RELEASE AND ROADMAP. ROMUL - DEVLOG #2

Hello everyone, we finally released!

ROMUL! Please love and fear it.

Yes, yes, it really happened!

Despite all the bugs, networking issues, sleepless nights, and adventures with Steam Support, we finally managed to release our game!

You can already buy ROMUL on Steam!

And please, if you enjoy the game, leave a review.

For a small team like ours, every review matters a lot and helps a great deal with promoting the game.

We have one small request.

If you run into bugs or any issues while playing, please do not rush to leave a negative review right away.

We understand perfectly that bugs can ruin the experience, and we are not going to pretend they do not exist.

The game was supposed to launch under an Early Access banner (I explain below why that did not happen). That does not remove our responsibility, but it would still be wrong not to mention it here at least.

ROMUL is a big project, and we know very well that there is still a lot of work ahead.

How can you report a problem to us?

• Through our Discord server.
• Through the special feedback button right in the main menu.

We will check both feedback channels every day and try to fix reported issues as quickly as possible!

We really want to make ROMUL better together with you.

So any feedback, a found bug, or even a small suggestion about what the game is missing can be incredibly useful. I talked about this in more detail in another developer diary. There is a lot of text there, really a lot, so if you are ready and genuinely want to, you can read it. It covers the problems we ran into, why we missed the planned date, and what we are working on. I will not go into that here. We are simply glad that, despite the problems, we finally made it to release, and we want to thank everyone who was with us, is with us, and will stay with us. The game was supposed to launch in Early Access, but because of the problems described in the other diary, we are launching as a full release. That is why we decided to publish a roadmap. Thank you to everyone who followed development, took part in testing, supported us, and simply waited for this moment. You can buy the game at a launch discount now. We look forward to your reviews and suggestions! And for those who want to dig into what has been going on, I will tell you about the most interesting things that happened during this time. So, on to the news!

1. There are three of us now!

My friends from Lemma Arts joined development.

Now we are making ROMUL as a team of three!

That helps us move much faster and deal with the pile of tasks that built up during development.

2. Our first demo festival

We got into a demo festival, and of course we were very happy about that.

But as it turned out, it was a bit early to celebrate

For half the festival, many new players simply could not launch the game.

Meanwhile, for us and our testers everything worked fine.

Every day we fixed a ton of bugs and tried to figure out why new users specifically could not start the game.

In the end, by the time we finally found the cause, half the festival was already over.

So what happened?

It turned out the problem was in the saves.

We and the testers already had the necessary game data from earlier, so the bug never showed up for us.

Brand-new players did not have that data yet, so the game refused to launch.

The most frustrating part is that the fix itself took about a minute. Finding it, though, was incredibly hard.

3. Netcode. Lots of netcode. A LOT OF NETCODE.

This is probably the biggest technical problem we have faced in the entire development.

We ran into networking, co-op, and sync issues on a truly massive scale.

All this time we have been fixing, are still fixing, and apparently will keep fixing the networking side for a long while

Why did it turn out so hard?

This is my first co-op project, and in general my first game of this scale.

In ROMUL, all of this runs at the same time:

• Thousands of physics objects.
• Player webcams.
• Music you can add yourself into the game folder.
• Monsters with completely different behavior and movement.
• Zero gravity and ceiling gravity.
• And a bunch of other mechanics.

For comparison: in MIMESIS almost the whole game is built around the mimic mechanic.

In our game, the mimic is just a small cog in a huge machine.

And all of this needs not only to work on its own, but also to stay perfectly synced in co-op.

Honestly, we bit off more than we could chew

A full rewrite of the networking system

At some point it became clear that patching the old networking system over and over was no longer getting us where we needed to be.

So we fully rewrote the networking side, starting from the demo.

It works completely differently now. Because of that, some mechanics that already worked before had to be brought back into shape again.

But there is good news too!

Things are much more stable now, progress is finally clearly visible, and performance has improved a lot.

We also managed to multiply the FPS.

Anyway, that is enough about bugs for now.

Although I suspect they will stick around for a while

4. The worst part. Release problems.

This part is no joke at all...

As many of you know, we planned to release the game in time for the Fear Fest.

But we ran into a situation we still find extremely unpleasant.

Steam Support did not reply to us for 15 days.

We sent dozens of emails, tried to get any kind of response, and were simply ignored.

When the planned release date arrived, Steam changed it on its own to Coming Soon.

Only a few days later did we finally get a reply with the reasons the game was not approved.

What notes did we get?

• Crouching on gamepad did not work.
• The webcam did not work.
• There was a red Early Access label in the main menu.
• A few more minor notes.

And this is where it gets especially interesting.

We disagree with some of these notes and still do not understand how they were found.

Why?

1. Crouching on gamepad.

We could not reproduce this issue.

We tested the game on different systems, versions, and gamepads. Everything worked fine.

The mechanic code itself did not look suspicious either.

2. Webcam.

Basically the same situation.

We, our friends, and testers checked it. We used all kinds of cameras, including a Windows virtual camera running through a phone.

Nobody ran into problems.

3. The red Early Access label.

Originally we did plan an Early Access launch, but forgot to tick the matching option in Steam settings.

We decided to do that after the first review so we would not delay the process.

As it turned out, that was not the best call

In the end we decided to drop Early Access and ship as a full release.

Going through review again just for one checkbox, which we expected could take several more days and in practice an unknown amount of time, was something we could no longer afford.

4. The remaining notes we fixed in about 10 minutes.

So how did it end?

After all the fixes, we submitted a new build with minimal changes for review.

And, miraculously, another week later we were finally allowed to release!

We cannot know exactly what was happening on Steam's side or why the review took so long.

But given everything, we were left with the impression that the review process was handled extremely carelessly.

What did we lose because of this?

As a result: we completely missed Fear Fest, lost our planned release date, and even after the festival ended we still could not ship.

Now we are launching into what is basically empty space.

No festival, no extra attention, and no special way to attract players.

And that is probably the saddest part of this whole story.

We counted on this release a lot, because for us this is not just another game.

There is no big studio, publisher, or investors behind ROMUL.

We are just three friends from a small town who decided to make a big game on our own.

We do not have a financial cushion that would let us keep delaying the release forever and keep developing with no income.

Money is running out, so we simply cannot put the launch off any longer.

And of course there is the fear that without the festival, nobody will notice the game at all.

But we are releasing anyway.

Because we basically have no other choice left.

What is next?

Despite all these adventures, we keep working hard on ROMUL.

We are fixing bugs, improving performance, polishing existing mechanics, and of course adding new content.

We still believe in our game and really hope you will like it.

Thank you for being with us!

Thank you to everyone who follows development, plays the demo, leaves reviews, and helps us get better.

For a small team like ours, your support truly means a lot

And a special thanks to everyone who read this whole devlog to the end.

You are officially a hero now

- - - DISCORD - - -