A patch note from the team

Hey all,

So we’re finally ready to patch Ether One to v1.0.4! My apologies for such a delay in the patch. We’ve been trying to get it out to you all as soon as we could but we know it’s been awhile so I wanted to explain a little bit about the reason why the process took longer than it has done in the past. Hopefully we have a faster pipeline in place now for future patches so if we broke anything in the process, rest assured we won’t take this long and moving into our next title thing should be much smoother (we hope!).

A big issue for us was finding a stable build of the Unreal Engine to use. We originally shipped Ether One on Unreal Engine 4.8 and since the engine is making massive (and awesome!) improvements with each update. That means that the existing engine code base is also undergoing huge changes. This is the same with any software, but making sure we got the latest optimisation features was important for us. We locked it down to Unreal Engine 4.13 – one of the latest releases. A consideration we have to make is when we change engines, there’s a potential for us to update the SDK’s on the console end, which isn’t an easy process, so making sure PC and console line up in terms of updates is an important consideration.

We also switched programmers mid-way through the process. This was designed to be as smooth transition as we could make it with both programmers working together to figure out the logistics however our new programmer on the project had to get up to speed with previously written code. Any programmer out there will know what a time consuming process this can take and although we didn’t have any huge structural changes to make, we had to be vigilant on any small changes we make so that it didn’t have a knock on effect.

Following on from that point, we only have 1 programmer at the studio. We’re hopefully going to get another team member on board in the new year (if you’re interested in applying follow this link). But since we only have 1 person at the studio, trying to balance our time between bug fixing and also supporting the studio’s future needs with the new game, and other misc tasks they have, can be an extremely hard decision. On the one side we have a game out there which requires support where needed, but we’re also deep in production on the next title to share with you all. We’re trying to make the best use of the studio’s time to doing the most important task, and that sometimes means stopping patch work to support the new game, as ¾ people on the team could be waiting on a specific feature which is a road block stopping our production. We try to work around and delegate these issues where possible but sometimes it requires the programmers full attention for a few days. Our focus is definitely still on our existing community and you guys have spent your hard earned money on our game, and we will always prioritise your support over expanding into new games focusing support on a new customer base, so rest assured we’re always working on anyone’s issues we have reported.

I hope that gives you a better understanding of the process for those curious. We hope people weren’t running into any huge game breaking issues during this process, the forums are a good place to get community feedback. We read these threads as often as we can, however a more direct approach would be to contact us through our website, so that we get the email directly.

We want to thank you all for your generosity and kindness in investing your time and money into our games.

We want to continue to be able to develop more games like these moving forward, so we appreciate the patience whilst we figured out this tricky transition process.

Thanks from all the team,

Pete