The silence of 2016 is over. New river system, usability improvement and more.
World Machine has finally got a new development build (3014). Two of the most important new features are a major reworking of the River device to fully support multiple rivers and hierarchical river systems, and a usability improvement that lets you view the “before and after” of any device in the 3D View.
The creator is going to cover all the new features and updates in the next blog posts. In the meantime, he just teases the features, letting you dive into the latest build yourself. It’s been a long time since we heard about World Machine, so what is going on with the solution?
The developer took some time to write a post on the state of his project:
Everyone knows running a business is challenging, but what I didn’t expect is that it continually becomes challenging in new ways I wasn’t expecting. I started World Machine as a side project because I love mountains, computers, and the act of creation. Then I realized I had made something people could get a lot of use out of, and devoted myself entirely to running this business, quitting my corporate job. Since then, that’s been World Machine – me at my computer and lots of coffee, exploring how to make this software I love ever better. I created the forums with the vision of having a community of people all passionate about creating worlds, that could support and inspire each other, and enjoyed being a part of that same community myself. I looked forward to interacting with any customer that came along, happily answering questions, even if they were just teaching new users the features. It was fun and I could run the whole thing while still having plenty of time for big sprints of development.
But here’s what I never saw coming. All that was easily doable when there were a couple hundred users. But as World Machine continued to grow, the time devoted to handling the administrative and support side grew with it and sorely tested my ability to handle everything as a one-man shop. I’m amazed and grateful at the success World Machine has seen, but its success greatly reduced the time available for each part of the business – development, customer support, forum engagement, and generally keeping users updated (like the website and this blog). And those last two were the first things to drop.
You can read the whole post here.
We’ll be looking forward to finding out more about the latest build. Are you excited about the new features?