Alright guys, this project needs a new sense of direction. It’s time to clear the decks and set some concrete goals that are achievable given my current situation.

The Current Situation

• I’m too damn busy… I can probably manage a 2-3 hour devstream on weekday afternoons (on good days) and an hour here and there off-stream
• Godot Engine has a poor sense of direction and their changes WILL break my code faster than I can finish this project and they’re so god damn woke (and that’s putting it politely)
• It’s only a matter of time until I switch to Raylib
• The ~1742 setting is becoming more appealing to me than ~2042
• Halloween is coming up

Immediate Goals

• Promo art for Halloween
  • Eye-popping close-up for devstream thumbnails etc
  • Classic gentleman vampire in a high-collared suit sinking his fangs into a pretty lady’s neck
  • Cyberpunk & Baroque versions
  • Posed scene in game engine
• Music for Halloween - set aside 3rd or 4th weekend in October for recording
• Build a new GAMEPLAY DEMO from scratch
  • Leave out everything that’s a clusterfuck in Godot
    • More code, less of Godot’s lame themes, UI editor, etc
    • No in-editor NPC editing, we don’t need it after all!
    • Nothing fancy with skeletons/animations/etc that Godot devs keep changing
  • Keyboard+mouse only
  • Just one male & one female character model for now
  • Basic animations only - won’t even try to depict feeding
  • Not much character customization
  • Just combat & feeding for now - later we’ll re-integrate dialogue, quests, sorcery, etc
  • First-person or Third-person only, not both

Big Picture / Long Range Goals

• Multiple Demos
  • Gameplay demo - in the 1742 setting to keep it focused on vampirism (not technology)
  • Graphics demo(s) with full character customization and examples of more ambitious art/graphics/vfx which may require more time/money to do at full-game scale
  • Sandbox tests if interesting to share
  • Raylib engine prototypes (including a revamped turnbased engine)
• Development Discipline
  • Move all fancy/experimental stuff from old main game to sandbox projects
  • Make stripped-down versions of messy parts
  • Develop new features in sandboxes, test, polish, and then integrate into demo
  • Favor Raylib/etc over Godot
  • Use Godot for rough prototypes (especially using builtin Godot features not yet implemented in custom engine) and for comparison to Raylib prototypes
• Chronological release order?
  • Synthnostate 1742
  • possible sequel in the same era
  • Synthnostate 1942 - if we want to go there lol
  • Synthnostate 2014 a/k/a Crusaders - the turnbased RPG
  • Synthnostate 2042 - maybe 2142 if we don’t get to it until the 2030s - or depending how the future unfolds, maybe we’ll make it current-year like The Thing or a recent-past setting like Bloodlines