Mana Games

[manutoo]

polakis & dongtaipo,
thanks !

Fed1,
no, don't worry, I'm not discouraged, but I realized I have to be careful and now is more the time for fine-tuning than breaking news gameplay changes.

[Actarus69]

Hi Manu,

I'm sorry you had to have a medical operation, but the important thing is that you're fine now , if there's no health, nothing can be done.

I've been a bit absent from the forum, I logged on but immediately logged off, I've been busy lately otherwise I would have posted sooner.

[Fed1]

Keep it up manu!! You're getting closer to the 1.0 release!

I have a question about the last post, you mentioned that you're planning to expand the modding capabilities, What do you mean with that? What are you thinking?

[manutoo]

Actarus69,
thanks & no worries.

Fed1,
right now, I'm trying to add the possibility of just dropping player photos into a folder without the need to change the player base (it's for Stef's Mod, but actually, it'll work without any Mod as well).

I may try to do as well :
- separate the player 1/2 from the announcements, so it'd be possible to replace them with the player name (it's a big one, as it'd require doing the echo & reverb in real-time)
- a filter to search for outfits & anims (it's really not sure though, as I already looked a bit into it and it's actually kinda complicated)
- support for handmade reaching/high/low anims for the base strikes (like I did with the high/low volley anim, but with the horizontal reaching as well)
- probably other things that I can't remember right now or still didn't think about

And any small requests from the Modders, as they come regularly...

[Fed1]

Ohh boy, they sound amazing, if we were able to vote I'd go for the handmade anims, but all of them sound amazing, hope we can get them

[Actarus69]

Hi Manu, sorry you didn't feel well.

Yes, in my opinion you would need more holidays, you would have to recharge your batteries, as they say, so you would come back with a great desire, but I understand that it is not always possible, there are deadlines, commitments, etc.

Luckily you do a job that I think you like, otherwise you would have chosen something else, and above all there is nobody above you, you are not an employee. So, if you can, unplug everything and rest more

[manutoo]

Actarus69,
thanks, and you might be right : your message made me remember that in the summer of last year I got Covid and had to take half-holidays for 3 weeks and they resourced my mind in addition to my body.
So I'm going to extend my little vacations till I feel up again. (I'm still working a bit to handle customer issues & may also release in a few days a little update with bug fixes & 1 new feature I already did last week )

[Fed1]

Take all the time in the world!!! The game has evolved a lot and we need you fresh and motivated!! Still in beta but the game is easily the GOAT in tennis games!

[manutoo]

Fed1,
thanks for your kind word..!
I do feel noticeably better already, but still getting some half-vacation...

[Fed1]

I'm so annoyed for the Unity situation, somehow I'm not even surprised given that the CEO comes from EA, those greedy bastards will do anything to squeeze both customers and devs for more money. I really hope this ends with him out of the company,100% understand the lost of trust, and I know switching the game engine at this point is not viable.

I'm sorry you have to even think about the consequences of this Manu, one thing is to f*** around with big AAA budget companies, but with an indie and solo developer is just outrageous.

And just for fun, If you were to start Tennis Elbow 5 today (talk about dreams ), What engines would you consider?

[manutoo]

Fed1,
the 1st engine I'll check is Unreal ; I'm not very happy with the 5% royalty rate for game revenue above $1 million (which is gross game revenue, not my revenue, so it's not that high), but it's possibly the best one currently. Godot seems to get a lot of praise as well, but using it on consoles might prove harder.
There are actually also a lot of other engines, some may rise from Unity's ashes...

[polakis]

How long do you think until the xbox release? Plus i saw unity is backing off?

[manutoo]

polakis,
I'm not sure, I still haven't gotten my distribution contract counter-signed by Microsoft, and I might need to wait until October 16th to get the discount on the Pro license for Unity (that's possibly ~$1500 saved, so that's quite tempting ), so it's really complicated right now.

Else, Unity didn't back off, they just said they're sorry and we (the devs) are "confused" : they're likely going to add a few fail-safes which are to cap the install fee to 4% of game revenue, and ask the devs to count their installs by themselves. It doesn't solve much of the issues I listed in my mini-blog post and I don't know how I can count my installs in a reliable way, and it surely won't restore trust in the engine, so we're likely into this mess for a long while.

[polakis]

Will the console version have the mod installation menu?

[manutoo]

polakis,
yes, that was the goal..!