June update, what we've done, what's next

I’ve been focusing on work quite a bit lately and felt a little behind with communication.

Time for an update!

Note: I do occasional update videos and live streams on the GDQuest channel. Subscribe if you want to stay posted on everything that’s happening around the project.

We’ve already put out Free content

Your Kickstarter pledge funded both Free and paid content.

We’re producing the free content first for this project. As a result, the Gumroad coupons are coming later than planned. I can’t say precisely when, as we’re in pre-production right now. Early access might start around the end of June, but it may be pushed back to July as well. More on that below.

It can be hard to keep track of all the content that’s coming out. That’s why I’ve prepared a playlist with all the videos we’re making as part of the 2019 Kickstarter project: Watch the videos on YouTube

That way, you can see everything your support made possible. It contains about 40 tutorials at the time of writing, and we’re far from done!

New features in Godot 3.1 series

The bulk of the tutorials we released are part of the last stretch goal. We promised to cover the new features in Godot 3.1, and we’ve done that in depth.

You can find the playlist here: New Features in Godot 3.1 - Tutorials

When will the Metroidvania course be available?

The game and the course are in pre-production right now. You can’t plan a game’s pre-production reliably if you focus on quality. That’s why I can’t give you a release date just yet. Part of the reason it’s taking us time is I’m learning to work with a team after years working mostly alone.

Also, we’re working to improve the quality of our work, which also takes time and energy. You can hopefully see improvements with the feedback we’ve asked you and the pilot tutorial for the Metroidvania course:

Lastly, we’ve been working on bonus content, and I’ve been trying to keep supporting the Krita developers, among other things. I’m now looking to contribute to Blender Video Sequence Editor, which we all use at GDQuest. Contributing to Free Software is one of GDQuest’s goals. It takes time, but it hopefully benefits all of us in return.

We’ve done more, aside from videos

We’ve worked on open guidelines to improve the quality of our code and our videos.

What next?

Luciano sent me the first five animations of Mannequiny, the Free mannequin you’ll get on the Godot asset library. With that, we can create the 3D tutorials for the New Features in Godot 3.1 series: IK, root motion, etc.

I’m also doing a little extra, next week: organizing a new Docs Sprint for Godot 3.2. The reference’s completion rate has gone down with massive improvements to Godot 3.1. Together, we can complete it pretty fast, but we need to join forces.

Besides that, we’re focusing on the game and the next course moving forward. You can already find the project and on its GitHub repository

Why produce free content first?

In short, it allows us to learn to work as a team and get as much feedback as possible.

In greater details:

• It’s the first time we’re doing a project as a team, and I’m personally learning to manage people. I didn’t feel comfortable making the paid course straight because of that. If anything were to go wrong, I’d rather have this be on free videos.
• We’ve been figuring out ways to improve our code and the way we teach. This takes time, practice, and feedback. Having the free videos seen by thousands of people gave us that.
• The documentation for Godot 3.1 was still incomplete on the release day, so making tutorials for it could help new people who were discovering the engine, or looking to learn about the latest features.

Until next time…

That’s it for now.

If you have any more questions or concerns, you can always send me a tweet, comment on the update videos, or better, hop on the GDQuest Discord server and ping me by typing @gdquest. 😄

Be creative, have fun… see you in the next one. 🙂