Sam Vallely has some new information regarding when the demo for Ultra Pro Wrestling will be released.
Ultra Pro Wrestling Lead Developer Sam Vallely recently spoke with WrestleZone. When asked when fans will be able to get ahold of a demo of the game, Vallely said that has been delayed from their initial estimations.
“Well initially, we were hoping that we would have the demo wrapped up by the end of this year. That’s looking less likely,” Sam Vallely admitted. “After the Kickstarter ended, there were two things that kind of got in the way of that. One was I just completely didn’t realize how much non-game development stuff I would have to do.
“Like all the media stuff and promoting the game, and there was all the business side, setting up the business stuff. There was just all the stuff that I ended up spending like two weeks after the Kickstarter, and it hadn’t been near the computer. I hadn’t done any programming. And I obviously wasn’t prepared for that. So the other thing was the animation system that we had.
“I thought I could create a workaround for the issues with the animation blend, but it ended up being a complete overhaul. So that added a bunch of time on. And then one of the animators as well, Frank, who I mentioned earlier, he now works with us full-time. But he wasn’t able to do that right away after the Kickstarter. It took a few months; he had to sort out some other stuff.
“So that took longer. There’s been a few things that have kind of made it take longer than initially anticipated. So now I’m kind of more looking at maybe February-ish before we have the one-on-one done.”
When asked if this could potentially push the final game’s release into 2025, Vallely still believes they’ll make their target of Holiday 2024.
“No, I think it should be fine. Yeah, I think it should be fine,” Sam Vallely said. “It’s so hard when you’re a small team. I think if you’re a big studio, you have everything very meticulously mapped, though. But we’ve been a small team. We’re just kind of projecting now based on the work that we’ve done.
“And we don’t know if we’re going to lose an animator or if we’re going to be in a position where we get two or three animators. So I think going forward that there’s a lot of things on the horizon that I’m quite confident will increase our production. One of the things actually, as well as the animation system within the game engine, as well as that having to change.
“We actually switched to a new software for creating animations. That is actually much, much faster. So I’m hoping that this will, again, it’s hard when you’re a small team to project out like this, but I’m hoping that the uptick in speed that we’ve kind of got there that will sort of balance everything out, and we should still be on track for the end of next year.”
READ MORE: Sam Vallely Goes In-Depth On DLC Decisions For Ultra Pro Wrestling
What do you make of Sam Vallely’s comments? Are you excited to get your hands on Ultra Pro Wrestling? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
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