Update on Dwell

Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t made any Dwell blog posts explaining what’s going on, and others of you may be wondering why we rely on the Trello for updates instead. It’s a complicated story, but I think everyone wants to know what’s going on.

In March, we decided to redo the whole game in C# because the C++ code was bloated and couldn’t support over 50 people. At this time, Jackard left the project (because of creative differences) and Josh and Cameron came on full time. We basically had to start completely fresh and new because of the switch.

Since March, we’ve redone THE WHOLE GAME in C#. That is absurd considering we’re making an MMORPG here. We also added pixel-based movement, WASD controls, and can support aprox. 800-1000 players. Since then, we brought on Lou as our artist.

Lou’s work is good, but it hasn’t been shaping up properly. He hasn’t quite understood how to make tilesets properly. As a result, I haven’t been able to show off any screenshots because the art simply isn’t good enough.

Also, since I’m the designer, I don’t program NEARLY as much as before. Therefor, I can’t give you exact updates pertaining to the game because I don’t know the exact technical details beyond what I tell Josh and Cameron to do. I’ll still try my best to get blog posts out.

Finally, at the end of the spring I dropped out of college to focus on Dwell because I think it has potential. All we need right now is time. I REALLY want to show off screenshots but the art is not looking good enough right now for me to do so.

As for a timeline, I don’t want to keep promising dates and not fulfilling. Too many things change and at this point it’s just about making the game the best we can. I talked to the VP of 505 Games (published Terraria and Payday 2) because he was my mentor at GDC and he told me to scrap the timeline and just focus more on making the game. I’m going to listen to him because I want Dwell to be the best game it can, not some game that is pushed out too early and has bugs and glitches.

To wrap up, it’s not that we aren’t making progress (we certainly are), but it’s not VISUAL progress that I feel comfortable showing off. I’ll be doing a Twitch stream soon explaining the situation and talking with everyone about their comments and concerns :)