Version 2.1.1 has been released. Forgot to notify after. Pandemic reasons.
Now with that out of the way, I have an important announcement to make:
For the past years since this template released, circumstances have changed beyond what I would have ever anticipated.
Problem 1: Apple’s despicable business practices have finally become a liability and it took both the evidence of their deliberate anti-consumer programming to destroy iOS devices whenever one attempts to repair it anywhere besides Apple-sanctioned vendors, and the EAG (Epic-Apple-Google) Legal War to finally convince us to deprecate all support for iOS. Far as the EAG War is concerned, I am not taking sides there either. All parties are guilty, especially Epic Games, and they even went so far as to censor any mentioning of Apple on their Twitch streams (and I suppose now their YouTube channel as well). However regardless, one thing is certain: Apple does not care for it’s consumers and would rather force us to go through so many hoops just to even use their services. I was already frustrated at the tedious process and prerequisites for developing products for their iOS products, and personally, I will not waste $99/yo just to have a chance to submit my products in hopes that it even sells, IN ADDITION to being forced to buy a Macintosh computer to package builds. This entire ordeal is required just to test 2DTST on the iOS (lest there is a workaround to this I know not).
I have concluded that Apple and ALL of their products are nothing but a complete liability, both for developers and consumers, so from hence forth, we will not associate nor work with any of their services for game development anytime soon. Consider this a blacklist. We will instead divert all attention to Android for mobile support.
Problem 2: Epic Games.
You can agree, disagree, love me, or hate my entire existence for what I am about to say, I very honestly care not at all by this point:
I am not happy at all with what has become of this company as well as the community (especially them) these past years, ever since the Fortnite Battle Royale machine (and worse) corrupted them. I hardly recognize Epic Games, their developers, nor their fans anymore. They are not what they used to be; the company and community I once knew, respected, honored, and cared for. Lately I have not been the least afraid of voicing my concerns or disappointment of the company’s actions, but only because I cared for Epic and wanted them to change for the better rather than let a company like Tencent influenced them to a path of avarice and… Well I am unsure I am at liberty to say the other problem here on this thread. However after watching a third of Thursday’s stream, I became utterly disgusted. I now realized the old Epic Games is truly gone, never to return. Which also means, It is time for us (or at the very least myself) to move on from this cursed community.
Fate of 2DTST:
For whatever it is worth, we are still committed to working on the template for it will still take time for our departure from the Epic Games/Unreal Engine community to complete. Unfortunately for me, we still have a handful of games under our belt that rely on UE4 (and 3 of them UE5), so it will still be a while before Néotl Empire is officially gone from here for good. However, while the other members might be still remain active in the community (individually), I will personally be limiting all my interactions with the UE4 community from now on, only doing so if I am convinced there is no other or better alternative (in other words, only if I really have to, not because I want to). All that is considered, Version 3 will be the final version for this product and either the final or second-to-final product we will ever release on the UEM. There might be one more product arriving there should Epic decide to approve it (very minor yet important tool). Besides that, we will be moving marketplace services elsewhere.
Far as mobile support, it will arrive later as an update to V3. It will not follow into UE5’s release either, both because of our discontinuance of Unreal Engine, and because we suspect Paper2D will likely be deprecated in UE5.
If you want to keep track of progress with 2DTST, you can do so by joining our Discord server instead and following instructions for full access. You can thank the terribly restrictive overhaul of the forum’s interface format, we will not update this thread very often as it is now difficult to use the forums (Nevermind that it also managed to magically undeleted every post on the site).
Even in dark times like this… Always ever vigilant.
