MILESTONE: The Road Ahead

An Alectrosaurus mother stands guard around her nest in the Flaming Cliffs

DINODRIFTERS is now fully in private beta.

Currently, I am testing the game and making tweaks and small alterations to improve everything. Performance, graphics, balance, among other things.

All features outlined from the beginning are present and working well!

The timeline to come is as follows:

July will be all about tweaks, quality-of-life improvements and bug-squashing. The beta will be in private beta during this time. I need to record some voices for use in the text-to-speech system and perhaps tweak it a bit.

August will be big.

In August, DINODRIFTERS will begin to move towards release. There are additional things I know I can do to make DINODRIFTERS even greater. See here for details. More areas, more features and even more story. However... time is running out. It would take months of additional development to do everything I want to do. Not need, per se. Want. I'd want to add more dinosaurs. More areas. But as I am right now, I cannot.

However, the game is complete in the scope I iterated over a year and a half ago. It's my ambition that says I need to do more, but I am only human and reality is sometimes not what we want it to be.

Therefore, in order to develop past August, I would need to secure support.

While I always envisioned a straight release at the end of my timeline, I'm starting to consider the possibility of creating a either a Kickstarter or an Indiegogo to support an additional few months of development.

Subject to change!

There are several great boons to this idea:

• The bulk of the game is already done. Backers would be able to play the game from the beginning and see more features and maps and dinosaurs as they're added!
• Because of the amount of development already done, it means that I would not require much. Around $5000, including fees. Smaller than average and with a smaller timescale and sooner delivery date.
• It would provide the funds and resources needed to continue development post-August, up to January at least.
• It would allow me to hire individuals to create music for DINODRIFTERS. I lack the skills to compose. I tried several times, but it is beyond me! However, I have several people in mind whose style would fit the setting and ambience of the game.
• No promises, but if such a campaign is successful and drums up enough support, I'd think about creating ports of DINODRIFTERS after upgrading to GM2. I do not know how long it would take, but it would be possible to create Mac and Ubuntu ports easily and due to how DINODRIFTERS is designed, even Android and other tablets would work perfectly given enough time to make the change.

That's the plan I have in mind at the moment. For the next month, development will continue as normal and I'll announce the concrete plan by the end of July.

Until next time!

- Jane