Hard Promises - Project Update

THANK YOU! For your patience, your genuine interest and faith in Feudums - and for still occasionally checking in for an update month after month.

It has been a long time since we last provided an official update. While I'm not particularly proud of the long hiatus - and that's a real understatement - the good news is that there is now an agreement between all the affected parties. So after a [very] long [and sometimes nerve-racking!] trip, the take-away is: Feudums continues

That mere statement probably brings less excitement to you than it has brought to us - but consider it as a next step in the project's evolution: we were stuck, but instead of dying out - as the odds predicted - Feudums survives and evolves to the next level. Uhm ... and hopefully not into some kind of mutated monster that should have died instead. But you'll be judge of that in the months to come!

As part of our "Transparency Protocol," below is a short FAQ for anyone interested in the details. But fear not, if you don't care about the details yet: project progress reports will be regularly delivered through this site by our key members, so you won't miss any important updates about the game or when it is once again open to players (we're working on it already!).

 

THE MonSter'S Status FAQ

So - What does our beloved monster look like?

As of effective since January 30, 2017,  Feudums and 2 Pence Limited parted ways peacefully. This means two things at once: I'm back at the helm of my project and 2 Pence is no longer the developer behind the game - instead, a new group is being incorporated, consisting both of old Feudums team members and newcomers alike. In this assemble, I'll dive much deeper into actually coding the game and have direct control over the development while also retaining my original tasks. Hopefully, my wife and sons will start speaking to me again at some point!

We'll introduce the team shortly, so you can see the actual people behind the game, and we'll have a damn good reason to be more well-advised on our promises. ;)

The Dragon, Kalamona Brings the Winds of Change

What is also going to happen is that Feudums becomes more indie - something we felt was slowly being lost in the master plan of the past era. Feudums will be up close & personal - we won't go into hiding between releases, but we'll post about our tasks, progress, ideas, and yes - even our bad days regularly, because we think we can kill two birds with one stone: you'll see what we're doing, and by getting into conversations, you can keep us motivated and inspired. So pretty please, keep throwing ideas and feedback into our face.

Cool. Now will you set the servers back online, please?

Unfortunately, no. Not yet. We've experienced way too many issues and limitations with the server and we couldn't agree on the support conditions of the platform, so with a honest intention to provide a reliable solution for the project, we had to restart coding the servers. This also affected the communication modules of the client and since we also had a few quite annoying technical limitations on client side, especially with the map engine, we ... well, if you're reading this on a handheld, please sit down, in either case, take a deep breath... we pretty much restarted all the coding work from scratch.

On the glass half full side, don't forget that we've had like 7 months since the project halted, and our project assets were stuck in a legal limbo, so we had a lot of motivation - and time - to start coding a completely independent solution for both, looking for a headstart for when the project was ready to be continued. So we're not in the first steps of these tasks. In fact, I intend to show some of our new codes' new capabilities in the coming weeks.

Really, given the money and time spent on the previous era codes, If we had seen a better option, be assured we'd have taken that route.

We need a Plan!

When we'll get something?

I can't make promises yet. I know that time is important and waiting too long can kill the project, but rushing ahead without a solid foundation of the codebase - like we did the first time - can bring a devastating effect too, and I, or the team really don't wish to re-start the project a third time. Really, it would be just as utterly sadistic to you as masochistic to us. 

Instead, I want to keep you in the loop about the progress for real. We have our initial modules to work on, and we certainly have some requirements we need to fulfill before we could be flexible on the "what's next" question. Nevertheless, we'll discuss these "required" components too, but it's far more interesting that by having people & resources secured for the project and being able to go flexible after the initial phase, we want to start conversations early, on the priorities and exact content of the modules to come. This is another great motivation for us for providing continuous progress reports - you need the information to make thoughtful decisions.

So what we can do for now?

Unfortunately, you can't play the game yet. But you can keep asking for updates, throwing ideas and feedback at us or simply discuss any related thing. Since we're practically implementing a new code base, it's the perfect time to suggest changes in anything you've seen and maybe weren't pleased with so far. Keep up with our progress so you can shift development to the direction you want.  We're all ears. We must be!

You can also tell everyone that we're back in town. The more people sitting on our neck and chanting for a playable version - the more motivated we'll be. I'm not kidding. Sitting in front of a PC and coding all day and night is depletive. But doing it to prevent an uprising and ever-growing mass? That's what I call inspiring. ;)

For questions, please be encouraged to post it under this article as a comment or on the forum (comments posted under this article will be also answered in a forum topic). We'll answer everything.