Thank you, all of you, for your openness and honesty in confronting these issues. I know I am somewhat disappointed that a promising development tool will now be suspended indefinitely. On the other hand, the fact that you are taking a break, dealing with the consequences, and making plans gives me confidence and hope. All I would ask is that your team continues its work eventually. One of the reasons there are so many games for the sighted community is generalized engine development which people can rely upon to produce games without reinventing the wheel every time. Please don't allow yourselves to forget the encouragement and desire of the community at large. You are wanted, your product is wanted, and we have faith in you all to deliver. Take your time to catch your balance, then run ahead with the same zeal and promise you've shown for several years now. I believe in you. We believe in you! Thank you for all you have done and for all you will do in the future.
Dakotah Rickard Phone: (336) 662-2423 E-Mail: [email protected] > On Feb 5, 2022, at 12:20, Ebon sky studios <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hello all, > > We regret that we have to pass along some very bad news to all of you: > we are going to have to put the production of Sable and our first > game--Crimson Eclipse--on hold. > > Without going into excruciating detail, we have discovered that BGT has an > inherent issue with memory management, in other words, memory leaks. This > memory issue isn't as noticeable in most games created using BGT, given that > they don't require large amounts of data to be saved/loaded into/out of RAM > using the scripting language's built-in memory management functions. On the > other hand, game projects created using Sable are not hard-coded, but are > frequently reading/writing to numerous external data files. This difference > in process is where BGT's memory management functions do not work properly > and why we have the potential for severe memory leak issues. After some > investigative tinkering with Sable’s source code our programmer Paul was > able to optimize the application a little. Unfortunately, the optimizations > just weren’t enough. Since the memory issues are inherent to BGT itself and > not Sable, no matter how much we optimise, they cannot ever be completely > overcome. > > During our team meeting on 1 February, we discussed our best course of > action. After some soul-searching, we decided that we needed to suspend all > operations on both Sable and Crimson Eclipse. We do not want to release a > product that has the potential to crash any of your computers. If someone did > that to us, we’d be pissed and want to go running for the torches and > pitchforks. We decided, that no matter how painful and soul-destroying it is > for us personally, we will not release any sort of commercial product written > in BGT. > > At the moment, we have decided to step back for a little while and catch our > breath. We need to give ourselves time to recover and think things through > before we decide on our next course of action. We still want to create both > quality developer tools and games with those tools, but we will need to > reconsider our approach. The good news is that we learned a lot over these > many years that we worked on Sable and Crimson Eclipse. We know what, and > what not, to do in the future and have a better understanding of how not to > make a nonsense out of this. So don’t count us out of the game yet. > > After some additional back-and-forth, we decided that we will release the > current build of Sable but only for a limited 8 week period, similar to what > we did when we released the public beta in 2020. We appreciate this isn't a > perfect solution, but we know many of you were keen to try Sable and We > didn't want to deny you that opportunity. Furthermore, we are hoping that any > of you that do want to play around with this proof-of-concept version of BGT > Sable can pass along any suggestions that you think we ought to consider for > a new version of the application. Again though, we need to emphasize that > this version of Sable has those memory leak issues, so use at your own risk, > also any projects created during the release will be lost and unusable after > the 8 week period. the link can be found at the bottom of the post. > > We want to conclude this message by repeating our apology to all of you who > have been waiting for us to put out Crimson Eclipse and/or the public release > of Sable. We accept the fact that many of you will be sad, disappointed, > pissed off or some combination of those emotions. We are prepared to take it > on the chin, but we do hope that you will not lose your trust in us. Ebon Sky > Studios exists to serve the community—that’s all of you—and without that > community, we are nothing. > > Sable download link below, please read the full details on the download page > before running Sable: > https://ebonskystudios.com/download-sable-demo/ > > The Ebon Sky Studios Team: > > Paul Lemm – Programmer > Justin Jones – Game Designer > Thaddeus Podtepa – Game Designer > Brian Fairbanks – Sound Designer > Kelly Baughman – Volunteer Project Manager > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#124530): https://groups.io/g/blind-gamers/message/124530 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/88932762/21656 Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/blind-gamers/leave/607459/21656/1071380848/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
