Development and Future of Flyout

[GoodGuyJohn]

I want to preface this by saying I love this game, and I want to see it become the best aviation-sim out there, but I just don't see it happening with how things are going.

While I fully understand this is made by a single person with other things to do, a project of this scope will never reach it's potential with a single dev. In all honesty, it has been updated too infrequently and the updates have added too few new features for it to keep current players interested and to attract new players.

The last update has been more than six months ago, and I totally understand why, it is difficult to make things like this work, but at the same time, this game will unfortunately die if it isn't updated enough, and the only real path for survival of this game is to get more devs so the game reaches a more playable state and becomes what the developer wants.

Ultimately, I want this game to be what it wants to be, but the way things are right now, even though entirely comprehensible, will lead to it not being that. We all see the amount of people interested in it, but who are wary of this being abandonware, and this is not a good sign for a game's development cycle. While yes, some games survive being on alpha for years, like 7 Days to Die and DayZ, these games at least get rather frequent updates, and if not, at least the developers keep the community in the loop of what's happening. And the sad reality is that Flyout simply doesn't do either. And like I said prior, the only real way this project doesn't die is for the developer to bring more hands on deck, and while that is a significant investment, it might be the only way this game currently has to not die.

[Korvoid]

I think communication is a bigger problem, if you look at similar early access projects; Like Sprocket or Naval Art (tank and battleship builder respectively), the (major) update schedule is about the same and they are a both single dev.

I think at this point communication is more the problem, Stone (the Dev) is quiet and doesn't get particularly involved in conversations here) and isn't particularly active in the discord for the moment (may be more down to the time of year tbf; as he works another job as well), there isn't really a road map (there sort of is is but it's only on the storepage, and it's out of date, abstract, unordered and untimed).

like there is more coming (according to stones last post on the matter almost 3 months ago mind you, VTOL jets and Enemy AI should be coming soon), but that's not something particularly publically visible and again there's no time frame (that was 3 months ago XD),

[ProgramTheta]

Bringing more devs into a project isn't the force multiplier you might think. Things get real complicated real fast. All sorts of issues immediately arise that bog things down, related to getting them up to speed with all the work that's already been done and how everything works in the game, division of labor and responsibilities, paying the new devs, and all too often I've seen projects with years of work in them destroyed by infighting among a small dev team over petty drama. Hell is other people.

I agree that there should be more communcation about what is being worked on and the direction of the game. At least then people wouldn't have to dig through the discord logs for Stone's messages to be able to figure out on their own that the game hasn't been totally abandoned.

I think, and my opinion is the same for Sprocket, that the game really needs more dynamic activities to do with the vehicles that are designed for it to stay engaging, and with both games the dev is focusing all on the designer. I get it, designing is the main point of the game, but if there isn't much to do with the vehicles once you design them, you may as well just play with a 3D modelling/CAD software instead. Small-scale multiplayer lobbies would probably allow the game's community to sustain itself for quite a long time even in the face of slow development. So many options open up that way.

[HotDog]

We're working on the communication part of things, mod team is putting pressure on Stone to be more active, even if there's no news to share. There should be an update being pushed soon, if I had to guess (don't hold me to this) it will show up within a month, but the last we heard from him was towards the end of December saying the next update should be ready for testing "soon". If there's any news to share, I'll be sure to post it here as well.

[Korvoid]

Originally posted by HotDog:

We're working on the communication part of things, mod team is putting pressure on Stone to be more active, even if there's no news to share. There should be an update being pushed soon, if I had to guess (don't hold me to this) it will show up within a month, but the last we heard from him was towards the end of December saying the next update should be ready for testing "soon". If there's any news to share, I'll be sure to post it here as well.

Oh awesome that's good to know, I'm glad the mods, are putting some pressure on, I don't mind stone being quiet, but I think for the games community more would be better and from what I can see on the discord it's been 3 months (and two days) since stone last made a post on the discord, which is perhaps a little long, (not that I really blame him, if I ever get around to making a game, I will be equally crap at communicating about it, probably XD)

[Jamei]

I hope there will be sommething about wing aerodynamics licke induced drag.

[Korvoid]

Induced and Parasitic drag is already calculated, as is ground effect I believe , in the case of the former, their listed in the wings stats during flight (if you right click on any non-fuel tank wing you can see the some stat's based on drag for that section of wing).
there is a limit to what can be sensibly be implemented in a game however, so there is a limit to what can reasonably be implemented with aerodynamics; doing real time airflow simulation for example would be very computationally complicated, and be impossible in flight in flyout for most computers (probably; I'm a programmer with some experience doing that kind of thing, but I've not actually played with it before so I can't say definitively, but given that Flyout uses unity and how unity tends to work, I'd say it's a solid guess)

[Sweetwater]

Originally posted by Korvoid:

(not that I really blame him, if I ever get around to making a game, I will be equally crap at communicating about it, probably XD)

I would argue that it requires some form of commitment to have such a huge lack of *any* information posted. I'd guess that one or more of the following are happening:
- Stone's IRL job is making him unable to pay attention to the game at all
- Stone had some form of a tragedy in his life that has left this game out of his priorities
- Stone does not care about the game anymore
- Stone does care about the game, but is actively resisting the community's requests for more information about progress.

[Sweetwater]

Originally posted by HotDog:

We're working on the communication part of things, mod team is putting pressure on Stone to be more active, even if there's no news to share. There should be an update being pushed soon, if I had to guess (don't hold me to this) it will show up within a month, but the last we heard from him was towards the end of December saying the next update should be ready for testing "soon". If there's any news to share, I'll be sure to post it here as well.

This conversation must have been really high up in the server channels, even beyond the janitor channels. It's really unfortunate that he told only you guys this, yet did not make any form of public announcement of at least "hey, the game is still being worked on, expect more news soon." Thanks for sharing it here.

[Korvoid]

Originally posted by Sweetwater:

Originally posted by Korvoid:

(not that I really blame him, if I ever get around to making a game, I will be equally crap at communicating about it, probably XD)

I would argue that it requires some form of commitment to have such a huge lack of *any* information posted. I'd guess that one or more of the following are happening:
- Stone's IRL job is making him unable to pay attention to the game at all
- Stone had some form of a tragedy in his life that has left this game out of his priorities
- Stone does not care about the game anymore
- Stone does care about the game, but is actively resisting the community's requests for more information about progress.

I'd be inclined to disagree, as not communicating takes 0 effort, communicating takes effort it could be that IRL commitments have taken over, or any of the things you've listed, it could be a lot of things, it's a bit hard to say.

from what I can tell him being quite for 4+ months on the public end of things is unusual, but he's never been stupidly active either, it might just be that he's had nothing new to share (which is not to say progress hasn't been made), and nothing on the discord has caught his attention.

[Sweetwater]

Originally posted by Korvoid:

I'd be inclined to disagree, as not communicating takes 0 effort, communicating takes effort

As HotDog implied above, Stone has been made aware by the Discord mods (probably multiple times) that he's shooting himself in the foot by not saying anything whatsoever. At that point it's a matter of actively avoiding saying anything to the community.

[Korvoid]

Originally posted by Sweetwater:

Originally posted by Korvoid:

I'd be inclined to disagree, as not communicating takes 0 effort, communicating takes effort

As HotDog implied above, Stone has been made aware by the Discord mods (probably multiple times) that he's shooting himself in the foot by not saying anything whatsoever. At that point it's a matter of actively avoiding saying anything to the community.

Or it could be procrastinating, writer's block, anxiety/shyness, lack of time etc.

my point is your assigning motive where there may well not be one, I doubt stone wants to be silent in the community so much as other things IRL, mental or otherwise getting in the way, and up until relatively recently (up until about September) he had been relatively active on the discord, it's unlikely he's simply decided to avoid the community now