2023-09-06 update: Our plans for the future

Hi folks,

Just making this post to keep you folks updated on what’s been going on, as well as what we will be working on for the next few months.

A very exciting change of plan

At the moment, we have 2 more videos planned for our YouTube tutorial series:

• Part 10 of Creating a Metroidvania (like Hollow Knight) in Unity, where we cover how to code a boss character for your game.
• Part 21 of Creating a Farming RPG (like Harvest Moon) in Unity, where we wrap up everything that we have been leaving hanging in the series.

Once that is done, we will be moving on to creating content in a different manner. Instead of continuing to release tutorial series videos on YouTube, we will be shifting over to creating project files that our viewers will be able to download and modify to get a game of their own.

How will this work? To put it simply, take our Vampire Survivors series for example — instead of continuing to release more parts of the Vampire Survivors series, we will focus on creating a set of codes in Unity that anyone can download to use as a base for creating a rogue-like that is similar to Vampire Survivors. If you have used modding tools for existing games before (such as Warcraft III’s World Editor), that will be what we are aiming for with each of our codebases — a tool where you can easily modify the various parameters of a given game (such as abilities, skills, spawn patterns, items, character growth, weapon growth etc.).

We will continue to create content on Youtube. Our YouTube videos, instead of being focused on showing how to code things from scratch, will talk about how to use our project files, as well as explain how / why certain parts of the codebase are coded the way they are. We will also be doing coding streams on YouTube when we are working on the codes, so you can hop in and see us work / ask us questions!

Our Patreon will remain up, as we will need your support more than ever during this period of transition. Our vision is for a vanilla version of the codebase to be accessible to everyone, but Patrons will get access to more functionality (e.g. our Vampire Survivors codebase will contain functionality for creating weapons, but only Patrons will get access to code on weapon evolution). When we are finished making this transition, our Patrons who supported us during this period will get awarded a unique, limited-time badge for their support.

Why this change?

We have decided on this after much deliberation of our current content creation strategy. Simply put, we’ve decided that this new format allows us to 1) teach coding better and 2) make more accessible codebases for people who just want to make their own games.

• Modding (i.e. working on an existing codebase to get what you want) is a great and very quick way to learn coding. While it is arguable a bit more challenging, it is also a hell lot more exciting. I personally learnt my coding from creating Warcraft III and DotA mods, and not from the classroom, where things can get very boring and dry!
• We will be able to focus on creating a great codebase that is more robust and bug-free, so you can use it to create better games. When we are creating content in our current format, it takes us an astronomical amount of time and effort to create the tutorial articles and videos. To help keep the amount of content manageable and easily-understandable, we’ve had to use simpler methods of coding that is more easy to explain. This unfortunately, creates problems for our codebase in the long run, because simpler ways of coding are not always the best when scalability is a concern for the project.
• It is a better way of making us profitable in the long run. I know the purists among you will not like to hear this, but we also need to keep ourselves fed and housed. We haven’t evolved the ability to survive on sunlight and dew like the yogis from India yet.

YouTube video coming soon to address this

I will be making a YouTube video very soon (hopefully before the following week starts, but latest by the end of next week), addressing and elaborating on the points above.

What to expect from us

Currently, we are planning to polish up our Vampire Survivors codebase tremendously. Content-wise, we will be releasing a coding stream for Vampire Survivors sometime between the 3rd and 4th week of September. Keep your eyes peeled on our announcements here and on YouTube for more information!

Miscellaneous

In lieu of our plans for the future, we have also updated our Supporting Us page with details of what Patrons get if they support us. We’ve had a few Patrons quit previously because the benefits for supporting us weren’t clear, and they felt cheated because of that. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen anymore.

We have also added a new Iron Tier on Patreon, for those of you who simply want to support us, but are unable to afford the Bronze Tier! If you are a Patron, we will put extra priority onto responding to your questions on these forums, so the Iron tier is a way for Patrons to get easier access to that.