PHOENIXES v12 final peeks & status update (Oct 20th)

New status:

V12 will be out for $5 patrons in 22nd as scheduled, or maybe 23rd in Asian time zone

I have received some feedback expressing dissatisfaction with the speed of our updates and the way we communicate, and it’s clear our fault. This update took longer than we planned due to a reckless Godot 4 attempt, and it has also highlighted several issues in how we communicate with people. After the update is released, I’ll write a post to sincerely apologize and discuss with everyone to figure out what we can do better to communicate and share news with people in the future.

Old status:

Change of plan, We are going to spend a few more days to see if we can release a stable version of v12 using Godot 4 engine, so right now we are not sure if we can still release the update in early October.

During this update cycle, we’ve been working on developing two versions of the game simultaneously—one using Godot 3.5 as before and the other using Godot 4. Our original plan was to only release the Godot 3.5 version of v12 because we weren’t sure how long it would take to finish the Godot 4 version. But now that we’re almost done with it, so we decided to see if we can finish it within the next few days.

We decided to do that because the improvements Godot 4 brings are just too significant. It can easily solve many optimization issues we've been struggling with in Godot 3.5 for years.

Of course, if we find in the next few days that the task is more challenging than expected, we’ll drop the attempt immediately and stick to the original plan—releasing the Godot 3.5 version of v12.

The reason why we want to make the Godot 4 version happen in v12 so badly:
Using the Godot 4 engine basically means we need to remake the game from scratch on Godot 4. So, the longer we delay completing the Godot 4 version, the more things we will remake and the more time we will need.

Oct 15th status:

The difficulty of this task was a bit beyond what I expected, but we haven’t faced any insurmountable obstacles during this attempt. I think we’ll need at most another week to finish up the Godot 4 version of v12.

However, after careful consideration, we’ve decided not to continue this Godot 4 attempt. Here's the reason:
We might be able to finish the Godot 4 version of v12 in a week, yes, but as we keep finding and fixing more bugs, we’re losing confidence in its stability. We're worried that no matter how hard we try, we won’t be able to find all the bugs that could negatively affect the gaming experience. So, if we want to release the Godot 4 version, we’d also have to release a Godot 3.5 version as a backup in case the Godot 4 version has major bugs.

And if we go that route, after spending another week finishing the Godot 4 version, we’d then need extra time to debug the Godot 3.5 version, which could take idk, maybe another week at most as well, so in a word, we are gonna need another half a month to get v12 ready! That'll be crazy. I don't want that to happen. We had ambitions, we gave it our best shot, but now it’s time to stop and admit our failure.

We’ll immediately restart debugging the Godot 3.5 version and release the update as soon as it's done.

Should be in a week!