Because there's no reason to hide the information, old or not.
Summer Update
It's early August right now and the end of summer is drawing near. It's been a long time since our last update, so Stephen and I would like to get you to speed on what's happened in the past few months and what's coming up next.
Progress
Last time we talked, we talked about forming a company, redoing everything from scratch and putting forth our goals of making Stencyl a comprehensive platform for creating great games. What has happened since then?
We've worked every single day on Stencyl, and as a result, we have made some very good progress given our circumstances (we both hold full-time day jobs). We've gotten a lot done, and we're getting closer to the beta that all of us are eagerly awaiting. We are still developing one major feature, but besides that, we are just finishing small things, polishing our features, and improving what we have. The feedback from our first round alpha testers has been invaluable.
StencylWorks: The Tools
For the first time, we'd like to talk about exactly which major features we will be including in the 1.0 version of StencylWorks. We hope that this list gives you a better idea of what to expect from our tools. Just note that this isn't a complete list of what to expect. Wink
Our tools are written entirely in Java and are run locally on your computer, not on the web. Installation happens once. After that, all updates are delivered via an in-place patching system.
Scene Designer - The centerpiece of StencylWorks is the Scene Designer. This is our editor for designing scenes (our equivalent of rooms, stages or whatever you call them in other environments). This tool is focused around visual design, so it uses a rich drag and drop interface similar to what you'd expect out of a drawing program such as Illustrator or Photoshop.
Snippet Builder - The Snippet Builder allows your scenes to come to life. This editor allows you to design and edit snippets, the reusable blocks of logic that make all games work. The tool has two modes - a code mode for developers who want to edit the source code directly, and a GUI mode for the rest of us. For those interested in the gory details: Our base scripting language is pure Java, with a rich Stencyl API to build your games on top of. Additionally, the scripts you create are automatically compiled to bytecode for maximum performance with minimum overhead.
Individual Resource Editors - These editors allow you to manage everything you put in your game. We provide editors for Actors (anything that you put in your game), Sprites, Tilesets, Backgrounds, Fonts, Sounds and more.
Resources Editor - This is our "iTunes for game resources." This tool allows you to manage and organize a collection of resources that you can import into any game, tag, and share with your friends.
Game Center - The game center is a central control panel for everything related to your game, centralizing your Scenes, resources, Snippets, and more. This also acts as a hub for working with our Stencyl.com services, such as high scores and achievements.
Sandbox - The sandbox is a controlled testing environment for debugging your games that integrates directly with the editor.
Publisher - This tool will allow you to publish your game directly to our website straight from StencylWorks. There will still be a web-based form for those who prefer that method.
These are just some of the many top-level features available in StencylWorks at 1.0. In a future update, look forward to hearing about what the website offers and what some of the other online services will be. We'll even show off the interface for our tools... when the time is right Wink
The Beta
The beta is drawing closer. We're not at the point where we can announce any solid dates, but we'll report back about the status of this in early September. At worst, you can expect another mini-progress report. At best, an actual date for when the beta program will begin.
The beta itself will consist of a closed phase and a public phase. The closed phase will last as long as necessary, but we will be inviting lots of people – so there will be many chances to get in.
We will hand-select our initial beta testers. We're most interested in people who can make great games and can provide us with valuable feedback. This means that we'll largely choose people who are active and helpful on our forums rather than people who sign up for our mailing lists.
More Updates
Stephen and I have been working very hard this summer, and as a result, I in particular have not been checking the public forums very much. That said, I think that the vast majority of you would prefer that I spend my time developing Stencyl rather than talking about it.
While we are still in "stealth mode," we're going try to make more frequent updates on the forums and blog. Rest assured that all of us here on the Stencyl Team are as committed as ever to seeing Stencyl through to completion; we know that a lot of you have been waiting for a long time, but now more than ever, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
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