Hello everyone, here are the news from the front.

It’s september, yeah! After two months with a reduced rhythm because of holidays, heat wave, and other things, I am finally fresh and motivated to attack the rest of the dev. I’ve revisited my schedule a bit, there’s still a lot of things to do, I’ll really need this energy. I hope you have also enjoyed the summer :)

Programming

I have made good progress in programming the latest features, but I have not finished yet.

I have implemented a very robust localization system which I like a lot. It is so clean that it would make a very nice asset for the Asset Store, if I took the time to do it. We’ll see.

I had a lot of things to do with the game manager, especially to have a clean management of the game states, the loading screen, and so on. I can now launch the game and have beautiful transitions from the logo to the game, with fade of music and screens, etc. It looks a lot better.

I started making the necessary changes to the inventory system to solve the major issues encountered during playtests. I have to be careful not to refactor too deeply some of the things I did at the beginning that I do not like at all, but still do something clean. In theory it should not be too long. In theory.

Procedural Things

I always play a little with procedural modeling, especially with what I did during my Ph.D. thesis. Here is an image of an quick ecosystem generation test:

Graphic Novel

I really like my dialogue system, because with just a few additions I was able to do a graphic-novel-like introduction sequence. Here is what it looks like:

So I took the opportunity to write the game intro as a multiple choice story. Not only did I have a lot of fun writing it (I should restart to write novels, like I did when I started the game), but the result is really cool. So cool, I was told I should make a game just like that. It’s not a bad idea, I thought about it for some stories I wrote and that I know are too hard to do as an adventure game, but that would be great with this format.

3D Characters

This week, I took my courage with both hands to start the 3D modeling of the remaining characters. Modeling characters is the hardest for me, especially because I do not know how to draw. I make quick sketches to think about the concept, and I’m looking for a lot of sources, but I do almost everything directly in 3D. Here is an image of the Adventurer (work in progress):

I still have to improve it, I do not like its proportions. I would like it to be threatening while being a bit ridiculous, and in armor while having an “adventurer” aspect. I will continue to iterate on. Do not hesitate to tell me what you think of it :)

Roadmap

After the adventurer and a review of the other 3D characters, I will make the last character, which I will keep secret not to spoil. Then, as I said last time, I’ll iterate to improve the game experience (and everything else) on this first part of the adventure, until I am satisfied.

See you soon,

Arnaud

Hello everyone, here is the news from the front.

First of all, sorry to have again taken so much time since the last newsletter. When I’m focused on a task, I still have a little difficulty in forcing myself to do some “community management”. Overall, everything is going well, the development of the game is progressing well, besides I begin to see the end of the development, even if it is still far away and that there are still many dangers to come.

First pennies

That’s it, I finally won my first pennies, thanks to the sale of Unity assets, and that’s good :)

I probably have misjudged the market because it will not be enough to finance the rest of the development of the game. So I went back on my previous decision to make assets, and I now focus on the game. I will have to find an alternative solution to finance it, maybe with a Kickstarter near October.

Ultimate Screenshot 1.2

Even though I focus on the game, I spend a little bit of my time finalizing the latest version of Ultimate Screenshot Creator 1.2, that I started a few months ago. With this version it will be possible to take in-game screenshots on any platform. This version will even allow the automatic addition of images in the Android and iOS galleries. This version should be completed soon, in the meantime you will find more info about my assets on www.wildmagegames.com/unity.

First part almost completed

In order to set a shorter-term goal, I decided to split my game into four parts and to focus on finalizing them one by one. So I’m working on the first one, and it’s almost completed.

It means that I have revised the level design, reworked all the 3D models and created all the missing ones, reworked the atmosphere and the light, the programming, the gameplay, and all that is necessary for this part to be as polished as possible. Here is an example of one of the caves of the game:

Even if there are four parts, finishing this one means having finished a lot more than a quarter of the game, but rather 75%, since it implies finishing a lot of elements that are also found in the other parts. It will also allow me to have a “final” version on which I will be able to iterate and add content little by little, and thus better control the durations and budget.

Almost feature complete

I will soon have finished to code all the game elements.

To improve performance, I have implemented a continuous level loader, so that only objects close to the player are activated. It greatly improves performance.

I have implemented two procedural systems: creating rivers from curves, and creating random distributions from polygons, to place objects in the scene. I will detail these elements in future logs, but here is an example of mushrooms generated with my method, which takes into account the obstacles during the generation:

I worked again on the dialogue system, and it is now much more robust and powerful. In particular, I needed to create dialogue lines that could only be said once, and hubs. Here are two test dialogues that illustrate these new possibilities:

I am currently completing the localization system to allow the translation of the different game elements.

I will finally have to work on the inventory to correct game-design issues that have appeared during playtests, especially on the shortcuts management.

Website style and content update

I made an update of the website style and content. I wanted to give it a more professional look. I invite you to tell me what you think of it!

Roadmap

Once I have finished programming the last elements, I will finish the few 3D models missing for this part, the 3D model of an adventurer, and finally the game logic (dialogues, interactions, sequences).

I will then iterate on this part until the game experience is representative of my original idea, and until the game is good. I will also need playtesters in a few weeks, I will send an e-mail about it when it’s time, but do not hesitate to let me know right now if you are interested.

That’s all for this big devlog. You may also have noticed the new layout, do not hesitate to tell me what you think.

See you soon,

Arnaud