How close to completion is the game now?

[RickyMartini]

Actually.... It isn't 0%, because at some point Tynan will add to game everything that he will can add.

As resourcefull as he is, he could add content until after the universe's heat death.

[Tynan]

If I may analogize, do you see yourself as someone who draws the focus first and then draws the background/side stuff, or do you see yourself as someone who draws the background first and works their way into the focus?

That might not be the best analogy or, even if it is a decent analogy, it might not be easily answerable given your method of development, but if you think it could apply, I'd be interested in your answer.

I don't organize things as focus/background. In fact I'm not sure what you mean, so I can't answer. For me, I just prioritize tasks by cost/benefit and do the best one all the time.

[Adamiks]

If I may analogize, do you see yourself as someone who draws the focus first and then draws the background/side stuff, or do you see yourself as someone who draws the background first and works their way into the focus?

That might not be the best analogy or, even if it is a decent analogy, it might not be easily answerable given your method of development, but if you think it could apply, I'd be interested in your answer.

I don't organize things as focus/background. In fact I'm not sure what you mean, so I can't answer. For me, I just prioritize tasks by cost/benefit and do the best one all the time.

So in general:
Tynan is Randy Random!

[StorymasterQ]

If I may analogize, do you see yourself as someone who draws the focus first and then draws the background/side stuff, or do you see yourself as someone who draws the background first and works their way into the focus?

That might not be the best analogy or, even if it is a decent analogy, it might not be easily answerable given your method of development, but if you think it could apply, I'd be interested in your answer.

I don't organize things as focus/background. In fact I'm not sure what you mean, so I can't answer. For me, I just prioritize tasks by cost/benefit and do the best one all the time.

So in general:
Tynan is Randy Random!

Or, since he's still not adding it as a new Storyteller, he's in fact Tony Troll.

[CreepyD]

I wish all development went along like Rimworld
Tynan has that direct contact with the community which is fantastic.
We always know what's happening, and I love reading the daily change log page every now and then to see all the goodies being added.

Larger companies can learn from this (being so open and transparent), it makes for happy customers and we get a better game for it
I think some are catching on slowly.

[Tynan]

Sadly larger companies suffer from structural disadvantages when it comes to being in contact with customers.

People talk about how hard it is to be an indie dev, and there are definitely big challenges here, but there are also a lot of tremendous advantages.

[RickyMartini]

Now I'm curious. What are some advantages of indie dev?

[Tynan]

Now I'm curious. What are some advantages of indie dev?

1. Easy to change global company policy in an instant. This takes months to do in organizations and often sparks bitter political resistance from people with a vested interest in the old way.

2. All resources are fungible with each other since they're all just the time of one person. I can change to making a text game if I want; I don't have to worry about all the artists in my company who will now have nothing to do. Related to 1.

3. With one dev, there are no non-media-savvy devs who might say something that could get grabbed and made into some lurid headline. It's easy to be 100% consistent with your messaging and responses to questions. This in turn means there is no reason anyone should be prohibited from speaking to the community, which in turn makes you 100% participatory.

4. With nothing to lose, you're free to take risks on unusual properties. It's not necessarily the end of the world if you lose a year of dev time on something. But for a big company this is a disaster. Even if the company can survive it, the people who did it won't. So nobody takes any risks; strategies become about avoiding the possibility of blame for failure, rather than seeking optimal risk tradeoffs.

Many many others. I wrote about this a lot in my book actually.

[Mystic]

Now I'm curious. What are some advantages of indie dev?

1. Easy to change global company policy in an instant. This takes months to do in organizations and often sparks bitter political resistance from people with a vested interest in the old way.

2. All resources are fungible with each other since they're all just the time of one person. I can change to making a text game if I want; I don't have to worry about all the artists in my company who will now have nothing to do. Related to 1.

3. With one dev, there are no non-media-savvy devs who might say something that could get grabbed and made into some lurid headline. It's easy to be 100% consistent with your messaging and responses to questions. This in turn means there is no reason anyone should be prohibited from speaking to the community, which in turn makes you 100% participatory.

4. With nothing to lose, you're free to take risks on unusual properties. It's not necessarily the end of the world if you lose a year of dev time on something. But for a big company this is a disaster. Even if the company can survive it, the people who did it won't. So nobody takes any risks; strategies become about avoiding the possibility of blame for failure, rather than seeking optimal risk tradeoffs.

Many many others. I wrote about this a lot in my book actually.

Very nice, especially since this is a career turn that is not out of the question for me in the near future.  You just sold me a copy of your book.

[anarion321]

I believe the game's still in diapers so i hope it's far away from completion.

If not, it will be a huge dissapoint.

[Lady Wolf]

I'm happy to hear the game has no set completion/release date, given many that do have a set date, often either have the date pushed back, or release on schedule with a bug ridden mess of shovel ware that rarely gets patched into a playable state without several months of wait time. (Or just get pretty much abandoned by devs after release to linger on in an unfinished state, I.E Windforge, Darkout, etc..)

I've only just scratched the surface of this game, but so far it's a very compelling experience and I'm looking forward to a hundred + hours of play, easy.

[Elixiar]

So I noticed that work has begun on steam integration, does this mean we may see an end to vanilla Rimworlds enhancements? Or will Rimworld simply evolve and continue updates through steam?

I love Rimworld massively. Its one of my top 5 games for sure but I am worried that low end game content (colonies that survive that far at least) will eventually bring a few bad apple reviews and that is the last thing I would ever want to see for this game.
The hype train that the steam community is will absolutely slingshot this games popularity. I can see it already, I just think the game could benefit from a few more events first at least.
Better to have many things that do the same thing for the story telling purposes than a few direct events that just get straight to what that event actually is. E.g. A raid to cause chaos/ steal resources/ destroy the colony - a raid to kill everyone.

I want to see Rimworld win steam, which I fully believe it will. Just needs that extra longevity in my opinion.

[Devon_v]

Tynan just wants to get the Steam Key interface working. He's burnt out on Rimworld itself at the moment which is why he's been fixing up the website and learning PHP instead. The Stream release is not actually imminent.

[RickyMartini]

Yup. No steam in a long time. Only the workaround is being prepared. And even if: No, development would not stop.

[TLHeart]

love how people on this forum are saying no steam for a long time, but that is not what is being said on reddit....

[–]TynanSylvesterLead Developer 31 points 9 days ago

Likely before A12 actually.