Posts: Diary

Where do I begin? I started developing Zombie Jack more than 10 years ago, it was a learning experience and went through many itterations. The game has taken shape into it’s final form and while unfinished, it has amazing potential.

On the 13th of August 2023, Unity, announced their new payment model, namely the Runtime Fees, which would theoretically charge the developer (me) up to 20 US cents (0.31 AUD) per install of my game. Which means, if you install Zombie Jack after purchasing it on your PC and your Steam Deck, I will be put of pocket 62 cents. On top of this, if you uninstall and re-install, I will be charged again. At least, this is how I and many others understand the current situation. We are all still waiting for more clarification from Unity.

Regardless, one thing has been made perfectly clear. At the end of the day, the product I produce does not belong to me. So even if they decide to retract some statements and walk back on their decision/s, we all know now that they can never be trusted.

What does that mean for Zombie Jack? At this stage, I’m not sure. I will probably continue development but with great hesitation until more is known. I will also be looking into alternative open source engines.

Here is a video I found on YouTube that pretty much sums up the recent events nicely.

I took a little break this week from working on Zombie Jack to give the website a slight update. It’s still early days, but I felt like showing off a little bit of ZJ gameplay in the form of a video banner.

Next on the ZJ to-do list is to fix some bugs, yay, and add a Power Swing ability. I’m still striving to get a playable version of the game out there as soon as possible. So. Much. To. Do.

The Rustbox Games official Discord server is here! If you’d like to stay in the know, follow the development of Zombie Jack, or just hang out, you can find us on our Discord.

On the 25th of April, my best friend and co-developer went for a walk and never returned. I’ll probably never know what happened to him, which makes it so much harder to say goodbye.

He was always there for me and I appreciated every moment with him. I’ve known him for half of my life and there will forever be a piece missing.

To a better year. Cheers. 🍻

It’s alive! IT’S… ALIVE! … and so quiet too. I guess that old hard drive really was on its last legs. Probably should have known. Whoops.

As some of you know, my projects hard drive failed a short while ago and I lost a lot of my design files, thanks to Windows Backup and Restore for doing an amazing job of backing up every hour as requested. *He says sarcastically*. Seriously, how can it be that broken? My last successful backup was in May. MAY! No notifications or no pop-ups to suggest otherwise. As far as I was concerned everything was backed-up safely, but noooo, Windows just had to go and be a jerk.

At the end of the day, I recovered 99% of my work from cloud storage, emails, and sheer willpower. What I did lose I can recreate. Thank goodness for BitBucket! They kept Zombie Jack company until I had a hard drive up and running again to download onto. Now, back to work!