If the issue of Unity merging with IronSource seemed exaggerated, Well, I wasn't entirely wrong for Unity's next movement.
Since September 12, 2023, it was announced that by when 2024 begins, the new payment system would be implemented once the minimum thresold of $200,000 or 200,000 installations was reached. (Link to the cited source: gamefromscratch.com/unity-announce-new-pricing-and-plan-changes/) It may seem very generous of it to leave free use before reaching that new minimum thresould, but the problem is that afterward to reach the limit (Which fortunately we haven't gotten to yet, like most projects), it starts charging $0.20 per installation monthy (if you use Unity Personal), and to delay such taxes, it must subscribe to Pro, since the limit is 1,000.000, and the taxes are lower. But it's even squeaky that the Enterprise tier has exactly the same limits as the Pro (No longer unlimited nor yet to reach 5 million), but only with small differences in fee prices. That means that if once the game reaches 200,000 installations plus 10,000 additional downloads in the first month, I have to pay them $2,000 for extra game downloads, and so on each month, although it will affect free-to-play games with constant updates more than single-sale games (which stop selling as much as the months go by). Even so, it is still one more reason for not wanting to make a successful commercial game based on said engine. Another thing that can be quite annoying, and that arrives earlier in November, is that you must always be connected to the Internet to use Unity. If I lose my connection, and it lasts more than 3 days, I can't longer use Unity offline, which is another reason to cancel a project (Let's see if it is only for modern versions of Unity or the Hub after v3.0). With everything already explained, I think I'm starting to understand why I'm no longer enjoying the Randy & Manilla development, with a very slow rhythm and low performance. If it isn't my own mistakes that entail failure, then it's the engine itself that betrays. With under these new measures, the game is "definitely" not viable for commercial use and popularization (specially due to its nature). In the best case scenario, maybe I continue with the model of publishing almost annual updates for free (Given what I learned from the failures on Kickstarter and Indiegogo). For now I will leave the project on hold until the situation changes. In the meantime I will do tests with Flax and Godot to see if it is viable to port or reboot the game under such engines. But there is no doubt that the head behind the engine, will continue without problems with these practices regardless of the strikes and mass protests that could arise (Something that politics has proven to be an expert in completely ignoring the protests of millions by wanting to approve bad laws). In the worst case scenario, if even worse changes are coming for the engine, or if moving the project to other engines is too complicated, we will have no choice but to cancel Randy & Manilla permanently (But not before with a last free update as farewell). Anyway, many thanks for all the support you have given in the project, if the situation improves a little, maybe continue more calmly.
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Very soon I'll be on vacation, by 4th time. Therefore, the Randy & Manilla development will go on pause again until shortly after mid-August. Anyway, have a good summer ;).
The Quantum Patron Tier has already a 7-day free trial.
More than enough time to see at least all the exclusive advances that it offers to date. If you want to see how advances will be added in the future, the tier would have to keep. Let's see on Patreon: A new victory theme have just been leaked to confirm the appearance of Randy & Manilla for the next Super Smash Bros. coming out for the next Nintendo Switch! P.D: It's just a joke. Happy April Fools day. Important Warning!: The Randy & Manilla development will be disrupted by a battery change for the PC (Laptop) in which it takes place. That is because the other battery is consumed in a very short time after recharging it if it isn't connected under any power source (and the game consume a lot).
The factors can be highly execution dependent when it comes time to replace: It could only take a few hours or minutes in the best case, or if the battery model is wrong or the PC is already very old, it could lead to severe delays or even the cancellation. So I will be very careful that said replacement can maintain the PC for a enough time amount to be able to finish the project. Great News! Again, Randy & Manilla has been selected to be featured on the Valencia Indie Summit, but from 2023.
It is on the list of the 50 finalists of that event. The presentation will take place sometime on March 2 (or 4). (Watch in the finalists list): http://valenciaindiesummit.com/awards.html
That Randy & Manilla return to the top 100 for the third time is not a pleasant surprise, but that Manilla in Pocket Wonder also appears nominated is something that wasn't expected. We are witnessing something unprecedented, a couple of games related to the Randy & Manilla universe have reached the top 100 of the Indie of the Year 2022 (IOTY 2022).
From the case of Manilla in Pocket Wonder, that makes it the first game created with Pocket Platformer to be nominated at an IOTY (or any game awards event).
It's a double pride for me, a double nomination, I didn't expect what would happen.
I give big thanks to everyone who has watched and who has taken the project very far. Since his debut in 2019, it was always present that there is a great opportunity like this, but now it must walk the hardest path of all (complete the development of the game).
If you are interested in this projects, I leave a download & play links from both games:
Randy & Manilla: Back this game on Indiegogo: igg.me/at/randyandmanilla/x/22731077#/ Manilla in Pocket Wonder: Play online: Or download the webpack: After 3 years to the previous campaign, Randy & Manilla returns in a new and revamped campaign on Indiegogo, with all improvements applied so far. As a curiosity If you have noticed something new in the trailer, it is that another character face has been revealed that will join the game cast: Blue Quantáramo, the Mayor and Commander of Quantum City. He is responsible to send the alert message to E-Mailer about the threat of Cracksom Virus to Randy and Manilla. Surely they will have seen him from behind when starting the game from the 2nd beta.
Many thanks Sk_Alkoyaj for his great work. I also thank all the people who have followed me for all the advances and improvements of the Randy & Manilla game, and I hope that with this the final vision of my project is fulfilled. If you like this campaign but you don't want or you can't to contribute to it, don't forget to share the next link: Back this project on Indiegogo: https://igg.me/at/randyandmanilla/x/22731077#/ After the release of 2nd beta and its marketing spend, my development rhythm is slower and more constrained than ever. That's why I'm thinking of doing a campaign on Indiegogo again as a last resort in order to complete the game: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/randy-manilla-two-bros-in-a-multi-genre-travel/coming_soon/x/22731077 For those who don't know, my first campaign attempt on said page was in 2019, and it only achieved 3% of its goal with the help of my parents & neighbours: www.indiegogo.com/projects/randy-manilla-two-brothers-in-a-quantum-travel/x/22731077#/
Despite this, it was a good help for the project to reach its current state, but not enough to finish it. I would appreciate it if you would spread the word to support the project as much as possible to take it to the next level. Don't forget to share it to your communities.
Months before, with the Early Beta, we thought it was decent enough to be the last demo.
However, after several reports with bugs regarding jumps, camera, etc. I realized that I was wrong. Although in the previous beta it polished many details, it also left many others to polish (and the worst thing is that they were even important parts) That's why for this 2nd Beta, There has been a lot of focus on trying to polish all the details we could find and less on adding new levels. And as always, start with the first in the list with the graphic upgrade:
Again, the Net-Cubes have changed their textures a bit. Those that aren't part of the selectables, have clear edges that distinguish a little better than those that are. And also its colors are somewhat less saturated.
The same for the E-Mailer's ship, which has another slight but not insignificant model redesign and an improvement in lighting.
Seen from inside, it can see that the light from the windows and visor hits it, and you can also see normal maps, especially in the seats, that already have a second texture apart.
And even Manilla has a new hair look. She looks like more cute with that.
In the first Terra-Qubit levels, they had a very 3D land/world style fixed camera because that was the original idea for these levels. But there were sections that were poorly designed, such as the routes that was only shown while the character was walking directly towards the camera,which for a sidescroller platform game, hinders the gaming experience and comes to unexpected things suddenly.
That is why the camera of the first levels has been changed to a more manageable and similar to the one in the hub or in the later levels. As well as the structure that surrounds the routes was also redesigned in favor of the new camera.
If you go to the pause menu, you will see that the icons of the qdatas that were collected, are numbered with roman numerals to indicate the order that they were collected in each Net-Cube. They have also become buttons on the pause menu to show a preview of the qdata picture from the already obtained, and it disappears so that later it shows the other one.
The list of all other updates and improvements is somewhat longer than in previous articles, so it will be better to list them by numbers and order them from generals to from each specific Net-Cube:
1. 6 new soundtracks & two recompositions made by Marcus Wood, Kaaliu, Gamelody & Michael Martel 2. Added 4 more stages (include one boss) 3. Small improvements on the UI buttons 4. Ship controls for keyborad & gamepad are now by default 5. Camera drift in gamepads are now fixed (at least from Xbox One) 6. The characters has greater mobility through the air while performing the jump in 3D levels 7. Fixed harsh brakes when jumping (only if while the HP is greater than 1) 8. Redesigns in certain parts of the levels 9. The max score is slightly lower for levels that require it 10. better handling of sorting layers 11. Added a button indication for fast text in the dialogs 12. More polished details 13. Samuel Domínguez Cañete as Randy Qubit 14. The button for Randy punches can be pressed twice to perform combos 15. The checkpoints are now healing points 16. When a character into the void, it returns to the near position before the fall. But it loses one HP 17. A red fading was added if a character die 18. Buttons have been swapped between jump and fire/kick in gamepads Terra-Qubit: 19. The net-points for the objective from level 1-4, has been changed by corrupt bricks 20. The Golembrick Boss HP reduced from 50 to 40 Gamezone Cube: 21. Both Randy and Manilla as NPCs will stop following the player for then go towards the arcade controls as they get closer Rol & Rogue: 22. Randy can give up to 2 hits with double punch 23. The HP from many enemies it has been reduced 24. Enemies can no longer do burst attacks (specially with Manilla) 25. Manilla no longer takes damage while an enemy is spinning from very close distanse 26. To each battle, the icons of the attack buttons appear
With so many details added and improved for this version, maybe it can make a difference compared to the previous version.
I hope that this version, despite its problems, is good enough to consider it as the definitive demo before putting a price on the final and complete version. It has been a great honor to develop this project since I started showing it in 2019, and also thanks to a great collaboration of people from many parts of the world.
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