I DIDN’T UPDATE FOR MONTHS YET SO MANY EXCITING THINGS HAPPENED! “=-=
Funding
I got MORE FUNDING! I learnt about this news months before it went public, but in mid-March it was announced that Management In Space was one of many fortunate projects to receive Screen Australia’s ‘Games Production Fund’! This support will give me enough funds to cover most of the production for 2025, which has meant I’ve been able to work on MIS full-time this year! This is also why I wasn’t able to do much actual dev work in January and February, as I was busy getting the legal and accounting stuff sorted! It was a lot of work to get it all done because this is the first project to receive both grants from Screen Australia, which also means I’ve gotta buckle-down and make everyone proud! >:3 I’m still on the hunt for a publisher though to help not only cover the remaining 2 years of production, but also assist with marketing and distribution.
You can read more about the announcement [here]!
Game Developer Conference
I must be doing something right, because at the same time the news broke about getting the grant, I was also awarded a travel grant from Screen NSW to travel to San Fransisco and attend GDC in mid-March! It was a very last-minute trip, but I was fortunately supported by so many incredible people who were all welcoming and helpful in making my journey a fantastic one! I was lucky enough to get invited to present MIS at the Australian Showcase while there, as well as meet dozens of talented people whom I now call friends! I was also able to attend well over a dozen talks and learn so much (I have half a book full of notes now)! The entire experience was a blur of excitement and passion!
ALT Games
Upon getting back from my trip, I had not-even a fortnight to prepare to talk at a new local games festival ALT Games! I, and half a dozen other indie-devs, were invited to talk about our projects and pitch them to talented developer Daniel Mullins. It was a fantastic talk (though I was still somewhat jet-lagged haha!) and it felt fantastic to be discussing my work. Despite the scope of this game, everything Mullins asked me and spoke about felt professional and encouraging, and it really helped inspire me and my work. In addition, I was able to check out all the amazing local talent that was on display at the festival as well as catch-up with so many wonderful people.
Actual Game-Dev
So as you can tell, it’s been a busy few months, but with the business stuff settled and my travels complete I’ve now been able to find plenty of time to actually work on proper game-dev! To bring you up to speed; MIS is being rebuilt from the ground up in Godot. The reason for the rebuild is that the prototype was a rushed experiment whose purpose was to show off a fancy vertical slice. While I have copied over chunks of code for re-purposing, most of the code is being totally redone in a way that is more open-ended and allows for more “systemic stacking”; systems talking to systems over and over in ways that encourage all sorts of behaviour and outcomes. This is also to help build the game in a way that allows modding in the future; a game of this nature should encourage community involvement and creativity, and I want that to be part of this project’s mindset from day one.
The reason I’ve swapped over to Godot is that the environment is less cluttered that Unity’s; all the features in Unity are fantastic for many projects, but I want to build and control many of those systems directly, and Godot is better at allowing. Additionally, to further encourage the modding community, I would love to release the game to open-source (where everyone can judge my terrible code hahaha) when I believe I am done with it. Finally, with Godot 4.0+, it is now even easier to work in C#, the language I’m most comfortable with. Ultimately it felt like an easy call to make, and one I have been very happy with so far. Although I’ve worked with Godot in the past, I spent the first few months of this year learning more and more about the engine before finally starting work on the main build of MIS. While there isn’t anything fancy to show-off just yet, I am already really proud of the progress I’ve made with the project. I learnt a lot of lessons from the prototype and the player’s responses to it, and I know that I’m already on the correct path to do this game justice.
Conclusion
Okay well that is it from me today! I’m going to try to be more frequent in my updating, but rest assured I am still working super hard and loving every moment of it. I hope you are all being wonderful and kind to one-another, particularly during these trying times, and till next time, all the best~!
^^