Hello,


For the past two months I have been working on another project, raising funds for the continuation of the remake of The Endless Forest. The other project is not entirely done yet and might in fact lead to something quite big later. But I will carve some time out for working on The Endless Forest again as of now. Because it would be nice to have a new build for Christmas, right?

Sorry for all the delays. Thank you for your patience!


Peace to all,

Michael,

A new alpha version of The Endless Forest Second Decade is now available for backers and supporters. You can read about it here.

Backers should have received an email message with a download link. If you haven't, please let us know.


Thank you for your patience!

Michael Samyn.


PS: bug reports are not requested yet, unless you would run into something that prevents the game from running

I have updated a bunch of scripts to the requirements of the new server and it seems that logging into the game works again. Please let me know if you run into any errors!

The web server that takes care of the login has been moved but there's still some technical issues. I will look into these next week when I get back to my computer. I'm currently off work because after a year of not seeing them, my children are finally visiting my home. Thank you for your patience. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Michael.

The game server that runs The Endless Forest is fine but the game relies on connections with tale-of-tales.com. And the old computer that hosted the tale-of-tales.com domain has broken down after many years of loyal service. The entire website needs to be moved to another machine. This will take some time. Sorry about the inconvenience.

As you may have noticed, the community website has been unavailable for a few days. This was caused by a severe malfunction on its server. As a result, the entire website has been migrated to another machine.

Please let us know if anything seems to be wrong.

Time flies. But progress is being made, step by step.

Over the past three weeks I have continued the implementation of the fawn character and added all the items that are still relevant to the options menu. I want to add new options relevant to the current engine but only after the remake is fully finished. I couldn't resist adding an slider to increase the density of the forest, for those of you with powerful computers. And I have added the names of all backers to the credits (you can still join them, by the way).

Work on the remake is going well, in spite of my other projects that run simultaneously. I have adapted my daily schedule to enable a large slot of time on the days when I am free. It seems to be working.

Over the past two weeks I have implemented the "screensaver" feature: the camera rotates around the sleeping deer and optionally switches to rotate around other players' avatars. Amusingly the same bug occurred as in the current game: the ground disappearing from under the other players here and there. I will need to fix that later.

Implementing this system also allowed me to discover and fix some issues with controls.

After a desperate search for old files on defunct file servers and CD-Roms, I ended up re-doing the rig for the Fawn avatar in Blender. After that I was able to implement it in Unreal so it re-uses the animations of the adult deer (which didn't working the current Quest3D-based game). It also took a bit of "exploring" to find all the textures for the fawn. But I did! So you will be able to frolic around the forest as a fawn in the next build.

After releasing what I guess is my first solo art piece in ages*, I have returned to the wonderful world of remaking The Endless Forest in Unreal Engine. I will be able to devote a lot of time to it over the coming months until August when a new project starts. So I am aiming for a new release before then.
I still teach part time (at IULM in Milan) and I'm working on a secret Endless Forest related project once in a while. But still, I'm happy with the time available and I am already making progress.
Over the past two weeks I have added joystick control of the avatar and a system for showing different language versions of the menu. I am trying to get all the main features in the game, working towards a beta release (feature complete but lacking detail and containing bugs). But if there's any features you would like to see prioritized in the remake, please let me know.

All the best,

Michael Samyn.


* Information and free download of "Compassie" can be found here.

Thanks to a beautiful act of friendship, the fundraising for the remake of The Endless Forest has crossed the threshold of Phase Four. This means that, once the remake is complete, the game will be expanded with a new area, a very special character, and some activities.

Thank you all for contributing!