We took advantage of Solarus Labs yearly meeting to make a retrospective of what happened in 2020, and what are the upcoming projects for Solarus in 2021.
Solarus in 2020
The good
We created exactly one year ago Solarus Labs, a nonprofit organization to legally support Solarus. So far, it has only served as a legal way to receive donations. We hope we’ll be able to organize some events someday, but the pandemic postpones this again and again.
Solarus had two releases: 1.6.3 and 1.6.4. They brought a better macOS support, better stability, and first and foremost: a free and open-source tileset by Max Mraz, called Ocean Set.
Solarus goodies began as a joke, but we actually made them real. Eventually, we sold some and it helped us pay the server fees.
Christopho made a video hommage to Bob Ross. He parodies the famous painter while creating a map in Solarus Quest Editor.
The community is bigger and bigger, and everyday more involved. Solarus got a lot of love from its community:
- Visual Novel System: a feature-packed overhaul of Solarus dialog system.
- New resource packs, new Lua scripts.
- Progression on Children of Solarus: the world map is done!
Solarus made some buzz for multiple reasons:
- Solarus has been added to Recalbox.
- Liège Game Lab: an university uses Solarus for education.
Some Solarus games have quite buzzed (both by Max Mraz):
- Yarntown: a 2D hommage to Bloodborne.
- Ocean’s Heart: the first Solarus game to be released on Steam.
For all these reasons, we can say Solarus reaches maturity.
The less good
Some projects have not progressed a lot:
- Text and video tutorials.
- Collaboration with a French institute.
- Android app.
- New quest launcher/browser.
- The Legend of Zelda: Oni-Link Begins.
Solarus projects for 2021 and later
We always have lots of projects for Solarus. Here is a list of what we would like to achieve in the year to come, and later.
Solarus 1.6.5:
- Bug fix for the legendary issue of the
Rkey when resizing tiles in the Quest Editor (done!). - Other bug fixes.
- Improvements for Ocean’s Heart.
- Top-secret project… (You’ll get some news soon!)
- Bug fix for the legendary issue of the
Solarus
1.72.0:- Multiplayer features (almost done).
- New Quest Launcher, with much more features and a fancy UI.
- Android app (still in alpha).
- Dark theme for the Quest Editor on Windows.
- New logo.
- Website refresh.
Knowledge transfer:
- More tutorials.
- New API documentation website.
Game development:
- The Legend of Zelda: Oni-Link Begins.
- Children of Solarus (number one priority).
Goodies:
- Covid-19 mask?
- New stickers (to come with the new logo).
Solarus Labs news
In order to give you the best transparency, we decided to open the Solarus Labs Git repository to the public. This is where we store the source for the organization documents: legal status, meeting notes, etc. However, it’s in read-only mode: forks and merge requests are blocked. Only the board members are allowed to edit the files.
Conclusion
Despite the not-so-good circumstances, 2020 has been a great year for Solarus! Thanks for all the community members. 2021 forecasts great things too: the release of Ocean’s Heart might bring new people to the community.