#i may. POSSIBLY make some sprite edits soon. no promises

[bamgamronpa]

i miss kiibouma

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: May 15th Part 1

It’s been longer than usual since our last answer session, so I’m answering a ton of questions today! It’s so big I split it into two parts. Thank you for the patience on getting a response to these.

Thanks for reaching out to us with your questions and kind words ^^!

Sorry if this has been asked before or isn't something you can say but is there anyway for Cove to confess in step 4? I wanted him to confess in step 3 and followed all the steps to make him do it but ended up texting my family instead of Cove at the end.

Yeah, Cove can confess in Step 4!

Hello! I heard that Cove is on the spectrum, albeit undiagnosed. As someone who is ND, this makes me UNBELIEVABLY happy. I literally was brought to tears! Thank you for that!

Out of curiosity, will Cove be diagnosed in Step 4? I have a strong feeling y’all won’t make it a HUGE deal/make it out to be negative, so I’m not worried about that whatsoever! I’m just curious just he’ll off handedly mention it? Or will it just not be touched upon at all (which is ok!)?

Either way is ok, I’m just curious!

I’m happy it made you happy! Admittedly, Cove simply being someone with autism that grew up not being diagnosed was something I included for myself. I didn’t really think anyone would notice or ask about it, aha. But players did start to have questions about his traits, so I started to talk about it outside of the game. It’s great to see it get such a positive response and now I do feel like having it be a non-topic may have been the wrong choice and bringing it up would’ve been good in terms of having positive representation for that. I don’t know if I’ll find a way to mention it in Step 4 now, with how far along the game is, but I am at least thinking about it when originally it wasn’t something I really even considered.

Hey!  Just wanted to say thank you for Our Life.  It's been a bright spot and a needed escape in what's otherwise been a crummy year.  I know you just did a Q&A post but I figured I'd ask anyway.  Was just curious about Step 4.  Will it be similar to the other Steps in that it consists of several different moments or will it just be one long sequence?

Step 4 is shorter than the prior Steps because it’s just an epilogue rather than a full arc of a story. It’ll consist of scenes that all happen in a set row one after the other. There won’t be a collection of Moments to choose from. But it’ll still be very sweet and fun.

¡hola!, you see, first I want to say that I love Our Life! (°◡°♡) and I have 2 important questions, would Cove cry watching titanic? and what is the saddest part according to him? (sorry for my english) 

Titanic would make him cry. He’d probably think the parts showing people who aren’t able to make it to the life boats/are choosing to stay and go down with the ship were the saddest.

Hello, I wanted to ask how much you earn with creating games? Like is it possible to make a living? Thank you >< <3 

How much I earn varies a lot month to month based on Steam sales, Patreon backers, and how many projects are in full production at the time. It’s also hard to say how much I make historically, since that also changes dramatically year by year. But I do earn enough to work on these games full time! I really appreciate all the support that allows me to do that.

Hey!! I was wondering for the 18+ Our Life moment, will there be an emphasis on safety/comfort for all involved? I feel like there  would be just going off of what the rest of the game is like, but I wanted to ask 

Yes! Cove is a nervous boy himself and also super cautious about doing anything the MC doesn’t like, so clear consent from both is absolutely needed for anything to happen. It’s a conversational sexy times Moment with stops/starts so the two can talk about how they’re feeling, rather than a heat of the moment just going for it kind of thing.

Hey!! I was wondering how long the wedding dlc would be? Will it be broken up into moments, or just one big event? 

It’s one long series of scenes all in a row rather than a collection of Moments to pick from. It’s the shortest and the least expensive of all the DLCs. It’s not super crucial to get and those who aren’t into big weddings can totally skip it without worry.

HELLO AMAZING DEVS 👋 i am hopelessly in love with the worst guy ever (jeremy king) and because of this i have a really stupid question: does he really hate people who are nice to him? TvT he’s too cute to be mean to istg it’s a miracle JB held the urge to be consistently nice to him bc just look at his FACE he is so cute! thank you for jeremy’s route it’s so lovely (and awful bc he’s scum 11/10) it gave me so much laughs LMAO i hope you guys have a good day!! 

Haha, thank you. He doesn’t hate them but he’s certainly not pleased with them. Jeremy is either uncomfortable with or annoyed by people being sweet on him, depending on how they approach it. He’s far more comfortable with jerkiness. It lets him relax and he can be himself without it being a problem, since he’s also a jerk. He feels a level of guilt being such a little punk to kind people, not enough to be a better person but still.

Has Cove dated or been interested in someone other than MC? 

Nope! He stays single over the course of the game if he’s not with the MC.

Is Step 4 more mature? Or it's gonna be set in similar atmosphere as Step 3? 

Step 4 is a similar atmosphere as Step 3. Though, it’s actually kind of less mature-topic heavy than Step 3 since it’s just a ‘hey, let’s check in on the gang to see what they’re up to’ style epilogue rather than a story arc with serious issues.

will there be new music for now and forever?? or will the old our life music be reused? 

It’s gonna be a brand new soundtrack. We’ll be opening up a job position for that soon.

Hi, is it okay if we use the assets in Our Life (like the sprites) for fanworks or fan content content, like edits? 

Sure! Just as long as you don’t use the assets made by those artists to make money.

Quick clarification on Step 3 choices: I hope I didn't come off rude (because I LOVE the game, really!!), I was just curious because the intro threw me off at times. For example, you could choose how you felt about Elizabeth in Step 2 (Dinner), but during the Step 3 intro, it says that you got closer to Liz and I didn't get a choice in it. 

For the example, it can’t be helped that you’re closer to Liz in Step 3 than you were in Step 2 because she’s inherently closer to the MC regardless of whether you liked her or not in Step 2. Her feelings are out of your control and the game isn’t so dramatic that you can push her affection away and not let her bond with you, haha. But ‘being closer’ can still be relative. For some people maybe that means you’re best buds now and for others it might just mean you’re not fighting all the time any more. If there’s other parts you want to mention, feel free to let us know.

Did the illustrator for Our Life change? 

We have many OL artists! The main artists who set the game’s style haven’t changed, but there’s multiple other artists who help finish assets.

So Miranda's type is confident and outgoing, huh? So...does that mean Terri's her type?? 👀 

Haha, sorry for the late reply on this. As you might’ve seen in our post yesterday- yeah that is her type.

Hey! First, I just want to say I've really enjoyed how detailed OL got with gender identity and sexuality and how respectful the topics were handled! It's been so wonderful to play since the experiences could be close to my own (I'd be lying if I said I didn't tear up at parts). Second, I was wondering, would future games explore the topic of polyamory? I'd love to see more visual novels allow room for that and I saw you've explored the topic before.

Keep up the amazing work! ♡

Thank you! We do want to include polyamory in at least some of our future projects. Floret Bond, which might be what you’re referring to when mentioning how we’ve explored the topic before, is on hold unfortunately. So right now I’m not sure when something might release or what will be the first game of ours to come out with poly relationships (we might do something else before FB is done). We’ll have see how things ends up coming together.

Hey um. I feel like im not allowed to ask this on the private discord cuz people will yell at me but why is there so much focus on OL2 and not finishing OL1 stuff? I like the new people but i kind of want to finish cove's story and get derek and baxter stuff first. didn't people pay for it? 

I’m sorry, I don’t understand entirely what’s making that situation a concern. There’s a channel in the discord for critique where no one is allowed to comment back. People can voice things they’re worried about without any way for others to push back on it. And the two teams working on the OL games are different. We try to post pretty often about how we’re hiring brand new people to start on Our Life: Now & Forever. The OL1 team is all still working on OL1 like normal. There’s only more updates on the Patreon for OL2 because the expansions to the first game are mostly script-based at this point while OL2 is just starting to get all its art, which means there’s a lot more to show off as previews.

Also, there was a Kickstarter for the first Our Life, if that’s what you mean by people paying for it. But one of the stretch goals was to start Our Life 2 early, before fully completing Our Life 1, so that the new game could be out sooner. It wouldn’t make sense to stop doing OL2 work because that would be going against what backers were promised. Maybe you didn’t get the full story before and hopefully this clears it up!

Hello! I know it's up to every player but.. What is your recommendation for playing order? Did you ever had any timeline  events planned? 

I didn’t make the events with a planned timeline. The events got made simply as I had ideas for them and then I just kind of organized them from left to right on the screen in an order to space out more dramatic ones between more lighthearted ones. Any order the player wants to go with is totally valid!

Hi! It's Step 4 a paid dlc or update? And how long it's planned to be? Ps. Love the game! 

The Step 4 epilogue is free! The Cove Wedding DLC does cost money, though. Those are planned to be shorter than the usual Steps/DLCs.

Will we have options for what sort of job the MC might have by the time step 4 takes place? 

Yeah, you can. It’s not super exact or detailed, but there are options about it.

Is there a pandemic in Our Life world, or is it just in a better timeline with no pestilence? 

Our Life is pandemic-free! That didn’t exist when we began working on the project and it’s not something we’d like to feature in this story now that it has unfortunately come along, aha.

Hi, you said that you can play tic-tac-toe or hangman with Cove in Boating if you're sick/scared but I keep getting tic-tac-toe. Am I doing something wrong?

After being sick/scared you have to continue to be upset/unwell. If you calm down and decide to just chill you’ll end up playing tic-tac-toe.

Hi, GB Patch! Since Lee was initially commissioned to only appear in two Steps does this mean she won't appear in the Wedding DLC? I really like her character so it'll be a little weird to not have our cousin at our wedding, aha.

She is gonna be in Step 4/the wedding DLC after all! We’re still working with her creator to make sure it fits with what they wanted.

Is Sunset Bird based on a real place? Asking for a friend, not trying to move there or anything. 👀

It’s based on small beach towns in So-Cal, but not one specific town you could go see in real life, I’m afraid. It’d be nice if it was real, though.

—– —– —– —–

We released a new FAQ! It answers common questions and we’ll keep adding more to it. Please check there before sending an ask. FAQ   Also, if you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Blog

[fantroll-purgatory]

@chrisjoshington​

Okay before we start: CD I first saw this submission through my mobile browser and therefore had no idea that you sent it and was gonna message you to BEG you to hold it for me. I love them so much holy shit. And I have some ideas.

Alternia, Beforus, or AU: Alternia

Themes/Story: Corday is nb and uses he/they/she interchangeably. He’s basically Theater Kid taken to its logical extreme. They’re a master of the art of disguise and utilize this skill to aid the rebellion. And also do some assassinations. So there’s her themes; theater, disguise, assassination. 

Thank you for giving this offering to me, an Adjacent to Theater Kid. I am planning a murder mystery party for my birthday. My birthday was three months ago. Corday is invited.

Name: Corday Nopper

Corday is a reference to Charlotte Corday, Marat’s assassin. Nopper references Noppera-bō, a mythical creature that disguises itself as human and can wipe off its face like a chalkboard. 

I…I never knew about Charlotte Corady before I read this holy shit.

Age: 9 sweeps,19.5 human years

Strife Specibus: Knifekind

I wanted to keep it simple and discrete for him. It’s also just subtly, just a little bit a reference to the assassination of Julius Caesar.  

I think you could also maybe get away with Staffkind if he’s into musical theater because of the pun.

Fetch Modus: Monologue Modus. They have to monologue for a minute about an object without saying the name of the object and their modus has to guess which item he’s talking about.

My main concern with this modus is that it doesn’t seem like Corday would use this one because it would require too much noise if they were sneaking around. Maybe a CHARADES MODUS? It plays into the acting without them needing to speak, and it lends itself to comedy when they need to retrieve, for example, a Perfectly Generic Object.

Blood Color: Indigo

They’re described as the enthusiasts of the spectrum and I thought that fit well for the level of Passion she brings to her job. 

Special Abilities: Nothing aside from the usual blueblood strength. 

Symbol and Meaning: I’ve been split between Sagio and Sagirius. I’m leaning Sagirius though since it’s called “the Bardic.” 

I can see either one working for her tbh, but I LOVE Hope players so I side very strongly with Sagirius.

Trolltag: zealousDeathspian. Zealous references their enthusiasm, Deathspian is a portmanteau of Death and Thespian. 

DEATHSPIAN IS SO GOOD. What about dramaticMurd–I’m kidding I’m kidding. If you wanna go even harder on the theme maybe Deathspion to include “espion” in the title?

Quirk: As neutral as they can possibly make it. Outside of their acts, they like to project a relatively neutral image to make them harder to pin down. They are partial to (~: emojis, though. Their one identifying marker. 

Ex: Just as normal as can be. Definitely not a fun assassin or anything. (~: 

They change the quirk up between disguises, though! 

Lusus: Probably a big raccoon with many faces. As a reference to shapeshifting racoons in Japanese mythology.

Personality: Have you ever met a method actor? He buys into roles with all the enthusiasm possible. If you have any question about her disguises’ lives or personalities or likes or dislikes, she has a thorough answer. If she has a long mission playing a character with a broken arm, she will Break Her Arm. 

They’re committed to this because they thoroughly believe in the good of the cause and that if everyone just works hard enough, they’ll succeed, and succeed Soon. They’re definitely an optimist to a somewhat critical degree. They expect most things to go right simply because they believe in it. 

He also has a tendency towards the ruthless. When he’s got a mark, the mark will die. He’ll do anything to accomplish his goal. He has a strict moral sense, but that moral sense includes Never Fail To Follow Through On A Promise. 

She’s predisposed to drama and acting over the top when hanging out with friends, but can actually be a very serious and competent person when she needs to be. Dedicated and focused and responsive and passionate. 

Interests: Theater, Musicals, Costumes, Makeup, Sculpting, Glassblowing, Jewelry Making- Basically anything to do with costume making. Soap Operas, Trashy Dramatic Tabloid Magazines, A Good Knife. 

Title: Witch of Hope

Hope seems to fit her because of her strong convictions and optimism as well as her willingness to do anything to reach her goal. He has a strong personality, so an active class makes sense. But the Witch comes in in the active change, the need to shape and mold the nature of all that potential and optimism that he holds into a usable form. 

Land: Land of Drapes and Pinion 

Dream Planet: Derse

Design party…: 

Leftmost: Their True Appearance/how they dress in front of friends. They hacked off their horns so they could put fakes in their place because they’re just that hardcore. And he also designed a new symbol to do a little more anonymity preservation. The shoes are from fan-troll. 

Blue: This is what she wears if she wants to walk around discretely. The goal is to be as generic as possible. The shoes are John’s! 

Purple: He disguises himself as a Bartender/Candy Vendor and runs in highblood circles to get Intel. The symbol is meant to look a bit like a lollipop. There’s sopor candies stuck in his hair. And I couldn’t decide on a good makeup so I did like… paint that looks like drool and a black eye. The suit and pants are both from fan-troll. 

Violet: Her most recent disguise, she assassinated a violet Career Adviser and took on her role. And uses this as a way to meet people she can convince to join the rebellion.  

Listen…I love him so so much my redesign is the MOST minimal thank you for this joy. I especially love that you kept visual continuity with the eyes without compromising your vision for him as a master of disguise.

Okay SO. Minimal minimal changes idk if I’d even go top to bottom. Let’s go left to right?

True Self

I liked how you gave Corday’s casual duds this very “hanging out backstage before curtain call” vibe so I pinned their hair back the way one might if they were gonna wear a wig over it.

I also figured like. Breaking her horns its badass and all but it may be difficult to fit a prosthetic horn over that? So I gave her slightly shaved down horns (she could even do this with her knife!) that could potentially fit a prosthetic over them.

For his mouth I really liked the look of his teeth but I figured if they stuck out too much then they would difficult to conceal when he was undercover so I colored their outline in grey to keep the definition while visually implying that they’re set further back from his gums.

For their shirt, I gave them their real symbol. If we’re gonna push that this is how they are with their friends then that’s them at their messiest and most relaxed, which would include aspects of their True Self.

Other than that just a few outline changed but all in all it’s a real good look.

Generic

So I edited the symbol you originally gave to her true self and shifted it over, mostly so it could feasibly comply with multiple sign languages? I also edited the horns so they’re just pointy and not so arrowlike.

For their disguise, I wanna explain my reasoning. So we know that hemoanonymity is effective in that people genuinely can’t tell what your blood color is, but that it’s also see as childish and immaturely rebellious, so doing so may bring you attention in a way that simply wearing a shirt with a blood colored symbol may not.

BUT

A really, really effective disguise makes the onlooker draw their own conclusions and feel much smarter than you are. So, fine! Let his symbol be hemonanon! Deck him out in grey-colored clothing that’s indistinguishable from others’ fashion choices.

but

If you look closely you’ll see that they’re wearing bronze ankle socks. They’re very small! Barely noticeable! Almost like something they’d worn them by mistake.

Someone speaking to her would obviously roll their eyes at her greyed-out sign and cast about for hints of her “real” blood color and see the socks. Aha, they’d think, she’s slipped up. Forgot to leave those at home, huh? And now that they think of it, it’s obvious she’s a bronzeblood. It’s not just the circle in her sign either; she may not be dressed to the nines, but look at the touch of mascara around her lower lashes! The slight gleam of her lip gloss. Typical bronzebloods. They can try to hide their blood color all they want, but their desire for creature comforts will always give them away.

Barvendor/Candytender

Once again, not much to change here. Made the white threads in their suit yellow for that little pop, and swapped out the tie for a loud bow tie for the whimsy. I also adjusted a few stands of hair that felt like they were laying oddly.

For the face paint, between the candy association and the single sharp snaggletooth, he’s already halfway to being a jack-o-lantern, so that’s what I used for his makeup! Other than that he was perfect.

Career Advisor

I lengthened her jacket collar and her sideburns to more deliberately cover up the space where there would be a line between her face and her fin; we don’t really know how far practical makeup can take us in this instance. Aside from that though I really didn’t have any fixes and tbh that was more because I felt like I had to futz with the sprite a little bit.

I LOVE THIS TROLL SO MUCH LONG LIVE CORDAY.

-TR

[keinart]

Monday Update 30/04/2018

ENGLISH:

Hello everyone. Let’s keep talking this week about what’s done or isn’t, shall we? I think I’ve already mention how I want to keep these short.

Programming

One of the hardest part that slowed down the dev progress after finishing the writing has been the programming. My previous game, One Thousand Lies, was made in Renpy. Something like the staple for indie visual novels. While Renpy works well for itself it is pretty limited once you try to go a bit further and making modifications can become complex. Also the system how Renpy manages new versions, translations and some other features is pretty pretty basic (if I had to update OTL right now for anything, I would destroy everyone save data in the process) as well as there being a few bugs I couldn’t never get rid off while developing OTL (like the Gallery not working properly RANDOMLY for example). I tried to use Renpy for some time despite all this, but I had to switch to something else at some point if I wanted to step up some features.

So my adventure looking for a new engine began. Among all the possible choices the new Visual Novel Maker for example, from the same guys that make RPG Maker, is probably the strongest VN engine oriented right now. However it is pretty new, so there’s not much documentation and once again it is hard to do anything beyond what it brings by default. Not impossible though, but hard, since everything is based on Javascript and I pretty much hate that programming language (sorry for those 2 of you who actually like it).

There are more engines I’ve tried, but at the end I went for what every indie does, and for a reason: I’m using Unity.

At the end of the day Unity is powerful enough for anything I may need now and in the future (reminder that this is an episodic game so I want to release several games and have an engine that can keep up with any new ideas I may want to try), and it is free for indies unless I make a lot of money so there you have it. Worth it.

Combined with the asset Utage, a japanese Visual Novel engine, Unity becomes a pretty powerful weapon. All the text part is handled by an excel file meaning it is really easy to edit without breaking everything. This compared with Renpy that for translation would search every line in the code then export them to a new file is a lot more convenient. Renpy had the nuance that any little change at the source would immediately not match with the translation and force you to copy paste them again, delete the old one, and if you wanted to keep some order you had to go through the code to make sure everything is in their right place.

For a Visual Novel, where changes to the text happen every single day, let it be for typos or editing, handling a translation was pretty much hell. With Utage however they are just two excel columns, one next to the other, making it extremely easy to work and edit. Even animations are included within the Excel document, meaning I can handle scenes easier always keeping control.

There are more functions like the file system management so you can even handle downloads of assets by batches, pretty useful for the phone version of the game to don’t destroy internet connections and to avoid compatibilities issues if you update the game. Another function for dicing images that I would probably talk about at a different update but that reduces the game size by A LOT. The main issue is that some (not all) of the engine documentation is in japanese, so is not really accessible for western developers, but the creators give support in english if needed.

In any case it took long to get the engine working to start scripting. But it is finally happening and all what’s left is just getting assets and spending time putting them all to work. This takes me to the next point...

What’s left?

For music we have some songs done already, but at the same time I don’t want to show them yet for particular reasons that I will explain when the time comes. Music production got delayed a bit but I hope I can give you guys more info soon. For Graphic Design in our team we have Winter. Graphic Design started a bit late so for now we only have the Textbox finished as you can see with the first image, and the logo is almost done (I wanted to finish it before announcing the game actually...). We have a lot of ideas and great designs coming for all the other menus and you have probably already noticed that the buttons at the screenshots are a bit unusual... Look forward for them!

Then for art we do have all main characters designed, but work for sprites is still needing around 4 characters (I will announce them as soon as they get done!). And from there we will go into CG work. CG will probably take the longest since they are really high definition and complex pictures, but you have seen what Naguri can do already so I’m sure you will love the results.

For backgrounds we are almost halfway done. 10 backgrounds finished, but we are going for a bit over 20. They are really detailed as you have seen already so they take some time but the quality is top-notch. At the end of the day quality is our main concern after all.

So there’s still a lot of work to get done. As I mentioned before the story is finished. Generally most indie VN devs has the issue that they don’t have their text finished and their development fail at some moment where they realize their story is not really that good, or they need to do many changes, and all their assets become unusable. This is something that many of you have probably already seen a few times with some Kickstarters for example. I wanted to make sure with Lotus Reverie that that wasn’t the case, that’s why I finished the entire episode text before getting assets, and that’s why it took so long to announce. Personally I have never understood those games promising more text and content for their projects if they reach some goals. I think any story has an optimal amount of words, making it longer doesn’t necessarily make it better, the opposite, it can affect the pacing and make it boring, and for that reason I wanted to make sure that part is handled beforehand properly.

In exchange the work that is left can be “reduced” to getting assets and putting them all together. This of course requires work but more than anything is just time and money. The story won’t change and there shouldn’t be situations where the entire development shifts to a new directions going into dev hell. However I hope you guys understand how I have real life responsibilities and work, and because of that I can’t really dedicate full time to the game. At the end I don’t really have much time neither money, but no matter if it takes longer or if it costs more than I expect, the game will come along. This is a project of passion first and foremost.

Until next update!

ESPAÑOL:

Hola a todos. Voy a seguir hablando esta semana sobre lo que ya está terminado y lo que no. Vamos al lío que como ya dije quiero mantener estas actualizaciones cortas.

Programación

Una de las partes más difícil y de las que ha retrasado todo el desarrollo tras terminar de escribir ha sido la programación. Mi juego anterior, One Thousand Lies, se hizo con Renpy que viene a ser algo así como el programa estándar para desarrollar novelas visuales. Renpy funciona bien para lo que necesita pero al mismo tiempo está bastante limitado si quieres ir un poco más lejos. Cualquier modificación que vaya más allá de sus funciones se vuelve excesivamente compleja.

Uno de los mayores problemas que tenía con Renpy era la forma en la que las traducciones se llevaban a cabo. Renpy te detectaba todas las líneas de texto dentro del código y te las exportaba para traducirlas. El problema es que si hacias algún cambio al texto a posteriori después de traducirlo (algo muy normal para una novela visual que siempre se está cambiando pequeños detalles como faltas o editando algunas frases) el juego ya no te lo iba a detectar, lo que requería volverlo a exportar, y de nuevo reorganizar las nuevas líneas, borrar a mano las antiguas. En fin un poco caótico. También Renpy tenía problemas con por ejemplo cualquier actualización o parche que quisieras sacar del juego, si actualizase OTL ahora mismo para cualquier cosa destruiría todas las partidas guardadas de los jugadores inexorablemente. Incluso también tenía algunos problemas con bugs bastante aleatorios como la Galería no funcionando A VECES al desbloquear imágenes. En definitiva, que Renpy ha sido el motor que he intentado usar durante bastante tiempo con LR pero estaba bastante limitado en muchos aspectos.

De ahí empezó mi aventura buscando un nuevo motor. Hay muchos y los he probado todos pero por ejemplo diría que Visual Novel Maker, de los creadores de RPG Maker, es el más potente de todos. Es muy nuevo y lleva poco tiempo en el mercado lo que hace que haya poca documentación y nuevamente, ciertas limitaciones, pero lo recomendaría sin duda si no fuera por un detalle: requiere Javascript si quieres hacer tu propio código para lo que sea. Cualquier modificación fuera de lo que ellos ofrecen se vuelve nuevamente más difícil de lo que debería y más si hay que usar Javascript que es el lenguaje que más odio (lo siento por las dos personas que os gusta esa cosa).

De manera que he acabado haciendo lo que todo desarrollador indie acaba haciendo: usar Unity.

Unity al final es lo suficientemente potente para hacer lo que sea tanto ahora como en el futuro. Mi plan es sacar varios episodios de LR al fin y al cabo por lo que voy a necesitar un motor que pueda soportar cualquier futura idea o problema que pueda surgir conforme pasen los años, y Unity además es gratis de usar para indies siempre y cuando no ganes mucho dinero así que es la conclusión lógica a elegir.

Combinado con Utage, un engine japonés para hacer Visual Novels de la Asset Store de Unity, desarrollar una VN se vuelve bastante más conveniente. Todo el texto lo lleva un excel de manera que es muy fácil de editar cualquier cosa sin romperlo. A diferencia de Renpy tengo los idiomas en columnas del excel de manera que puedo cambiar lo que sea en uno u otro sin romperlo. Incluso las animaciones las puedo manejar con excel permitiéndole tener todo mucho más ordenado.

Hay muchas más funciones como el manejo de archivos que me permite organizar descargas a través de grupos de manera que para teléfonos móviles puedo reducir la cantidad de archivos que se van descargando para no destruir conexiones lentas y también permitir que juegues mientras se va descargando todo de forma paralela. También puedo actualizar el juego sin destruir archivos de guardado o crear incompatibilidades de versiones. Más funciones incluye el Dicing, que sirve para reducir el tamaño de las imágenes enormemente y del que ya hablaré en más detalle en otro momento.

El mayor problema que tiene es que no toda la documentación está traducida, lo que lo vuelve algo inaccesible a desarrolladores no japoneses. Pero los creadores ofrecen ayuda en inglés si la necesitas por lo que si eres un desarrollador creo que es una buena idea si estás buscando un motor con el que trabajar.

En cualquier caso me ha llevado mucho tiempo hasta que pude empezar el scripting del juego debido a la búsqueda de motores, pero eso ya está encaminado y todo lo que hace falta es terminar el resto de elementos y ponerlos juntos, que viene a ser una cuestión de tiempo más que nada. Lo que me lleva a mi siguiente punto.

¿Qué queda?

Para música tenemos unos cuantos temas hechos, pero al mismo tiempo no quiero mostrarlos todavía por razones particulares que ya explicaré cuando llegue el momento. La producción música se ha retrasado un poco pero espero poder daros más información pronto.

Para diseño gráfico en nuestro equipo tenemos a Winter. El diseño gráfico ha comenzado algo tarde por lo que por ahora tenemos es la caja de texto como habéis podido ver en las capturas. El logo está casi acabado sin embargo así que espero poder mostrarlo pronto e ir ya de lleno al resto de menús y otros elementos con el que tenemos muchas y muy buenas ideas que espero que os gusten (imagino que ya os habréis fijado que los botones de las capturas son un tanto particulares...).

Para arte ya tenemos a todos los personajes principales diseñados, pero queda trabajo de sprites para 4 de ellos. Espero poder anunciar poco a poco los personajes que quedan de la plantilla tan pronto como sus sprites estén finalizados. Tras eso iremos a por CG, que es la parte más larga y compleja ya que son imágenes de alta definición y complejas, pero ya habéis visto lo que Naguri puede hacer por lo que estoy seguro que os encantará los resultados.

Y finalmente para fondos estamos a medio camino de terminar. Llevamos 10 fondos de unos poco más de 20 que el juego tendrá en total. La calidad y el detalle de los mismos es impresionante como ya habéis visto por lo que lleva un tiempo acabar cada uno de ellos. Nuestra prioridad sin embargo es la calidad por encima de todo por lo que espero que comprendéis este ritmo.

Así que todavía queda mucho trabajo por delante. Como ya he mencionado antes la historia está finalizada. La mayoría de Novelas Visuales independientes tienen el problema que el texto no suele estar acabado conforme empiezan el resto del desarrollo, y aunque esto es más inteligente desde el punto de vista de tiempo suele dar el problema que la historia acaba cambiando o los resultados no son los que se esperaban y se entran en situaciones complejas. Arte que deja de ser utilizable, canciones que no encajan en ninguna escena, fragmentos de la historia que cambian completamente. Incluso en más de algún caso de Kickstarter muchos habréis visto como los desarrollos cambian por completo y se tiran años hasta poder tener un producto listo.

Eso es algo que quería evitar con LR, por eso la historia está finalizada. Nunca me ha parecido bien esos juegos que prometen “más escenas” o “más contenido” durante sus campañas. Es algo que no comprendo porque añadir más texto generalmente no suele ser sinónimo de mejor, al contrario, puede destruir el ritmo de la propia historia. No pienso hacer grandes cambios a la historia y el texto se va a quedar como está, garantizando que todo lo que queda de desarrollo es simplemente terminar el resto de elementos y unirlos. Esto al final es una cuestión de tiempo y dinero. No es que tenga mucho de los dos por desgracia, pero al menos puedo garantizar que no tarde más o menos, cueste menos o más, el juego acabará saliendo y no recibirá mucho más cambios. Este es un proyecto de pasión por encima de todo, y cueste lo que cueste le daré la calidad que merece.

Hasta la próxima actualización.

[asobimashou]

Inn the Beginning

The following was originally posted to Maidens of the Kaleidoscope. This post is only an archive and may contain responses to, questions for, or quotes from the original forum thread, which, as of this writing, may be found here.

BGM - "Valley Inn"

This is the Valley Inn, the beginning area of the game. After every death, of which you will undoubtedly see many over the course of this Let's Play, we get sent back here. Although it doesn't serve much purpose mechanically, It's a nice, comfy little area to start our quest each time we die horrible, and really helps add to the flavor of the game -- there's no real urgency to our hero's quest, no looming threat to the world that must be taken care of as soon as possible; Denton has all the time he needs to tackle Table Mountain. This allows the game to maintain plot continuity between runs -- if you get halfway through the dungeon before dying, any progress you make on any sidequests along the way is remembered by your save file, and is considered canon to the story. This stands in contrast to classic computer roguelikes, where "permanent death" means that every time you start a new run, you're creating an entirely different character -- even if most players will just reuse the same character template over and over. In this game, on the other hand, no matter how may times we splat, it'll still be the same Denton waking up in the same Valley Inn for a different day of horrible torture on the same road to the Land of the Sun.

Koppa: "It's a memento of his friend's. True that you don't see many Wanderers wearing them nowadays though." Man: "Whoa, you're a talking weasel! That's pretty uncommon too!"

Yes, very astute observation of you, Mr. Unnamed NPC. Any other smart remarks?

Hmm -- an inn in a town called "Valley Inn". Fascinating.

The man to the right is the warehouse guard, who explains to us how to properly take advantage of the warehouse -- but we'll be leaving him alone, because I'd rather explain it myself.

Warehouses are the first of the game's "mercy mechanics" as a console roguelike. Anything you stash in here will be saved between runs, leaving all its special properties intact, allowing you to hoard the best loot from your runs before equipping it all at once and heading for the Land of the Sun for real! This mechanic is probably the most important one out of all the mercy mechanics in the game, and the one that most distinctly sets it apart from more traditional mainframe roguelikes. There are some caveats to this mechanic, but we'll cross those bridges when we come to them.

In roguelike jargon, rules that keep track of some kind of progress between runs rather than during are called metaprogression. The most traditional of roguelikes have no metaprogression at all, so this can naturally be a very heated topic among roguelike purists! By the standards of indie neo-roguelikes, the metaprogression mechanics in Shiren the Wanderer are actually pretty weak, in that they don't have a significant impact on the overall gameplay experience, but by the standards of traditional roguelikes, the metaprogression elements in Shiren are quite strong.

The kanji for "warehouse" or "storehouse" is painted on a banner to the side of the door in elegant calligraphy. Denton stops to admire it. The localization in the DS release of the game changes all kanji signs to small pictures, like a sword or a mug of beer, hinting at the nature of the business inside, but this fan translation leaves all the kanji in for flavor -- and, presumably, the convenience of not having to edit any sprites.

No inn town in an RPG would be complete without a bar, of course. To our left is another kanji banner, this time with the kanji for sake on it -- this is the one that would be replaced with a slightly setting-inappropriate mug of beer if we were playing the DS version.

"You've got promise. So I'll tell ya something. Equip your arrows, then use the L button... and fire! Fire!! FIRE!!!!!"

Oookaaay. If I ever find any arrows, I'll keep that in mind, sir.

Denton takes note of the pub and reminds himself to come back to it later if he needs a little something to forget the horrors on the road ahead.

Heading east, his attention is drawn to a sign hanging out in the middle of the path. Denton stops for a moment to read it. It appears to be a scoreboard of some kind -- perhaps for a local gambling tournament. Wait... who was that Shiren person anyway?

The last object of interest in the town is this one last building. There don't seem to be any people standing around by it, and it has no sign with a name on it -- only another banner, with the kanji "番" -- ban, meaning "turn", "round", or "number of a series". I wonder what goes on in here?

Previous update

Next update

[scrollingdown]

Alphys Meta

Iirc the commonly accepted reason as to why Alphys took so long to finish Mettaton’s body was that because if she did, he’d leave, and some details have me thinking that while this was true, and Mettaton definitely picked up on it, it wasn’t the whole story. First some odd details. This isn’t required for the upcoming theory to work, but it lays a good groundwork for it. Warning: long and image heavy, also blatant metaphysicsery.

This is shortly before Frisk’s soul inverts in orientation, from that of human souls to that of monster ones (as exemplified by Asgore and Toriel’s) and becomes able to shoot bullets. It’s obvious the phone is responsible for this but- Resonating with Mettaton’s presence? What? Okay so the phone is designed to work in the presence of Mettaton, that’s fair.

Or… not? There is no indication the phone is used here. There’s no indication it isn’t, either, but it’s odd that no text or option for it pops up if it is. Frisk’s soul seems to be turned yellow as part of the initiation of the encounter. And yet the phone was definitely doing something last battle. A lot of Alphys’s “rescues” were shams, but it seems to be genuine, like the jetpack. It’s weird. Here’s more weird – it doesn’t happen in the battle with NEO.

(We’re assuming there’s no retroactive change in history between genocide and the other timelines here for the sake of avoiding a headache.)

Dialling back a bit, resonating is mentioned again in Undertale. From the rawr:

10754: * You feel something slightly&  resonating within ASRIEL.

10755: * You feel something weakly&  resonating within ASRIEL.

10756: * Strangely^1, as your friends&  remembered you.../

10757: * Something else began resonating&  within the SOUL^1, stronger&  and stronger./

-

10818: * You called out to your&  friends with all your&  heart./

10819: * From somewhere^1, you felt&  their support.../^

10820: * You reached out to ASRIEL's&  SOUL and called out to your&  friends./

10821: * They're in there somewhere^1,&  aren't they?/

10822: * Within the depths of ASRIEL's&  SOUL^1, something's resonating..!/%%

These are the only other places resonating is mentioned, and it’s in the context of SOULs. It seems like Alphys’s phone set up a resonance between Frisk and Mettaton’s SOULS, and that later this resonance happened without it’s assistance. A boss battle is supposed to be an exam of everything you’ve learned so far and Undertale’s not one to shy from mixing meta in-universe - for Frisk do these events act as the training wheels for this aspect of the Asriel fight? But that’s getting into conjecture.

The resonance with Mettaton (temporarily) changed the orientation and colour of Frisk’s SOUL. Could it have had a similar effect on Mettaton’s? The NEO form has something that appears to be a SOUL in it, in monster orientation. In the same area on the EX form, it’s in the human orientation. If Alphys built the containers for the six human souls (a big if, as we have no evidence of this) or had access to the requisite knowledge, then it’s highly likely this is Mettaton’s, safely contained.

And then he un-contains it, the numpty, but it can leave that form and survive in open air, just like a human soul can. And while monster battle sprites are monochromised:

ZOOM, ENHANCE.

It’s pink. (Red + White, but that might be reading too much into it). Not monster-white. There’s an assumption made here – that in NEO form the monster orientation also means monster colour. So a little grain of salt for that particular property is required.

Interestingly, while Frisk’s soul changes back after, this change (of orientation at least) seems to be more lingering for Mettaton. How come? This is the return trip towards the headcanon-country Alphys bit.

These are the blueprints that concern Mettaton, esp considering his presence on them post-pacifist. An injector of some kind lies next to an illustration of a monster soul being being inverted before being placed into a lying form. Alphys is in one person very reminiscent of the multiple times in history that, on discovery of a new wonder-substance, people started using it in absolutely e v e r y t h i n g, it being so new that the dangers haven’t been determined yet (i.e., asbestos, radiation).

I’m not the only person to have thought along these lines.

The blueprint is dusty, meaning she hasn’t touched it in some time. If NEO’s soul is any indication, she never put it into practice.

She was going to inject Determination into Mettaton.

There was nothing to indicate it wasn’t safe. The legend of Asriel absorbing a human soul was well known, and it wasn’t that which killed him by the account – and it was known that monsters that did this became stronger. With what was known at the time, taking the substance that made a human soul strong and using it to make a monster soul strong was a reasonable hypothesis.

ENTRY 3: If only I could make a monster's SOUL last... ENTRY 4: I believe this is what gives their SOULs the strength to persist after death. (…) Let's call this power... "Determination." ENTRY 6: Soon, they'll all turn into dust. But what happens if I inject "determination" into them? If their SOULS persist after they perish, then...

What’s interesting is why she thought injecting determination into a flower might make it a suitable vessel for souls. The entries don’t show her thought process as clearly on this one. ENTRY 7: We'll need a vessel to wield the monster SOULs when the time comes. (…) What about something that's neither human nor monster? ENTRY 8: What happens when something without a SOUL gains the will to live?

Your mad scientist is showing there, Alphys.

ENTRY 10: experiments on the vessel are a failure

This is where the shaky parts of this theory start happening but – I believe she made some connection between Determination and human physicality (or physicality in general) at some point during this process. Judging from NEO, she could have made Mettaton his body just fine without it, so what problem was she trying to solve by involving determination?

They were both fans of humans – making him more human? I think, however, it was about helping him to bond to his body (although it probably wouldn’t have worked if he didn’t already have an attachment). Either way, it doesn’t matter; she was planning it.

ENTRY 11 (in its entirety): now that mettaton's made it big, he never talks to me anymore. ... except to ask when i'm going to finish his body. but i'm afraid if i finish his body, he won't need me anymore... then we'll never be friends ever again. ... not to mention, every time i try to work on it, i just get really sweaty... ENTRY 12 (in its entirety): nothing is happening. i don't know what to do. i'll just keep injecting everything with "determination." i want this to work.

Her procrastination probably saved Mettaton’s life, because…

ENTRY 16: no No NO NO NO NO

If it’s on her workbench when Frisk finds it, that means it was the last thing she was working on before that happened, because after the amalgamation incident, its dust and the dust on the labcoats speak very much to an Alphys that didn’t do much science after (beyond messing around with seagrass).

Both Alphys and Mettaton know about the EX form prior to Frisk’s arrival (which means Alphys did complete it at some point), but Mettaton doesn’t use it, at the very least in public. Why? Stigma against humans? NEO seems to be either a prototype or a hasty upgrade.

Was whatever Alphys planned to inject determination for, the final hurdle? Grain of salt again, because there other possible in character explanations for this.

But it is very in-character for Alphys to promise someone something, only for something to go horribly wrong which makes it impossible, and then for her to lie and avoid telling the promised about it out of fear of what they’d think or do. The still-strained friendship Frisk arrives to see does fit in with something like that happening. Tl;dr; The resonance performed the final step the blueprint depicted. Determination was safely transferred, like it is in a human-monster fusion, and then being the persistent thing it is, stuck around.

But this is just a theory.

[EDIT: Senshi76 just pointed out to me that this may be at least part of why the EX form is so much stronger than NEO, as well as why Mettaton can briefly  rewind time in the EX battle!]

 (Where I Got Things:

Resonance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3lH_jRkQ9o

EX Battle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbVBzyZk75k

NEO Battle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axZ1r_duW0w

Fuzzy Mettaton EX Overworld Sprite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogNHObCZjwU

Mettaton EX Overworld Sprites - http://undertale-resources.tumblr.com/post/136160533443/mettaton-ex-overworld-sprites

Pre-pacifist Alphys Desk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4wXK2q5lug

Post-pacifist Alphys Desk - https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/comments/4jyn77/monster_souls_human_souls/

Entry Excerpts - http://undertale.wikia.com/wiki/True_Lab)

[aurelliocheek]

Spitlings on Stadia

Developing our debut title – from prototype to online multiplayer.

Hey, hello! We’re celebrating the ­release of our first game Spitlings releasing on Stadia – let me take you on a brief journey to tell you all about how we got here.

But first – let me introduce ourselves: We’re Massive Miniteam, a small indie game company in Cologne. Together with Robert Schneider (code), Michael Koloch (creative director) and Tim Schroeder (code), I founded the company in late 2017. We’ve been surviving on a lot of contract work in AR/VR and app development for business clients while working on prototypes and pitching publishers. We started out in a small room we rented from TH ­Cologne at the Cologne Game Lab and then moved into the newly formed Cologne Game Haus (CGH) across from gamescom – together with a dozen other small game studios. The CGH was a great place to start out from, as it provided us with a lot of contacts and resources to pool from. It enabled us to arrive where we are today: in 2019 we were able to grow to 9 team members. We’re proud to say we’ve outgrown the space available to us and have moved into our own new offices at the start of 2020. ­Incidentally, we moved one day after having to turn our submission build over to the QA department at HandyGames. It was pretty chaotic.

When starting Massive Miniteam, we wanted to gain financial stability as soon as possible. This is why we took on a lot of contract work to establish an income. Luckily, our experience in AR, VR and app development coupled with a lot of networking and some lucky contacts provided us with a financial base to rely on and hire more people.

Frantic pace and close calls – Spitlings is best played with friends you’re not afraid to scream at (lovingly)!

Origin of Spitlings Spitlings started as a student game from our creative director Michael – he took inspiration from the minimalism of classic arcade games (specifically Pang) and made his own version of it: One screen, one stick and two buttons, single player and/or local co-op. The gameplay is hard to describe in words but immediately understood in videos and GIFs: You need to pop all the bouncy bubbles on the screen. To do this, you can spit up and down with your Spitling. Spitting down lets you jump, so you can gain some height, but watch out: you have limited spit! Gotta slurp it back up from the ground… yikes! When a bubble pops, it spawns two smaller bubbles – the rest is physics, special blocks and chaos. As is common with student games, Spitlings was buried in Michael’s prototype folder.

Three programmers, two artists, a producer, a project manager and a creative director put behind bars for criminal use of puns.

Enter the woes of game development: In May 2018, we were working on a different game which we had state funding for, but due to various complications it went nowhere fast and we were frustrated and a little lost about what to do. We decided to organize a pitch session where everyone at the company pitched the others, Michael dug out his old prototype and we thought “well this looks like something we could finish in three months” (Spoiler: We didn’t.) We split up into small groups and hacked away on various prototypes. This procedure is also why we call ourselves Massive Miniteam: development on a prototype (should) start with just two or three people and only after the first stretch is it brought to the rest of the team to help out.

In just six weeks, Michael and Robert banged out the co-op level editor, most of the gameplay features and a considerable amount of polish. Without a doubt, the ­level editor was the most important feature early on. It allowed us to quickly hop bet­ween playing the game and editing – We might change something around, move a few blocks and then, at the press of one button, jump back into the game to test out the changes. This allows for an extremely quick iteration cycle and enabled us to polish the levels to a tee. It was also ­extremely weird and funny to create levels in co-op together with other players! Creating levels was so fast, I challenged our intern at the time to create a hundred levels in a day in a ­design brainstorming exercise – and he did it! Of course, at such a pace you throw away most of what you create, but a few ideas coming out of it even made it into the final game!

The style of Spitlings was heavily inspired by 90s Nickelodeon Cartoons. Our creative director is a huge fan and both the arcade gameplay as well as the slightly disgusting implications of spitting fit really well into the mold of our inspirations like Ren & Stimpy, Invader Zim or Spongebob. When deciding on the art style, we knew that we had to work with shapes and flat colors because of two reasons: Firstly, we didn’t have the time or budget to do a lot of 2D sprites and animations, so most of the artwork leans heavily into graphic design, flat shapes and lots of colors. Our creative director Michael has years of experience as a freelance graphic designer so he took to it and created a unique look for Spitlings that underscores the bouncyness of the bubbles and the squishy feel of all the surfaces.

Secondly, the strict rules concerning the visuals allowed us to clearly position every tile of the game in one of three alignments: friend, foe and neutral. The simplicity works really well to communicate what is happening on screen as well – once you have four players playing together and popping bubbles at the same time, it helps to have a very clear color scheme to rely on.

Celebrating the INDIE PRIZE from devcom – this is when we decided to turn Spitlings into a full game!

After six weeks of prototyping, we exhibited Spitlings at devcom 2018 and had such a great time with the players – and there were even some publishers voicing their interest to publish right there on the show floor! It was already a blast for us anyway – and then on top of that we were lucky enough to win both the devcom ­Audience and Jury Award! Right afterwards at gamescom we met with a lot of publishers and got more positive feedback than we had hoped for – that’s when we knew we had something on our hands.

Development uncertainty So, at this point we knew we wanted to develop Spitlings, and we wanted to release on all consoles. We were fortunate to secure dev kits for all major consoles early enough to not run into any porting problems later on. One very big plus was being able to take the game on our switch test kit and let publishers play while pitching them. After a lot of meetings at gamescom, several publishers voiced their interest, but after mountains of emails none came through.

After a few months of working more contracts for clients, we had not yet secured any deal with a publisher. Self-publishing was staring us in the face and it didn’t look too promising. Every indie studio knows how hard it is to gain attention for a debut title – doubly so for a local co-op game!

Our biggest problem with Spitling has always been that it does not look like much at first glance. The joy of the game can’t be communicated with a still frame. Screenshots do nothing for the game, GIFs and videos are better but still leave a lot of people cold – we have to get people playing to get them interested. Once you start playing, the juicy game feel, the simple mechanics and the infinitely replayable levels will make it hard for you to let go of the controller.

Luckily, we met HandyGames at Ludicious in February 2019. They immediately saw the appeal of the game and voiced their interest in partnering up. All in all it took just two months for negotiating and signing the publishing contract with them. Suddenly, things started to move really quickly! This gave us a lot of security financially – on the one hand because Handy­Games financed the rest of development, but also because we knew they had the experience to put our game in front of as many players as possible. Plus, they’re really nice people.

A photo from our visit to HandyGames in Giebelstadt. We made our team shirts easily recognizable so you can find us at the next event you go to!

Speaking of experience, they told us right away that we wouldn’t be able to finish the game by May and instead set up a deadline for September. And of course they were right. As is common with games, we created the first 80 percent of the game in a few months – and then the second 80 percent took us over a year to finish. But to be fair, this was also due to the extended vision for the game the partnership allowed us to execute. We had always felt that the world of Spitlings could be fleshed out with a story mode and proper cutscenes, but we didn’t know how to find the time and budget to create them. Now we were all in. Our small game suddenly didn’t seem so small anymore. In hindsight, we would probably not spend six months working on a fully fledged comic for the cutscenes, including programming a camera system to navigate the panels, but hey – we’re very proud of it!

Getting on Stadia After successfully delivering the first milestones, HandyGames brought us the news about possibly launching on Stadia. We were elated! For our debut game to release on the new platform was a huge deal, so we were super motivated to work on it. However, we couldn’t talk about it. None of us had worked in AAA before, so it was totally new for us to have to keep something so big a secret for such a long time. Not being able to talk to anyone about the fact that we’re developing for Stadia was quite stressful!

But apart from this, developing for ­Stadia also meant we had to tackle the big monkey on our backs: online multiplayer. Everyone knows that local co-op titles have a very hard time gaining attention on the market, let alone selling many units. Yet programming a working online multiplayer is a huge effort, especially for a physics based game like Spitlings with a lot of projectiles and constantly changing environment, including collisions. And in our game, where everyone has to restart a level if someone touches a bubble, every frame counts! Constantly losing to the ping is no fun at all! Therefore, we had to rewrite the whole architecture of the game, including rewriting the whole physics system. Alongside our contract work, this took us several additional months to accomplish, but I’m happy to say we managed it well.

The first merchandise we made was just square stickers – simple and cheap, but quite effective!

Release Window When we first started on Spitlings, we deliberately set our goals really low: Three months development, push it out the door quickly. We always knew that there was more to the game than that, but we just didn’t think we’d have the time to fully develop it. So we’re happy about the fact that our publisher allowed us to turn Spitlings into the game we always wanted it to be. We created a whole world and story for the game, including over a hundred little creatures jumping through a world map and 200+ handcrafted levels. We made a 16 page comic and were able to pay our composer Juan (from Ludopium/Vectronom) to produce a fully-fledged original soundtrack for the game with 13 banging tracks! We’ve far exceeded what we set out to do with our first game and so the whole team is proud of the results.

At the moment, we’re extremely focused on the release on Stadia. There’s a lot of features on the platform that we still have to integrate into Spitlings and turn it into a really interesting game for streamers… As I type these words, we’re also moving into a new office, so you could say there’s a lot going on right now.

Until then, we’re looking forward to seeing people all over the world get their hands on Spitlings and discover that it’s the perfect game to have a quick round with friends because it’s so easy to pick up, but hard to put down. Or as we like to say: Once you spit – you never quit.

Milan Pingel Creative Producer

Milan is one of four founding members of Massive ­Miniteam. As is common in small teams, he wears many hats at work but focuses on Narrative, UX, Interaction Design and structuring the processes for the company. Milan got his Master of Arts at Cologne Game Lab.

The post Spitlings on Stadia appeared first on Making Games.

Spitlings on Stadia published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[buttdawg]

Came across this video about Retromania, which had been scheduled for a July 2020 release date, but it’s July 11, so people are asking for a more specific timetable.  

What irritates me is that the video’s title is “When is this game coming out?!” which implies that watching the video will give you an answer.   Instead, the guy takes five minutes to say “no one knows.”   Steam now says “Summer 2020″, and this dude says that it’ll be ready “soon”, “definitely this year”, but he’s not saying “December 31st, 2020″.   So somewhere between now and six months from now, but no one really knows, because it’ll be “done when it’s done.”

To be honest, I’m not in that big a hurry to play Retromania.   I was looking forward to playing it in July, but I sort of expected something like this, so if it’s delayed another year I don’t particularly mind.    And I get it, there’s a lot of intangibles and they don’t want to release it prematurely and it turns out there’s a ton of bugs in it.    Retrosoft is better off taking their time.   

What annoys me, though, is how they seem completely unprepared to deal with this very understandable question.   “When will your product be available for purchase?”    He spends the whole video talking about how great it is that people keep asking this, because it means there’s interest in the game.    He promises “biweekly updates” on the matter, but no one asked for an update, they want to know when they can play the game.   

Why did they bother scheduling it for July 2020 in the first place if they had no idea when the game would be done?    Why are they saying Summer 2020 now if they’re even less certain than they were before?    Why does this dude bother assuring us that they’re “close” if he really has no idea?    If it’s truly unknowable, why did they advertise it a year ago on NWA Powerrr?

I feel like this is just taken as a given in the video game industry, so let me put it a different way.   Imagine if the question was “Where can I purchase your product?”     Like, I’m selling tacos.    They’re delicious.    You come to my taco store, you’re gonna get some nice-ass tacos.    Best you ever ate.   A lot of people have been asking where my taco store is.    That’s really cool that so many people are hungry for my tacos.    Unfortunately, I don’t know where my own store is.    Now, I have the tacos, they’re here and delicious, but I don’t know where here is, or how you can get here to buy my wares.    But I’ll keep posting on social media when I have more information.   

That’s just a crap way to run a business, but this seems to be standard procedure in the video game industry.    Announce the game as soon as possible, promote the hell out of it for months, even years before it’s ready, and then start quoting Miyamoto and telling customers that you can’t rush these things, you know?   

I think this may be something gaming took from the movie industry, where they’ll run an ad for a Hulk movie during the Super Bowl, even though they only have about two minutes of Hulk footage rendered at that time.    The difference is that they don’t have to debug movie code, which I assume is why movies usually manage to release on time.   I mean, they had to re-do Sonic in a hurry, but that was just rendering the new model over the existing one, right?   No one was worried that he’d start glitching through James Marsden during the third act because someone forgot a semicolon.  

I just wish the industry could manage expectations better.   It’s relatively easy to make a cool logo, or edit a Blue Meanie sprite into an existing game.    It’s a fairly quick process to get Nick Aldis to film a commercial for your product.    So maybe those steps should have happened much later, after the bulk of the development was already completed.   And I don’t mean 95% of the development, I mean 99.8%, because it always seems to be that last 5% that takes exponentially longer.    Right about now is the time Nick Aldis should have been spinning around like a cartoon character and complaining that video games are too hard.    Then they could put “coming soon!” in the ad and it would have been somewhat truthful.