Colony Ship RPG - Release Expectations

In an update for the Colony Ship RPG, Vince mentions the expected release is not to be expected earlier than the end of 2020.

I think we'll need 5 years now that everyone's working full time and has 10 years of experience.

2016 - pre-production. The goal is to have all systems, quests, and locations designed and ready, so that we have a clear blueprint to follow. At the moment Nick, Ivan, and Oscar (programming, models & animations, level design & scripting) are working on the dungeon crawler, so they aren't sitting around waiting for me. Mazin (art) is working on both the crawler and the CSG (colony ship game), with the crawler being a priority at the moment.

2017 - laying the foundation. Once the crawler is released, we'll focus on the CSG. The goal is to get to the content-building stage fast but that's a long journey, requiring the following 3 steps:

• Engine familiarity and systems/tools porting IF using Unreal 4; at least 6 months
• All systems (character, crafting, inventory, dialogue, stealth, combat); probably a year
• Models and animations. AoD has over 500 unique animations, so it's not as simple as it sounds, but we should be able to do it in a year.

So IF everything goes well, we'll have everything we need by mid 2018 and start working on the content. That gives me 2.5 years to develop the setting, factions, quests, characters and party members, which is plenty of time. I'm already working on the main quest and it's shaping up well (good range of choices plus a really great fork in the middle where you can disregard what you've been working on until now - or continue if you still think it's the best option - and change the goal and the endgame scenario and endings). More on that in the future updates.

Our goal will be to deliver a 4-location demo by the end of 2018 and start gathering feedback and tweaking systems, which is a crucial step. I assume it would take us about 6 months to make changes based on the feedback, at which point we'll be ready to move forward once again.

The next step is to get to the Early Access stage, which will require 50% of the content (it's not an actual requirement but we don't want to offer less). I'd say it would take us a year to get there, but if we can do it faster, it's a bonus.

So, Early Access by the end of 2019, release by the end of 2020. So far it looks reasonable but it always does when the finish line is 5 years from now. Either way, we'll keep you posted of our progress and since you now know what to expect and when, you'll be able to tell the moment we get off schedule.

In addition the update also shows a list of system changes that have been made.