Here is some information about what is happening with Shores of Hazeron.
Shores of Hazeron will return to being a monthly fee via PayPal. It's not a top priority at the moment. I don't mind the game being free for a few months, to smooth over the indecisiveness of changing gears, switching to Patreon and back.
There were aspects of Patreon that I really liked. However, in the long run, it is not a practical business strategy to fund expensive servers using donations.
The "ton of work" needed for the Steam release is finished. It has been submitted to Steamworks for their review.
I am approaching Steam with a bit of caution. I'll wait until they are satisfied with the software before posting the two week 'coming soon' announcement. More than anything, that will decide the actual release date on Steam. I'm not in a hurry; would rather fix bugs.
Steam creates a valuable cushion between players who want to try the game and players who like it enough to play on line. Steam could easily produce more players than the servers can handle. Starting out solo, the servers don't have to handle that wave at all.
The servers only have to handle the fraction of the solo players who choose to play on line. By then, income from solo players could pay for an upgrade to the servers.
There are now two game programs:
Hazeron Starship is strictly solo. There is no option to play limited multiplayer with anybody else.
Both programs are built from the same source code. They are exactly identical in every way, except for identifying graphics, and features strictly related to solo play vs on line play. Most project code is in sub projects that build libraries and DLLs. By sharing those objects, the projects to build the final EXEs are quite small, only a few files. That saves a lot of build time.
Each program starts with a page for selecting/creating up to six avatars. In solo play, those six avatars all exist in the same persistent universe. You can switch between them, just like the on line game, even breed them to make highborns and demiavatars.
The universe is generated in exactly the same way as the on line game. It is no smaller in the solo game. All galaxies are present in all dimensions. Details of solar systems and resources are not the same as the on line game, because the seed value for the universe is based on the time of its creation.
The story engine functions in solo just like on line. Targoss will greet your new avatar to show you the ropes. Gagarin will teach you to fly a space rocket. The Relic story starts on cue, though I haven't tested it to the end yet.
It's all there in solo. It looks and feels just like the on line game, except the on screen widget never shows any network activity (the pink and blue thing in the top right corner). I don't know how much you can build before your computer begins to bog down. A little (very little) more work is needed to implement atom manager threads, so that work would be distributed across multiple CPUs.
Hazeron Starship is fully integrated into the build process now; it is part of the family. From now on, Hazeron Starship will evolve and grow and get updates right along with Shores of Hazeron.
Work now is focused on bug fixes and minor improvements that affect all versions, more or less equally. I'd like the Hazeron Starship release to be as bug free as possible; it will get first priority, at least until it is actually released on Steam.
Shores of Hazeron will return to being a monthly fee via PayPal. It's not a top priority at the moment. I don't mind the game being free for a few months, to smooth over the indecisiveness of changing gears, switching to Patreon and back.
There were aspects of Patreon that I really liked. However, in the long run, it is not a practical business strategy to fund expensive servers using donations.
The "ton of work" needed for the Steam release is finished. It has been submitted to Steamworks for their review.
I am approaching Steam with a bit of caution. I'll wait until they are satisfied with the software before posting the two week 'coming soon' announcement. More than anything, that will decide the actual release date on Steam. I'm not in a hurry; would rather fix bugs.
Steam creates a valuable cushion between players who want to try the game and players who like it enough to play on line. Steam could easily produce more players than the servers can handle. Starting out solo, the servers don't have to handle that wave at all.
The servers only have to handle the fraction of the solo players who choose to play on line. By then, income from solo players could pay for an upgrade to the servers.
There are now two game programs:
- Shores of Hazeron is the online MMO game, available exclusively at Hazeron.com. "The MMO Sandbox Universe"
- Hazeron Starship is the solo play game, available exclusively on Steam. "The Sandbox Universe"
Hazeron Starship is strictly solo. There is no option to play limited multiplayer with anybody else.
Both programs are built from the same source code. They are exactly identical in every way, except for identifying graphics, and features strictly related to solo play vs on line play. Most project code is in sub projects that build libraries and DLLs. By sharing those objects, the projects to build the final EXEs are quite small, only a few files. That saves a lot of build time.
Each program starts with a page for selecting/creating up to six avatars. In solo play, those six avatars all exist in the same persistent universe. You can switch between them, just like the on line game, even breed them to make highborns and demiavatars.
The universe is generated in exactly the same way as the on line game. It is no smaller in the solo game. All galaxies are present in all dimensions. Details of solar systems and resources are not the same as the on line game, because the seed value for the universe is based on the time of its creation.
The story engine functions in solo just like on line. Targoss will greet your new avatar to show you the ropes. Gagarin will teach you to fly a space rocket. The Relic story starts on cue, though I haven't tested it to the end yet.
It's all there in solo. It looks and feels just like the on line game, except the on screen widget never shows any network activity (the pink and blue thing in the top right corner). I don't know how much you can build before your computer begins to bog down. A little (very little) more work is needed to implement atom manager threads, so that work would be distributed across multiple CPUs.
Hazeron Starship is fully integrated into the build process now; it is part of the family. From now on, Hazeron Starship will evolve and grow and get updates right along with Shores of Hazeron.
Work now is focused on bug fixes and minor improvements that affect all versions, more or less equally. I'd like the Hazeron Starship release to be as bug free as possible; it will get first priority, at least until it is actually released on Steam.