Hello there everyone, just had to post a quick update regarding what happened to Bot Battle 2, as I've made each map independent following the idea of "one mega-island" not working out so well, both on a technical as well as an engagement level.
Having spread out the maps into independent releases, as was the case prior to me coming back to map making, it seems easier to manage the maps, and also helps my laptop actually load the UEFN worlds faster since it is less of a memory hog, and running Fortnite and UEFN simultaneously (albeit on low settings) is more than possible with this in practice.
But unfortunately, as I was moving the assets from one map to another, I took too long between copying and pasting Bot Battle 2 assets into its own map, so a lot of them go missing after you copy without pasting for a long time, so that led to the map unfortunately missing much of its building blocks; forcing me to recreate it... again.
So that's what I've been doing, and I have been hard at work on that. Unfortunately, this made me preoccupied from my work on Outpost Outbreak, but rest assured that my developement of that, now that I'm less busy with my own personal life, as well as having converted it to a UEFN project rather than a Fortnite Creative 1.0 project, will make me be able to (hopefully) finish it faster, as soon as I am done with Bot Battle 2.
So, I know many of the fans of this franchise are tired of the constant re-releases, updates, or patches to the same old three maps, as I've been recycling them for a really long time now. Time flies past you, and it becomes hard to believe that Bot Battle 2 was made over 2.5 years ago, which is just insane to me. Even Bot Battle, which I made all the way back in 2020 which is 6 years ago, still feels like yesterday. I still remember the week-long effort and the manual adding of each Sentry (back when the Sentries were traps in Creative 1.0) that I did, having been inspired by the original BOT map, as well as numerous games I've played; in and out of Fortnite... Gun Games, RPGs, the idea of a rarity gauntlet with the environment themed around what rarity you're carrying seemed quite simple for a lone developer.
But for Bot Battle 2, I had help, and for Bot Battle 3, I did lots of it on my own but it has been in development hell for a while, could even say the same for Outpost Outbreak unfortunately. The problem is that the first three maps I made, as well as Bot Battle 2, didn't seem extremely difficult to finish; because either the idea was simple enough for one developer, or I had some help in executing the idea itself, and even then, it wasn't exactly easy.
So I hope you guys can forgive how long it takes for new entries to come out, I know it's Fortnite and it isn't at all supposed to be this hard or take this long to get one or two maps done, but most of the time I'm either preoccupied with my own life, or hard at work on a small segment in one of my newer maps such as Bot Battle 3 or Outpost Outbreak.
And that's the scalability problem; it causes developer bloat. Either I keep my maps at about the same scale as they always were, spawning just many different iterations of Bot Battle, or I expand the world, the storyline, the characters, the premise, but do the same effort doubled for one map, as it took before to make my first three maps. But I choose the latter; I always do. I have some really solid ideas in my head, but executing them takes lots of time and effort, but I promise you it'll be worth the wait.
In the meantime, you can replay Bot Battle 2, or introduce it to your friends or acquaintances to have a good time together; the original 4-player co-op will be re-releasing as it was day 1 back in 2024, very, very soon. So stay tuned!
And as for those waiting for Bot Battle 3 and Bot Battle: Outpost Outbreak!, while I have not made much progress on them due to me being pre-occupied with splitting the maps from each other, and now with rebuilding Bot Battle 2 again, I promise it'll be hard and long days of tireless work on them, as soon as I can. And I'll be sure to update you all very regularly about it! Stay tuned here for the latest updates, as always.
