SLZ's approach to the MarrowSDK

[GreasedScotsman]

Hey folks. Brandon recently posted the following on Twitter:

"The games that are wanted for VR are obvious to both players and devs. But it’s also obvious that nobody is currently production ready to produce those titles at scale. The Marrow SDK will expedite creation of mods and games alike."

https://twitter.com/BrandonJLa/status/1633197685217058816

We definitely hear people wishing MarrowSDK had more features right now. After Bonelab launched, there were a few options:

Option 1) Make something like the community's "extended" SDK that would still carry with it all kinds of friction and pain points that hinder creativity. For example, there's tons of stuff that was made to function, but in the commotion of trying to get BL out the door, no time could really be spent on documenting it, streamlining the tools, let alone making them ready for public consumption, like providing in-editor helper visualizations and gizmos.

Option 2): We could build and rebuild features from the ground up with both internal and public usage in mind from the outset, make tools that automate away hours of tedium and take the time needed to streamline and document everything, so that when the tools are in your hands, you get to focus on creating amazing stuff, not struggling for hours, say, trying to decipher how to get Zones to work so your map will run at a solid FPS once you have more than a handful of enemies in it.

We chose option 2. Some things only need to be documented and touched up. Others have been ripped out by the roots and what stands in their place is so much more accessible and usable than before.

SLZ also knew the community would be absolutely amazing as they always are... finding ways to leverage and harness features well beyond MarrowSDK's initial offering in the meantime, allowing us to take this better/faster/stronger/from-the-ground-up approach.

Finally, we also have the concern that when we do update the SDK, there's a solid chance a number of the current mods are going to break... and we want to keep that pain and frustration to a minimum... so when we release an update, the intent is for it to be really meaningful and worth any hassle that the community will have to endure as they bring mods current with the new feature set.

I am both proud and beyond excited to see what you all do once a big SDK update finally drops. Please understand that we are not just tinkering around the edges here, and this built-to-last path takes time. We know it will be worth it, and we have no plans to end there... Brandon isn't kidding in that last sentence of his tweet, by the way... :)