It’s a good thing I don’t think anyone’s waiting on this game with bated breath. When I started learning Unity back in 2016, my “competitors” were the TEW Series, and the Smackdown vs Raw series (on PS2!).

Now, there’s multiple games doing “GM” experiences (Wrestling Empire, Journey of Wrestling, Fire Pro Wrestling World, Championship Wrestling Promoter)… and while it’s lovely to know these games have an audience besides me, it’s hard to get excited developing something when I know there’s no longer a hankering for this game to come back (because it already has, without me).

I am still working on Ringside Booker, but it is slow. Motivation is entirely from myself just to finish the darn thing as I know the ship for this game coming out and people caring has long sailed.

At one point I (like most Unity Developers) toyed with moving to the Godot engine, but I decided against it, maybe a future game will use Godot though, as it is a great engine that’s open source and lovely.

That pricing announcement killed any enthusiasm for opening Unity for a good three months, and when I came back, the game looked impossible. 3D characters that magically were going to get made and added? Pathfinding for custom arenas? AI that worked properly, walking to the arenas, and somehow having wrestling matches that would be fun to watch?! There’s no way one Adam can do all this, I can’t 3D model, and the scope creep was ridiculous.

I started again. Before my imaginary audience says “But Adam, you already started again after CWL ended” – yes, you are quite right. I did. I had to on that occasion because of the situation not owning any of the IP or creativity that amazing show had, and the big plans for the restart were in response to the many similar games that existed when I lifted my head up long enough to look. I still want this game to stand out, but there’s no way that making a half-baked mess of a game that I couldn’t finish would stand out. A finished game would be better.

As such, since February, I have redone everything, and got back up to almost where CWL Commissioner got to in 2 years. None of the visuals, none of the fancy buttons, just raw code, written in a much more sensible, coherent way that is likely to be workable in a year’s time.

Presently, you can manage contracts, book matches, simulate them, and save/load your game. This isn’t a lot, but it is the backbone of things. I can actually see this getting done, and on the way, I am hoping my project can stand on its own merits alongside those other great games, or even just be something more than one person enjoys playing.

Thanks for reading this. 🙂
Adam

(tl;dr Unity bad but then not as bad? Adam still 3D art bad, started again to make simpler game that might actually finish, hope it is good and make people happy)