PaintSquad Development Updates (and some notes on Halloween)

Why PaintSquad is offline

As previously mentioned in our article titled "PaintSquad Maintenance: Starting July 4th" released back in July, we've initiated maintenance for PaintSquad. However, due to the significant confusion surrounding the reasons for this maintenance, we'd like to provide you with a clear explanation:

Since the initial release of PaintSquad, the game has grown by an immense amount. Some of its fundamental systems were not originally designed to handle this scale, and this became particularly evident with the latest 2.1 Release. While we applied several hotfixes, it turned into a sort of "whack-a-mole" situation where solving one issue led to two new ones.

Consequently, we were left with no other choice but to take PaintSquad offline and embark on a substantial reworking of its core foundations.

Why we have been so silent

In our Discord Community, we've received numerous inquiries regarding the update's progress, and we understand that we haven't been able to providing frequent updates. We want to offer our apologies for not being as transparent as we should have been.

One of the reasons for this is that a substantial portion of the changes is happening under the hood and may not be immediately apparent. Additionally, development had a temporary pause due to our lead developer dealing with some personal matters. Since this, we're now completely back on track though. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this period.

Why the update is taking so long

We're essentially reworking PaintSquad's entire base to ensure its scalability in the future, which, as you can imagine, is a very time-consuming task. Additionally, we're finally bringing to life some long-planned changes and tweaks from our backlog that just make sense to implement now during this overhaul. We understand it's not ideal, but we're confident that the quality and performance of the re-release will be well worth the wait.

When can we expect the re-release?

Right now, we're still not quite ready to pinpoint an exact release date, but we want to reassure you that we're completely on track and committed to getting this update to you without cutting corners. The return of PaintSquad is just as eagerly awaited on our end, and we're excited for you to dive into what we've been cooking up. We'll also be keeping you in the loop more often on the progress going forward.

A little teaser

You might recall the game screen in Invasion that had to be removed due to a few hiccups. Well, we've gone back to the drawing board and revamped our system to make these screens more versatile and adaptable, also naming it "Panorama". With Panorama, we can quickly craft layouts using XML and introduce functionality with the help of JavaScript. To give you a taste of its capabilities, we've quickly built a little snake game in just 30 minutes!

This enhancement will not only pave the way for the return of the Invasion Game Screen but also open doors to incorporate similar screens in PaintSquad - but also our other experiences - in the future for a variety of purposes.

If you're eager to learn more about this system and the technologies behind it, keep an eye out for our upcoming Developer Blog page, where in our first post we'll delve deeper into the intricacies of Panorama.

About Halloween

We've also received quite a few messages about a Halloween event, and after careful consideration, we've decided not to host an event this year. Our primary focus is on the PaintSquad re-release, and all our resources are dedicated to that effort. But don't worry, we're already brainstorming some ideas for next year's Halloween event to ensure it'll be worth the wait.