jotted down earlier in the schedule so expect some pretty major changes in regards to that.

Finally, there is one other thing to address and that is, release date. I wanted to aim for this December and I'm not going to say it won't make that mile marker yet but I wouldn't be surprised if I decide to take the date off the shelf for a bit until it becomes more clear how long this is actually going to take me. I'll be doing some major reevaluating in the next few weeks and really digging into what Spaced Out is actually going to be in it's nitty gritty details because up til now it's been a lot of glossed over ideas and very little critical thinking.

Another reason for the lifting of the release date is because of the lack of demand for this. If there is no demand for me to have this thing out there yet, then I don't know why I'm deciding to kill myself over it unnecessarily. Along the way if it looks like I'm making really good time or I have a solid idea of when it will be finished then I will reestablish when I will plan on releasing it. I also hate the idea of not having something tangible when I'm waiting for a game to come out so I can at least tell you that I'd be very very surprised if it didn't come out before 2017.

And the final reason I can give you for why I'm relaxing on the release date is because I want to start making money... like tomorrow. That'd be good. So I will be working on side projects alongside Spaced Out that I'll be releasing with profit in mind. Again, if demand really kicks in for Spaced Out, we'll talk about kickstarter and getting funded for me to put the other projects aside and devoting all my time to getting you Spaced Out ASAP.

Okay, that's it for this week. See ya next Tuesday!