About the update, my life and future goals.

Hello.

Dayder here. In this post I want to briefly and partially explain some important things, like why the update took so long, my near future plans/what needs to be done in the project in the near time, and a few other things.

I will be as honest and precise as I can.

1) Why did I not release any update for almost 2 years.

I decided to improve and rework the project for a large part, to strengthen the foundation and make sure that I can manage to keep expanding it in the future. The code I had 2 years ago was awful and hard to maintain/expand in way too many parts. I used my new skills and experience to make it better, to the extent of my new abilities and (very limiting) tools.

I could try to make use of the hype wave that was happening around this project back then (which was maybe the main reason why I decided to grow it into more than a hobby and a way to improve my skills. I saw that thousands of people need it, and would like to see it grow). But I decided to not, as it could either lead me to working on more content while the code foundation and my skills are not good enough, and then result in a slow fade, or in much more pressure if I still decided to go silent and rework it, like I did now.

I decided to not try to take money while I am so unsure if I can manage it.

(honestly, I am still unsure, but at least I saw what I could do, even without support and in a near constant depression and feeling bad, and am sure that I want to continue working on it).

I do think that it was foolish of me to go this way, I really needed money, holding back several buzzing needs which were driving me crazy and living mostly on parents’ support, was overworking like crazy for no reward, and it all harmed me greatly, but I am sure I will recover, and, on the other hand, can’t say that it didn’t have to be done. Just maybe in some better way. I can’t think of any much better way though.

I was literally spending most of my time, very often without weekends, on developing, but, looking back, I can’t say that that was very effective.

I have no ways of income after I quit my first ever job to concentrate on this project, and it isn’t good at all for my mental and physical health, and hence efficiency.

One of the main slowdowns and sources of frustration for me was, and still is, my PC, which is really not holding well at all as a workstation for Unreal Engine. Especially for C++ development.

I got really sick of spending up to around 1/6 – 1/3  of my total development time of compilation/building/launching the game and re-launching the editor after crashes. In some days it is quick and okay, in some – painful and time and nerve-wasting, depending on what I have to do. You really lose focus on what you were going to do, when you have to wait for so long before getting to test the results, often only to see that you made some mistake. It greatly lowered my efficiency when I had to work on C++ parts of the project, and I foolishly tried to compensate it by overworking like crazy, which, you know, couldn’t be good when done for so long.

2) The PC slowness described above made me work mainly in Unreal Engine’s visual programming system, “Blueprints”. It is relatively convenient, but, most importantly, near instant when you want to check the results of your changes.
As a downside, they are a bit unstable, which resulted in me losing some progress a few times (but thankfully I usually backup frequently), and, most importantly, they are SLOW when it comes to performance.

Many of the base and most important for performance systems of DotE are coded in C++ (I was slowly moving some of them into C++), but too many are still in Blueprints, like ~2/3 of AI, which harms the performance greatly due to that, attack code, status effects code, animation code, and some of the stuff done every frame for dragons, fish, and some other objects.

I optimized almost everything that I could without cutting features, but just the fact that many frequently executed calculations are still in Blueprints, even if optimized to the best of my ability, does not allow the performance to be as great as it could be. I do not aim for DotE to become a 100+ players on server MMO, as I focus on things inherently conflicting with this idea performance-wise, but this performance problem will have to be addressed in the future.

And to do it, and, of course, just to develop this project efficiently, without having to compensate my PC’s slowness with my time and without stress, I need funds to get a good workstation. The sooner, the better. I don’t really want to endure this way of development anymore. It was slowly killing me and got me constantly highly stressed and feeling bad.

3) While at the moment, to be honest, I am in a bad shape in many ways, and shaken, after burning myself selflessly and foolishly in such way, something like this happened to me before, and I know I will fix myself.

But I need a good recharge. And I really can’t get any good recharge right now, with many mental barriers and a total lack of money. Please, help. I want to work on this project efficiently again, and do it better than before, but I am stressed, tired, unsure about my future, and have a long neglected health issues due to that.

I feel like I valued the project’s future that I was aiming for, so much, that I valued my own future less than it, which is awful. Help me fix myself and improve my conditions of work, and I will return to work on it efficiently again.

Please, subscribe to at least the 3$ tier for some time, and share the word about this project with other people who might like it. It will really help.

4) Also, about copyrights…

It was a big source of worry and uncertainty even when this project was just a hobby for me.

I was always trying to develop mechanics in a universal way not only because it is kind of the right way to do it, but because I was afraid that at any moment I could have to cut these dragons, and all the mechanics that I made specifically for them, would become obsolete, along with my time invested into them.

I got a bit crazy on “unifying” some code parts due to that, and spent a lot of time on trying to do that, with some (or many) wins. But it slowed the development down significantly. Although, if I have to add more unusual dragons or creatures, that will come in handy…

By the way, about new dragons.

I must warn you right now that I would like to start adding some non-copyrighted dragons in the future, but HTTYD ones are in equal priority. But for the near future the focus is still not on adding new dragons, as many things still need to be finished, given that I will have a workstation to allow it.

If I will have to cut HTTYD dragons in the future (which I hope won’t happen, but DreamWorks has right to demand it), I want to still remain working on this project, just steering it in an entirely non-HTTYD direction.

5) Don’t expect this project to be developed fast, at least in the near time. But you can help me speed the process up by supporting on Patreon, or other sites, if/when I will open such possibility.

I need to cool down and try to sort out some of my own problems, if I hopefully get your support, and then get back to working full time on it. I don’t want to overwork like I did, again. In the long run it doesn’t seem to increase the productivity at all.

There are many things to be done. There are many things that need to be redone in C++ code (but it should take much less time than writing them from scratch).

After I sort some of my problems and finish some things in the project, in some time I plan to start looking and hope to find or gather a team of some sorts. I, to be honest, never actually wanted to work alone, but I am barely fitting for a role of a team leader, at least in my current bad mental shape and lack of confidence and experience in many areas.

My unmet dream since the University was to be in a team of professionals, and good people, working on something useful and cool. This project, I think and hope, may fit this definition now or in the future.

6) Also, a quick note on where the money will go.

The first and most important priority is getting a new, powerful workstation for me. These are very costly, even more so where I live. So costly in fact that it would require saving up the entire monthly salary from my first job for almost half a year, to buy what I have in mind (not even top tier parts), and it is without the GPU (which are insanely overpriced at the moment, thankfully mine still holds somewhat well).

I can’t just partially upgrade my current PC, because most of the components are very old and even back then weren’t the top tier.

Then, I need money to live. Living on parents’ help is really not good; if I didn’t have this ultimate goal in my head, of this project, I would have long ago started to search for some better job, but I just can’t drop it, especially after I have invested so much time into it.

I have some additional medical expenses that my parents also cover, but we are not some wealthy family at all, and it only results in guilt and less confidence for me.

I have, like I mentioned above, some needs since the end of university, that I thought I will cover when I find a job after graduating (oh, if I only knew what a hard way I will choose in life...), but after 3 years I am just forgetting them basically.

The little savings that I had from my first job, I have spent a long time ago, having squeezed what I could out of them.

Also, very importantly, having money to spend could really accelerate the development in some areas, as I could just simply buy plugins/assets, rather than re-invent the wheel myself. At first it was really useful for me to do all things myself, for experience, but now in some areas it only slows me down. Although, I am still wary to use the third-party code due to many reasons, like the risks of an additional dependence on its authors to update them and fix bugs, and specific code systems of DotE that many of these plugins won’t function well with.

Buying some specific assets could definitely save up time though.

When I finish some things and boost my confidence, I, in the future, plan to start searching for a team, and money will definitely be needed there, you know.