Hello and thanks for trying out Windstone. I look forward to your feedback.
I am the sole developer except for a real life friend who composed about half of the music. I composed the rest .
I've been working with UE4 for about 6 years and have been 3D modeling in Blender for the same amount of time. I've used GIMP for about 15 years for digital art and photoshop long before that. I've been a life long artist in many mediums.
All the assets in Windstone are created by myself with the exception of a few textures. The vast majority of the textures I make in GIMP. I make all the 3D models in Blender.
I've been working on Windstone for about 5 years nearly every day, often all day, much more than a full time job.
For a road map, I keep an endless list of things I want to complete to help stay focused. Usually I have a shorter priority list of 10 to 20 tasks and once those are done, I play test and add new things to the list, which usually includes a mix of bugs that need to be fixed, new mechanics to implement and new assets to create as well as game play balancing.
It's usually not difficult to stay motivated as I love working on the game while watching videos or listening to music. The only time it was really hard to stay motivated was during 2019 when I was dealing with some major real life issues, but other than standard burn out from working too much and then taking a break every once in a while to regenerate, it's not hard for me to find motivation as most days I look forward to it.
I'm very happy with how development is going, but that's not to say existential dread and fear of failure aren't often on my mind. I also am a bit envious of bigger dev teams who could have accomplished what I have in a fraction of the time, but I also enjoy working alone. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to work on game development and thankful for those who enjoy playtesting and offering helpful feedback.