I brought my heavy laptop home to Belgium over Christmas in order to finally figure out that nasty programming problem that had me stuck for weeks. And I did! Behold the Forest Magic in Unreal Engine! At least the first step towards it. I will be add the rest next.



Full report here.
Free for backers.

Sending us requests for updates on the status of The Endless Forest remake is counterproductive. Please trust us that we are doing our best. There will be a progress report before the end of the year. But please don't hassle us.

We have posted a little report about the progress we've made over the past 1 ½ months remaking The Endless Forest. Access is free for backers. It's not to late to join.



Additions in this step include the deer's braking, stumbling, stretching, sniffing and listening. And we have added point-and-click navigation. More details in the report.

Here's a second update on our progress remaking The Endless Forest in Unreal thanks to your contributions: http://olt.lt/ms/the-unreal-forest-step-2/
Access to the development log is free for backers. Email us if you need a discount code.



In this step we have added mouse and camera controls and the beginnings of a button bar with sit/stand and roar buttons. For this we learned how to do a lot of things in the Unreal Engine that will come in handy along the line.

We have posted a progress report on the remake of The Endless Forest on the development log: http://olt.lt/ms/the-unreal-forest-step-1

Backers get free access.
You can still join them!



To summarize, we have solved two major challenges: wrapping the forest so it is endless, and seeing other players across the borders. But creating a dedicated server in Unreal is a convoluted process that may require a new computer with a more recent 64 bit operating system. We're also digging up the many old models and textures that make up the game in our amateur-era archives and converting then to modern file formats.

We are very pleased with the results so far and eager to continue the work.

See you in The Old Forest!

We have started the remake of The Endless Forest in the Unreal engine!
Here is first test of the deer avatar:



If you want to play with it yourself, you can download a Windows 64-bit build here.

Update: here's the macOS app -the very first time The Endless Forest deer appears on a Mac (at least natively)!

Merry Christmas!

The crowdsourcing campaign for remaking the technology behind The Endless Forest reached 60% yesterday. With 2 weeks to go, it remains possible that we achieve the goal. But things do need to pick up a bit.

Something weird happened since we extended the campaign.



See how the pink bars dropped as soon as the extension started? Lesson learned!
A lot of people in the community encouraged us to extend the campaign but so far this seems to have been a bad decision (we could have been working on the game already instead of managing the campaign). We can only hope that people are saving up their money to contribute at the last moment. I'm sure we will close with a peak. But will it be high enough?

On a more optimistic and wonderful note, have a look at the list below. It shows where people who contribute are coming from (through clicking on a link, I presume).



In other words: YOU ARE THE BEST!
In the two other crowdsourcing campaigns we've done, it was Twitter that directed most people towards contributions. But you guys are beating Twitter and Facebook, and EVERYONE! That alone for me signifies success. It confirms that this community is wonderful and prepared to support the things they love however they can.

I guess we just overestimated the size of the community. But thanks to a remake we will be able to grow!

As a final graph, screenshotted from the IndieGogo admin pages, I'd like to share the breakdown into countries where the contributions are coming from.



Unsurprisingly, the United States are in the lead.