Hello everyone,
It has been exactly one month since the “delay” of the Tornado Alley Ultimate beta. I place delay within quotations because July was an optimistic release, but it really wasn’t practical.
Between the delay and this post, we recently unveiled the returning revamped map, Town. I hope you all enjoyed that live premiere and the map itself. This new revamped Town (and many other unrevealed maps) are only possible with more development time.
I’ve already explained the reasoning behind the July delay so this post will be explaining how I will be handling the future of Tornado Alley Ultimate development and what you, the fans, should expect.
Firstly, I and other contracted developers (people who work on small portions of this game) have all started our college semesters, meaning we aren’t going to have all the free time we had in the summer to work on the game. Obviously education comes before anything. We still dedicate hours a week to development, so please keep that in mind. So although we may not be posting on the group wall as much, please know we still are working when we can.
Creating Tornado Alley Ultimate has been a laborious task, and definitely the most tedious game I’ve ever had the privilege of working on. In fact, we are already reaching an entire year of development!(Tornado Alley Ultimate began its planning stage on September 3rd, 2018.)
I greatly apologize to everyone for such a long wait time, but there is no other option.
In order to efficiently utilize our development time during the school year starting up, please know these changes are coming to the group:
- We are no longer going to post anymore of these long threads (like the one you’re reading now) until we officially announce the beta release (which will only be announced once the beta is complete.)
- We will no longer regularly update the group shouts like we did in the summers. We want to focus on development and utilize our resources and time efficiently.
However…
- Due to positive feedback from the Tornado Alley Ultimate Video Presentation and Town reveal, we plan to make many more live premiere videos showcasing new content coming to Tornado Alley Ultimate. While it will be infrequent, we will still post these live presentations to the group shouts. These live premieres (and the eventual release announcement) are the only announcements that we will be posting to the group shouts. So when we do post a live premiere to the group shout, be sure to tune in!
So expect the group to slow down a bit in activity, as the only things we plan to post will be live premieres, and it will be infrequent as preparing the content and making the video is a lot of work.
I continue to get questions regarding the release date: it is To Be Announced.
I take full responsibility for overestimating our development speed and announcing a premature July release. I do not want to announce a release date and repeat what happened in July. There will not be an official release date announced until the beta is 100% complete. It could be a day from now, a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. We don’t know. When it’s complete, it’s ready.
So to sum it all up:
- We are continuing to work on the game when we can (although the developers started college so we don’t have much free time like we did in the summers)
- Developers will not be as active in the group anymore, only posting live-premiere reveals when we have content ready to show off.
- The release date is not going to be announced until the game is 100% complete.
Thank you for reading,
- 1billybob1