ERK Games

Great news! We'll check the release as soon as it's available. We really hope that now that you've done a great job implementing the Flowgraph editor, you'll soon start working on realization a particle system. It's actually one of the few things we're currently missing to port our new game project to the Ultra Engine.

I'm not going to say anything bad right now, please understand my words correctly. BUT it seems to us that your current release strategy is wrong a bit. I don't think it needs to be clarified that an early release cannot be called 1.0 and not have at least minimally functioning modules for developing something not only based on code, but also on GUI and game levels, especially after more than four years of development. Especially considering the emphasis on the new interface that you are promoting. And especially considering that the Leadwerks engine was capable (and quite capable) of doing all this, and it was an old engine of the 7th generation of game consoles. So how is this radically different from another intermediate update for monthly subscribers? And who's the potential buyer of the new engine, if even the old engine, which has been neglected for several years, is hardly known outside of this forum? People simply won't accept an unfinished product, and on platforms like Steam, it's important to show the best right from the start of sales, even if it's early access. The strategy you have mentioned will mislead people, and if they buy Ultra, they will definitely refund it within half an hour. Remember the experience with Ultra App Kit, which had serious shortcomings from the start and even with the updates made, it was not accepted by the Steam community: it seems to me that you gained absolutely nothing from its publication and mixed audience reaction, and now the situation may repeat itself with an even more negative reaction, including from the old audience, do you understand what I mean? It won't be interesting to new users in its current form, and the old audience, includes us, will remain dissatisfied that they were made to wait for almost another year. By the way, you mentioned March 2024. That's a long time, considering that everything can change at any moment. With the level of functionality that you propose for 1.0, even our team that develops and releases games on Leadwerks (and respects you and your team), won't be able to switch to the new engine before that date (we planned to do it as soon as possible) - because it turns out that we won't be able to continue working on the game without at least having the flowgraph editor! And a Vulkan benchmark with a new interface is unlikely to help us create something worthy of audience attention. But... Apparently, there's nothing we can do about it 🌝 Alright, then I have one last question: do you plan to follow your previously announced plans and release a major update for Leadwerks? At least before March 2024, if the answer is "yes". Because this engine REALLY needs an update, and we have already submitted the main issues related to its functioning in a bug report about a year ago: And by the way: Leadwerks, if it had a completed form, would be perfect for legacy development and would be relevant in this niche for many years to come. It has amazing features and compromised system requirements. Some of us are working on projects on older laptops, and it's still quite usable, if not for the annoying problems described by us and many others in the bug report threads. It seems to us that it's too early to write it off and radically replace it with something that isn't yet ready - it should at least be brought to working condition before that, because at least it ALREADY has a fan base.

Can you please answer me: 1. Am I correct in understanding that you are planning to release a version called 1.0, which will have a minimally functioning engine, but modules for developing flowgraph scenes and particle emitters will be unavailable? 2. Will 1.0 also be released on Steam, or will it be an exclusive release for the website?

The implementation of Theora Video on Leadwerks was written by Niosop a long time ago, even for the 2.x versions of the engine. As practice and a HUGE number of tests and attempts have shown, it works quite unstably and requires significant additions as well as radical solutions to minimize crashes when playing videos (in particular, it requires low quality sound in the video file (96kbps recommended and 128kbps maximum) for more or less stable operation, and video resolutions no higher than 720p at 5000kbps (recommeded 720x576 for 16:9, which, you see, is rather low quality for 2023). Our first game on Leadwerks, SALVATIONLAND, uses a significantly improved Lua-based version of this implementation, but crashes still occur on certain hardware combinations. We were unable to identify their patterns or fix the C++ code, as Niosop didn't release the source code for the library. So, yes, I wouldn't recommend using this Theora implementation to ANY users of the engine. It's necessary to write video implementation from scratch, look for ways to do so. We're currently searching and have not yet found a solution. There was our attempt to attach some ffdshow components to the engine to launch full-screen video separately from the application process. Unfortunately, this caused a large number of problems and was a rather rough.

Great, thanks for the reply!

By the way, we are really looking forward to the release of a new engine. We're aiming to port a new project in development to Ultra Engine - yes, it will take a certain amount of time and push forward the release date, but I think it'll be the right decision if the engine is really better than Leadwerks in terms of speed and stability. We're especially excited about the new terrain creation tools and the 64-bit code that will remove memory limits. I know that this will be a bit offtopic, but can you tell me please, what is the state of the Lua wrapper now? The thing is that we have our own technical base, the code of which is 95% Lua code, and we would like it to be relatively easy to port to Ultra. This moment really worries us.

Steam have a good online, so no matter how we all feel about this platform, we can use it to make our product more popular. A Steam release is the best way to "passively promote" an engine/software/game when the product is not very popular at start/doesn't have a huge advertising budget. Me and my team would like to see Ultra Engine on Steam, even though we're not a big fan of the platform, we (ERK Games) embrace the benefits that Steam provides. Fun fact: at first, we planned to promote SALVATIONLAND in our own way, but later we decided to use Steam Direct. And we don't regret this decision, especially considering how cheap it was for us at regional prices (the ENTIRE game budget is around $200 and I'm not kidding now).

Huge Update 1.4 - Released! This update is the latest in a series of major updates. Now the game will only be supported with small patches as needed. We have come a long way together with you, dear players. Thanks for your support! Changelog: - Cleaned up about ~500 megabytes during resource check - Added junk buyer at the level "Gamsk - 2" - Police chief at the "The Beginning" level now plays an animation during his first appearing - Optimized game assets - Optimized levels - Added new character voice lines for several subquests - Updated Readme files - Fixed a number of minor bugs WARNING: It is recommended (but not required) to start a new game to apply all fixes. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1807590/view/3694679124144168413

Huge Update 1.3 is available Despite the intensity of the final tests, at the launch of SALVATIONLAND we made several serious mistakes that led to crashes and general technical problems. With this huge update, we want to prove that we care about players' requests, and game development is not just a hobby for us, but a full-fledged, important part of life. In addition to fixing various bugs, we also made a number of major structural overhauls that changed the pace of the game in its first quarter, as well as added several training elements for new players. We hope you enjoy the result. Thanks for staying with us! WARNING: you need to start a new game. It is also recommended to run SavedgamesRemover.bat in the root folder and delete old saves to avoid problems. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1807590/view/3635005161222150540

SALVATIONLAND official soundtrack is available on Steam The "disc" is divided into two sides: the first contains music by various artists, used in the gameplay, and the second - author's ambient themes, recorded specifically for the game. Soundtrack is supplied free of charge. Enjoy! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2326950/SALVATIONLAND_Soundtrack

ERK Games presents the first open-world game powered by Leadwerks Game Engine - SALVATIONLAND. This is a story shooter with additional non-linear quests, stealth-action and survival elements, developed by members of former "Between the Realities" team. Game released in 15th February, 2023. You can buy and download game with 15% discount here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807590/SALVATIONLAND Official soundtrack available here for free: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2326950/SALVATIONLAND_Soundtrack If you interested, you can discuss game here. Also, if you found any bugs and problems, contact us here and in Steam Community topic: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1807590/discussions/0/3198118671848886939/ Please add to wishlist! We hope you enjoy the final result of our two years work.