EARLY ACCESS RELEASE, THE ROADMAP
It’s hardly a surprise but ACS3 turned out to be much larger project then I originally thought. Even after factoring a fair amount of uncontrolled growth into my estimates ;). When you’re one man army it’s very easy to get lost in such a mammoth undertaking that stretches over multiple years. You have to switch between high level tasks such as general program design and very low level ones like working on smallest functions in the code constantly.
A while ago I created a very general breakdown of the project to allow myself to see the overall progress easier. In the beginning it was quite depressing because it looked like I haven’t really done much at all but over last 2 months or so it started looking better. I thought I would share this simple roadmap now so everyone who is interested in ACS3 development progress can track it as well.
I broke down the progress of each feature into 4 stages: prototype, in progress, implemented and polished.
Prototype means that I’ve done some work on a feature but it’s not production code (it’ll have to be rewritten) or it’s code that can be reused from ACS2 but hasn’t been ported over to new codebase yet.
In progress means that there’s ongoing work on a feature and some parts of it are functional but it still requires more work to be complete.
Implemented means that the feature is functional enough that can be considered done for release. The feature can still be enhanced but even if there’s no time to do it - it’s working well enough.
Polished means that the feature is ready for release and all the known bugs were fixed. I don’t expect any features to reach polished state until the very end of development cycle when only bugs will be getting fixed and no new functionality is introduced.
It’s worth noting that first 3 positions (Core System, Rig Framework, RDE) although look modest in the table cost months of development and constitute a very substantial part of the work for this release. If I had to put a number on it it would probably be at least around 40% of the entire effort.
At the same time I feel confident enough to announce that ACS3 Early Access version will be released within Q2 2020. Hopefully a few weeks before end of Q2 but time will tell ;). Pricing for new licenses and upgrades will be announced later.
Last but not least - if you don’t have ACS2 already you can grab it for $49 now and upgrade to ACS3 for a difference in price when the time comes. In short, you don’t have to wait for ACS3 but can get ACS2 now, upgrade to ACS3 when Early Access is released and the overall cost will be the same as buying new ACS3 license. Check the link below for details.