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[oahda]

Wondering if that's Michael now~

Looking great as usual.

[oldblood]

Thanks for the compliments guys! Glad to hear the new assets are doing what they're supposed to be doing...

***

DEVLOG 48.

Decided I'm gonna start collecting emails for anyone that is interested in participating in future Beta demos. The Beta likely won't hit for at least a month, but it doesn't hurt to start collecting now. If you're interested: (1.) Leave a comment with your email OR (2.) If you're not comfortable with that, email me directly at [email protected]

Because the beta demos will NOT be available for public download, will be emailing beta testers access directly. The Beta I will be Acts 1-3, so approximately the first half of the game. Idea here is to make sure that the game is operating properly, design and mechanics are all functioning as expected. My goal is to try and catch any potential issues or concerns here before trying pushing in farther into the game itself.

The Beta II will be polished based on the feedback of the testers and will ideally also include all six acts to allow the testers to play the game from start to finish. The goal of this demo will be to try and catch as many bugs as possible and try and polish up the game as much as is possible. Ideally, this demo would be done via Steam or some other distribution platform.

***

I had a heart to heart with my schedule this week and unfortunately, I've come to the realization that my dates just aren't working. I haven't allocated enough time for fixes and polish based on various demos and no time for things like distribution integration. To keep things transparent (and attempt to keep me on track), here is my schedule. Bear in mind these are just major milestones and each one has dozens of contingency tasks below it:

● Act II Complete (05/16/15)
● Alpha II Fixes & Polish Complete (05/30/15)
● Act III Complete (06/13/15)
● Beta I Launch (06/20/15)
● Act IV Complete (07/04/15)
● Beta I Fixes & Polish Complete (07/11/15)
● Act V Complete (07/25/15)
● Act VI Complete (08/08/15)
● Distribution Integration(s) (08/15/15)
● Beta II Launch (08/22/15)
● Beta II Fixes & Polish Complete (09/05/15)
● Target "Gold" Status (09/12/15)

So yet again, I find my dates pushed back. If these dates hold up (and it feels realistic?), then I can't complain. Things always take longer than expected. But time is money and this has always been an experimental game, so I have to be aggressive with my time here...

***

Slapping in a WIP image just to break up the wall of text...

Guess who you meet in Act II?

[oldblood]

Was surprised to see Masochisia alpha II featured on the GameJolt homepage today!

[Osteel]

Man, you're moving fast on this. Good job. :D

[TopherPirkl]

Congrats on getting featured on Gamejolt! That's great!

Sent you an email about beta testing, too.

[oahda]

You know I'll beta test for you~

avaskoog at gmail

[oldblood]

@Osteel: Thanks for the encouragement. This was supposed to be a six month project so to me it feels like I'm way behind schedule. Thanks.

@TopherPirkl & Prinsessa: Added you both to my list. Many thanks!

***

For those curious, being featured on the Gamejolt homepage brings a lot of views and plays. The demo is a large download so I wasn't expecting a lot of downloads but for perspective: During the 3 days this week before the game was featured- the game had 250 views and 30 downloads. Since being featured yesterday afternoon, the game has added 2,136 views and 492 downloads. And I expect that number will rise for as long as the game stays on the homepage.

On a more personal note, that means that just under 1,000 people have downloaded the demo since it went live in April which is kind of insane to me. This always was a very personal project for a niche' audience and frankly I didnt expect that 1,000 people would ever even know the game existed, let alone download the alpha demo... So just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has downloaded it and all the insane (no pun intended) amounts of support I've had the last 5 months here on TIG.

[and]

1000 downloads is pretty awesome congrats!

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

This Devlog is inspirational. Impressive to see all the evolution.

[Zizka]

Congratulations on getting featured on game jolt. Very inspiring! I'm learning a lot from the way you promote your game by reading your devlog.

As for the beta testing, let me know how you're doing testers-wise. I don't know if you're aiming at a certain amount of people.

[oldblood]

@and: All things said and done, ended up getting almost 5k views and over 1,100 downloads just on the gamejolt site so we're now up to over 1,600 downloads. I couldn't be happier about that.

@bakkusa: Wow, I think that's the first time someone has ever called this devlog "inspirational" haha. I've added you to the beta list, thanks.

@Zizka: Thanks, glad you're finding it helpful. I'm hoping to have 25-50 people as part of the closed betas so its all pretty open for now. Will add your email to this list, thanks.

***

DEVLOG 49.

I spent about 12 hours yesterday just building rooms... "The Woods" more specifically. I usually try to avoid long work crunches like that as my work suffers but-- I was bound and determined to get a first pass in. The woods are generally supposed to have a confusing and claustrophobic type feel to them...

I assume most players will make a few circles in the woods before finding their way but I don't think thats a bad thing. There isn't a huge number of rooms so they should get the hang of where they're going after a few trips.

Stylistically, I wanted the woods to feel darker and more sinister but not to be absent of color. I really like using the colors a bit liberally just to swim upstream from traditional horror... While far from "bright" there are splashes of darker colors throughout the woods.

Some WIP teasers:

Statues in the woods server as markers.

This seems familiar...

We must be getting close.

***

Semi-related. You can now play through the first two acts. Gonna polish and tighten them up then move onto Act III. This FSM is getting... messy... and there are still 4 more acts to add in. Beginning to wonder if I should have tackled this differently.

[oahda]

And people say visual programming is less confusing than programming languages.

Forest looks great, and that's definitely an okay amount of colours.

[oldblood]

And people say visual programming is less confusing than programming languages.

Forest looks great, and that's definitely an okay amount of colours.

Ha. I think that may just be my poor layout skills at work... generally speaking, I think the visual programming is easier to grasp. Just don't let me manage the layout...

Fuck.

I just realized, it's Hamilton's birthday today...

Happy birthday Hamilton!

[oldblood]

DEVLOG 50.

The "golden" number. 50. This should be an important update.

But it's not.

This devlog feels more like a diary than a devlog sometimes...

I'm just going to talk about Environment art and this huge milestone slowly drawing to a close...

Things are moving. Woods are basically done now. "The Shrine" is in and I'm moving on to other environment areas. I'm starting work on what I'm calling the "rain valley" which is basically another valley area but with some unique color schemes and... you guessed it... rain.

Once that is done, will be some warehouse rooms to do, a church and some "special" rooms that I may or may not tease here. This devlog is very transparent but there are some things I'm withholding that I may tease without ever really talking about or showing much of. I'm actually removing a whole section of rooms called the "Mountain" where you hiked a mountain. Yes, I'm creative with the names. But I couldn't justify it with the story and frankly the map was already feeling fairly large.

In short, I may actually have all the environment artwork done by early to mid-June. If that actually occurs, then all the character, environment and item art for the game would be complete which would mean a lot of huge milestones were out of the way.

That would leave me 2 months to focus on writing, dialogue, wiring up all the events and a million other smaller things but would definitely mean my target dates would be realistic assuming nothing catastrophic occurs and assuming I stay focused on work and don't have any meltdowns...

A meltdown once the game is done would be fine...

In fact, I'm sort of assuming I will have some sort of issues once the game is done. The game is getting all my attention so I'm sure once its gone... bad things will happen. But this is my life.

[slarti88]

In fact, I'm sort of assuming I will have some sort of issues once the game is done. The game is getting all my attention so I'm sure once its gone... bad things will happen. But this is my life.

Maybe start fishing around for new game ideas to occupy yourself with once its done? Of course the downside is you could start thinking about the new idea a little more than you should which might affect the current one, this is something that has happened to me.

[oldblood]

Maybe start fishing around for new game ideas to occupy yourself with once its done? Of course the downside is you could start thinking about the new idea a little more than you should which might affect the current one, this is something that has happened to me.

Appreciate the suggestion slarti. Sadly, that doesn't work well for me... I have to focus on a single project (and that one project alone) or I get distracted and neither project gets the attention it deserves. Got to focus the beast...

[oldblood]

He promised to meet you there. His friends will be waiting for you...

[oldblood]

DEVLOG 51.

So I've been relatively quiet on this devlog the past few weeks but I'm getting a proverbial shit ton completed. I'm hoping to have about 95% of all the environment assets completed by the first week of June. Of course, there will still need to be some polish and fixes... and as I move deeper into the game, I'm sure other assets will be needed... But will be nice to work with the vast majority of the art completed.

Completing the core of the environment and character art will let me put a big focus on: writing, dialogue, wiring up the events and attempting to polish or tweak features.

As I outlined in my milestones a few posts back, I'm also working on cleaning up Acts 1 & 2. Made a lot of changes there that I should probably document but just haven't gotten around to. I'm very much in heads down mode which is great for getting stuff completed but leaves me feeling like shit and burned out. At some point in June I will probably take a week off to just let my mind recover. I know that I need to stop working when I start getting angry and lashing out at everyone for little (or no) reason.

This is all feeling very much like a... ramble.

I will try and showcase some of the different areas you will find here over the next week or so. In the interim, will just leave this image from outside the Shrine where you meet the Guardian. Sorry, was too tired to make a better GIF loop...

Tell him the magic words. Or die.

The goal is still to launch a closed beta of acts 1-3 in mid to late June (email me if you're interested in helping with playtesting/feedback).

HELP NEEDED: I'm probably going to be in need of a video editor for a trailer in the next month so I'd like to at least start putting feelers out now. I'm not the best video editor in the world so if you or someone you know has some experience with putting together trailers, please email me or post here. Will be paid work. I will provide all the SFX, music and video. Just note, you must have trailers for completed games that I can reference.

[oahda]

Well, you should definitely allow yourself to have some breaks, be it evenings, weekends or an entire week.

Looking good anyhow!

Was going to say I could try my hand at the trailer, but I can't say I really have any references lying around, especially not from finished games. I'll be happy to give it a try if you can't find anybody else, anyhow. I know After Effects and I've edited lots and lots of video, I just don't have much stuff lying around online, especially not of this sort.

[oldblood]

Was going to say I could try my hand at the trailer, but I can't say I really have any references lying around, especially not from finished games. I'll be happy to give it a try if you can't find anybody else, anyhow. I know After Effects and I've edited lots and lots of video, I just don't have much stuff lying around online, especially not of this sort.

Awesome. Good to know! Will keep that in mind. I've gotten some emails, but no one has really caught the eye yet. I have some interesting ideas for the trailer so really want to find someone with experience in getting narrative across in 90 seconds but maybe the pros are outside of my budget, will have to wait and see...