Switching development direction (Patreon)

Hello there!

I realized that there is no way I can make BBS both as a game engine and a machinima studio at the same time, or it will turn out into Jack of all trades, master of none. I decided to drop the idea of trying to make a game engine, and fully focus on making BBS a machinima studio.

I have no experience of making video games (mechanically and gameplay wise), and I don't really want to make any certain game. Trying to implement a game engine with some scripting without a goal is practically impossible for me, as I lack the direction, because there are so many genres, and making BBS to adhere only to a single would limit its capabilities, while trying to implement it as generic as possible is too broad of a focus and impossible to implement in an adequate time frame (I don't really want to spend multiple years experimenting to craft a decent game engine).

However, with a machinima studio, I know exactly what I need, and the scope is pretty narrow. I can exactly see what's missing, and what mechanics I need to implement in order to reach the goal or satisfy my vision of a machinima studio. I can name exactly what's missing from BBS right now:

• Integrated environment, as in, during filming, everything is located in a single panel instead of opening and closing (don't confuse it with switching) different tabs. I.e. a single timeline where camera, actors and player recordings are in a single place.
• Better visuals, as in more advanced shading: shadows, AO, voxel translucency, SSR, foliage waving, etc.
• Immersive animation, i.e. directly moving limbs in the world, instead of having to open a form editor, and only then edit the pose.
• Being able to animate objects from one actor to another. This is necessary to make exchanging items between two characters and actors within vehicles much easier.
• Basic audio editor, allowing to add pauses and color code them so it was visible in preview to what character voice line belongs.

These are the ones I can think from the top of my head, but I'm certain if I'll think harder, I can find more missing elements that could be implemented into BBS, the machinima studio.

I'm sorry if you expected it to become a game engine. The only thing I could say is that BBS is open sourced, so if someone has the skill, time and/or lots of money, they could try continue in game engine direction.

Thank you for your time, attention and support! 💖