This is the post where I talk about the near future of Sprite Lamp and releasing on various platforms. Yesterday I posted about Spine integration, and I’m also working on the tools for editing depth maps. There are a couple of other smaller features I’m hoping to have added at some point, such as loading of custom shaders, but when the depth editing is done, Sprite Lamp (the standalone application, for Windows) is getting startlingly close to finished. Given that, I’m going to try to make the next release a Steam release. Fingers crossed, I can make this happen in something like the next couple of weeks.

Questions of Steam early access

I’ve given a lot of thought to early access, because I have slightly mixed feelings on it in practice. I don’t want to be ‘one of the bad ones’ – I feel like there’s a certain amount of frustration going around with certain early access projects for various reasons, and I don’t want Sprite Lamp to be one of those.  On the other hand, betas are useful for various reasons, and a platform like Steam is a good way of carrying them out. There can also be hiccups in the implementation of being on Steam itself – it’d be nice to have a chance to make sure Steam-specific things work (for instance, upgrading from hobbyist to pro will be done using the DLC system, I need to make sure that works smoothly) before it goes to a bigger audience.

So I’m pretty open to suggestion on this strategy, but currently I’m thinking of trying to get the Windows build out as a closed beta (which will involve me trying to get Steam keys to everyone who has already got Sprite Lamp by Kickstarter or through PayPal). Once that’s sorted, we’ll go into early access – at that point, it’ll be at the current (slightly) discounted Kickstarter/early price of $35/$90. When it releases fully, it’ll be for $40/$100. I’m going to try to make this early access period as quick as possible, though. During the early access period, I’ll also try to get a maximally polished Linux build onto Steam. The current Mac build isn’t really Steam-ready, though – a fact probably known to those who have tried using it. That brings us to the next section.

Sprite Lamp for MacOS

For a while I’ve been in contact with a fellow I know by the name of Rob Caporetto who was potentially going to help me out with the native UI version of Sprite Lamp for MacOS. He’s got some experience with MacOS and C#, which isn’t the most common combination of skills, so it seemed pretty ideal. Unfortunately he wasn’t free to work on stuff until fairly recently, but I’ve been in contact with him and he’s had some time to look over the source code. We’ve talked about what needs to be done and how to do it, and come to some conclusions:

• It’s probably not worth holding up the other releases to wait for this one. I didn’t make this decision lightly, because I had always wanted a simultaneous release, but at the same time, it seems pointless to keep a working build out of Windows and Linux users’ hands just for the sake of that (especially when those two groups are likely well over half the users).
• There’s a small amount of work for me to do on the codebase to get it ready for porting, which I’m going to jump into as soon as the depth editing stuff is done.
• It’s probably somewhere in the ballpark of a month of work. As such, I’m going prioritise doing as much as possible of the port stuff myself, especially the grunt work, and Rob can spend all his time on the hard bits. That way it’ll be in Mac users’ hands as soon as possible.
• More than was the case with the rest of the development, we’ll be able to prioritise the adding of features so that the most commonly used ones are in first, and as soon as we have something pretty usable, we’ll put it out there (on Steam, if we’re at that point by then, or otherwise in a regular update).
• More as it develops.

So, that’s that. I’m pretty damn excited to see the first build working on MacOS, but not half as much as Halley is (being the artist behind Sprite Lamp’s sample art, and a mac user).

More engine integration

The other part missing from this story is the future of engine integration. More than any other part of the development of Sprite Lamp, engine integration has taken me off guard scheduling-wise, because it’s hard not to get tangled up in small details when you’re working with unfamiliar tech. However, once this next release is sorted, I’ll be able to get into doing some of the integrations closer to full-time. First priority will be Unity since so many people use that, then I’ll look at rejiggering some of the Game Maker stuff, and then basically I’m going to go through the history of people requesting engine integrations and try to get as many sorted as I reasonably can. So far I’ve been including engine integration stuff with Sprite Lamp, but when there’s a bit more complete I’ll be making them all available for free download here.