Development Update - December 6th, 2019

Infinaron

He Who Manages
Mane6 Developer
May 30, 2017
38
148
35
Rockville, MD - USA
During last week’s ManeCast stream, we showed off our current progress on level 3 supers. Visuals, sound, and balance are still very much a WIP, but now you know what they are, how they work, and what plans we have to spice them up even further.

There’s something important we need to discuss, and if you’ve already watched the stream, you know what it is.

Version 1.0 (and Story Mode) will not be ready before the end of 2019. No matter how you slice it, we need more time in Early Access.

When I first joined this project exactly one year ago, I had four years of game development experience under my belt, but none in project management. I joined the team because the developers were personal friends of mine and I saw an opportunity to help them succeed.

The moment I started working I hit the ground running with some big changes: I opened things up, improved the systems they used to track tasks and share files, and started making plans for the future. That included an estimate for 1.0: Summer of 2019. But the realities of game development set in, and suffice to say, it became clear that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Good work takes time, and missed predictions damage the trust you’ve all put into us, so from now on, we’ll only be providing estimates when we’re perfectly sure we can make the deadline. As in, it’s done and we’re just performing final checks. The next time we announce a release date for 1.0, that’s it, barring any sort of interference from a cosmic entity. That will mean fewer (or no) estimates overall, but there will be more certainty when we do set dates.

Two major features for 1.0 remain: Level 3 Supers and Chapter 1 of Story Mode, both of which are getting all our focus and are a good ways along already. This team has come a long way since 2011. The Early Access build of TFH has received 23 updates and counting.

We’ll keep providing steady game updates, streams, and local event appearances so there’s always something going on. Meanwhile, we ask for your continued patience as we work on the big stuff. More is on the way.
 

SmokeRulz

Where there is smoke, there is fire!
Backers' Beta Tester
Feb 3, 2016
356
525
We love you guys. <3 Keep up the hard work! Deciding not to try and constrain yourself to dates is going to work out better in the long run. Take your time and make it as awesome as possible.
 

gatorafan

HOLAS: (tm)
Backers' Beta Tester
Feb 3, 2016
238
567
Ship02: Ur
nightarks.enjin.com
Maybe it's just me, but way back then when you guys announced the story would be episodic (and 1.0 would only have chapter one) I had some pretty low expectations. I mean, what can you expect from episode 1? Introduce characters, go to maybe from one point A to point B to point C? Have a bossfight at the end and close it in lets say, 3 (exaggerating 4) solid hours worth of playtime (and that's for the people who must speak to every NPC multiple times, search for every door and pressing the interaction button with every single sprite in each zone). What else can there be? The happenings won't happen until the mid point at the very least. The twists and revelaia-tons won't occur until the end. How many contents can there be?

From the way it was worded last stream I'll admit it's getting a tad harder to keep things in the reasonable scale. So looking forward to that.


As for the delay? Eh. I guess one of the benefits of being an indie, cartoonish, quadrupled, anime-ish, fighting game (a niche within a niche within a niche one might say) is that the game is far away from the judging eyes of the general crowd, it can allow itself to lay low and take things in a reasonable non-crunchy way and eventually release at the right time, and one can have the confidence of that when it happens it'll blow expectations away. You've certainly did it to me, many times as a matter of fact. So no hard feelings besides that initial burst of disappointment one gets when the news break out. Also, I'm not sure if this is a bad or a good thing, but at this point in time (closing to two years after the original release date), I've kinda gotten numb to this kind of announcements. . -.


Anyway, to close I also gotta say that while I was being a jerk on Twitch chat, someone else correctly pointed out that even with these last delay, the work you guys put in the last months (right around the time Aaron joined) should not go underappreciated, you got the game to so many places and started to talk to us non-Discord users when I was thinking the team was falling back to old habits. So that's very appreciated, and I can't thank Aaron (and the rest of the team) enough for that.


tl;dr: kinda sad but expected, still love you guys, looking really forward to story mode now, and thanks for keeping us up to date.
 

Infinaron

He Who Manages
Mane6 Developer
May 30, 2017
38
148
35
Rockville, MD - USA
Thanks, I appreciate your words. We're very much looking forward to Story Mode too, but we don't want to rush it.

We haven't been showing a whole lot yet, just the basics, so it's difficult for players to imagine what to expect. Also, we've described our Story Mode release schedule as "episodic". I admit that doesn't entirely describe our intentions. When you hear the word "episode" in storytelling that could mean a small section of a large story or a self-contained narrative within an overarching series. We're doing a little bit of both.

Being careful to avoid spoilers, we intend for each episode to have a clear beginning, middle, and end that will leave players satisfied with a complete story arc within each chapter while adding to the larger plot along the way. Each chapter focuses on only one character at a time and that character's personal journey. There will be plenty of interesting plot in each section in addition to the whole arc.

Each chapter also has quite a bit of unique content. We've got story-only music and art, minigames, and special fights to accompany the narrative.

Hope this helps frame things a little better. Thanks for bearing with us. We'll show more when we can.
 
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