Schedule Update & Move to UE5 (Patreon)

"It was only as the titanic form rose before me that I finally grasped the inevitability of the conflict. Looming large the Wyrm obscured everything before me. The traders and farmers streamed past, paying little heed to the hooded wanderer as they ran for their lives.

Baskets tumbled, their contents lost to the shifting sand. Gold, silver, and all manner of precious things were dropped without hesitation. The smallest were bundled up in the arms of strangers, the strong aiming to aid the weak. Their bravery meant little against the slavering maw that began to descend on them.

It is not my way to interfere, with this place or its people. I watch. I write. It is not for me to decide such things. Yet nonetheless I raised my staff. Unbidden the words rose in my throat and I uttered the commanding sounds of that long forgotten tongue.

This decision was too weighty to be left unmade."

Ehkos, A Guide to the Desert Kingdoms

Hi All,

We were torn as to whether we should make this a poll at all, as the drawbacks and benefits are difficult to articulate, but we felt it was important to gauge the feeling of the community around this decision.

This post will not be an exhaustive list of every feature or problem, but will try to give you an idea of what we're talking about so that you can come to your decision.

Update Schedule

This is probably the most contentious bit of news; we're moving to less frequent but larger builds.

We have maintained our twice-per-month update schedule since the first release in November 2020, with some months even seeing more updates than that. The problem with this is that we're more or less past the "easy to fit in 2 weeks" content and we're into the "3 weeks plus of work" stage. It's why the female centaur doesn't immediately ship with an adult scene, for example.

For Avatar tier, what we're moving to will not impact you at all. You'll get a single update around the middle of the month and it will include all the previous month's content.

For Ascended tier and above, the two updates will be replaced with a single larger update, however it will release on the same day as the last month's update goes live for Avatar tier. That is to say that both builds will release around the middle of the month; Ascended will therefore gain exclusivity on the new content for one month rather than two weeks.

This was always something we knew might become necessary, as some things are not possible for our small team to deliver within a 2 week window. It's important to know that this will allow us to make more, not less, each

Why are we making this decision at all?

We mentioned, when announcing UE5, that it allows much more rapid development. That is absolutely true and remains the case. What is not faster however, is maintaining two separate versions of the game.

Some items can be made in UE5 and ported back to UE4, however many others must be made twice. Bugfixes are required for UE4, a cul-de-sac that no longer feeds mechanically into the Alpha.

The long and short of it is that releasing UE4 builds is hugely hampering our development progress.

What are my options?

So before we spell out the options, and though it's a simple choice there are pros and cons on both sides, we want to make something clear; the current UE4 build will remain accessible to Patrons. That means the UE4 version will be available for download either way, we'll just stop updating it with content and put that work into UE5.

So the options;

Option 1

This is what we're proposing. We push UE5 out much sooner than intended, in the not-yet-alpha state it's in. The game starts in an area of the map which players haven't yet seen and where none of our current quests are set.

This means that there will be fewer quests available at the start but far more mechanics. Pregnancy, followers, and mounts are already in (to name a few).

This will essentially be pre-alpha but UE5 - further along in terms of features.

Option 2

This is what we're currently doing. We don't push UE5 out until it's at Alpha, continuing to update UE4 every month. This means some time on some wasted work and therefore knock-on delays - for example all bug-fixing is irrelevant as it's a different engine. Additionally we'll have to update and detail areas of the map which are not in UE5 (as the map is physically different and more spread out).

The clear benefit here is playable content - everything which is already in will remain from day one and the new quests will be added to this version as well. It does delay the Alpha but that may not be a major concern for you.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

To address the change to the update schedule; we always want to make sure you have a chunky update every month, and we just don't think that's possible if we keep having to salami slice our workload to fit the arbitrary 2 week point. I'm always upfront about things, honest to a fault, and I really believe this is the way to maximise what you get in return for your support.

I'd usually end by thanking you for your support (we really do appreciate it by the way) but instead I want to ask for your honest response. You'll always have the UE4 version to replay content until it's in UE5, but this is the only way we can see to cut the dead weight of a second build.

Team Carnal Instinct