The rebirth of Overlord is at hand. The wait has been long, and while its full form is not yet realized, we stand at the dawn of a new era.
Overlord 2 will be released next week so we wanted to give y'all a quick look at what to expect –and save on version 2.
TLDR
- Overlord is becoming a desktop app so we can build new methods of connection and interaction
- It works a lot better/faster/more reliable than v1
- Overlord 2 will be released on July 29, 2024
- The price is going up to $75, but it will be on sale for $60 during the first two weeks
- Licenses are one-time purchases and come with 1 year of feature updates.
- As a pre-release, you may purchase now or renew for the v1 price of $55 and get access to v2 plus one year of updates
We'll go more in-depth next week but for now we'd like to talk about some of the whys of v2.
Our vision for the future
Why do I need an app if it worked before as an Extension?
Fair question. And right now, a desktop app might feel like a bit of overkill to do most of what v1 did. We are trying to future-proof a system that so many users rely upon daily while growing along with the wild new ways designers are utilizing the creative tools that are being released every month.
Adobe changes
You may have heard that Adobe is changing its 3rd party development platform from CEP to UXP. Yes, these are different letters, but it also means different technology under the hood. One of those main technologies is an inter-app communication system called vulcan.js that Adobe released as part of the CEP extension system. This is the core of Overlord v1 and what makes it possible to send messages between apps. Adobe devs have confirmed that it would not be included as part of UXP.
If Adobe switched to UXP tomorrow, Overlord would stop working
These changes haven't affected Ae or Ai yet, but it's only a matter of time. It's also out of our hands, and that's not something that excites us. To be proactive, we have built our own inter-app communication system that will live outside the Adobe ecosystem. As Adobe technologies change, we may now update Overlord with confidence.
Building our own communication system has also made it possible to know which apps are available to receive messages and to target a specific version. No more silent failures or accidentally sending to multiple versions of Ae.
Beyond Adobe
We are living in a golden age of design tool options but with a very finite amount of time on earth, it can be challenging working between them all. By creating a desktop app, we open up the potential to communicate with apps outside of Creative Cloud.
This is incredibly exciting and we have a lot of areas to explore, but I can confirm that Figma will be connecting with Overlord later this year.
Beyond buttons
Extensions are incredibly powerful ways to interact with the host Adobe app, but there are some inherent limitations. By utilizing an Overlord desktop app, we open up the potential for running actions with keyboard shortcuts and additional hardware.
Updates
A desktop app is easy to update. Extensions are not.
With the Overlord app, you'll be notified when an update is available to install with a click. This will also update the extensions and plugins that live in the host app.
Overlord 2 price
The price for Overlord will be going up to $75. This price includes:
- a perpetual license that you may use forever
- one year of feature updates
If you want the new features and connections we are building after the year of updates, then renew your license for another year. Or don't.
You never have to pay to update. It is not a subscription. It's not a service. It will not stop working in a year. If the version of Overlord you buy (or v1 that you bought in 2017) works for you, your workflow, and your hardware, then keep on using it.
Perpetual license philosophy
Each one of us has entirely too many subscriptions. As a software company, we understand why it makes sense for a lot of products to use subscription payments. Since the beginning, we have decided that Overlord should run entirely offline. This is for both speed and privacy.
Because we have no interest in your design data moving through a server somewhere, it doesn't seem right to charge an ongoing fee for using the system.
We hope you will continue to renew your license so we can keep shipping new features, but it's not required.
Overlord is like a nice pair of shoes. We hope you will buy them because they look good on you. We hope that next season's pair of Overlord shoes will also look nice on you and you will want to buy that version too. But we aren't going to charge you a lacing fee.
Mandatory photo of Twig the wolf
