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[ephoete]

Oh wow had been overlooking at this one for so long! Totally off-the-wall, witty level design (seriously you've got some amazing concept depicted in the trailer video). My only worry would be about the initial budget you're asking, that seems short.
For instance the audio, if I got it right you're asking for a budget around $400... That's way too less. I'd think it costs between $3k to $5k to start having a decent soundscape.

[Polygonzo]

Music is something I need to address in an update soon. I'm working with some local musicians/friends on it so that budget is about right for us. Still, I need to elaborate on that.

[ephoete]

There must be good friends though because $400 is real real short for a soundtrack, unless you only need one or two loops for the game and no sound designer I don't know.
You guys are going well on KS you shouldn't discount your price and your value and this project and ask for a real budget, and this with or without friendship.

[oldblood]

There must be good friends though because $400 is real real short for a soundtrack, unless you only need one or two loops for the game and no sound designer I don't know.

Actually for a game with a $10k budget, this is about spot on. I've routinely worked with friends and have had $300-800 budgets for music (SFX separate) and have never had a single musician ask for 3-4k (or 30-40% of the games budget) on a $10k game. Maybe I just have nice friends though...

Not to devalue your work or the work of musicians anywhere. But if you're indie (designer, programmer, artist, musician) you're "devaluing" yourself by working on your own project-- simply because you can't afford to pay yourself what you're worth. That's like being an artist who collaborates with a programmer and demands a $75k/year salary because its the industry standard.

[ephoete]

I'm afraid the intentions of my message are perhaps misunderstood.

It's not about asking 30% of the budget, it's about saying the right price and having a consequent budget that reflects the work that needs to be done in a fair way. That's also one of the chances I see behind crowdfunding, e.g. "sparing no expense". $300, let's say you pay the guys at least $8 that means about 40 hours of work, so between 5 and 10 minutes of music basically. I don't know how can one survive with $8 rates in this world as a freelancer though, except friends perhaps.

I'm just a bit worried to see projects going on KS without taking fair costs into consideration. For instance 3-friend teams raising a budget of $30k for a one-year project with risks and external costs involved on top of that. I believe this is a bit irresponsible. And I'm talking of promising and professional projects like yours. So once again, it's not about asking $75k salaries but trying to be fair and responsible, there's a happy balance between both.

I can understand having a bigger budget lowers the chances to be successfully funded but sometimes the situation is a bit Kafkaesque. I've too many times the impression some teams go KS and are enslaving themselves in a budget that they cannot keep. I'm not sure to understand why... and actually why it makes "indie so indie" like we often hear. It's sort of contradicting with the big studio's world where budget are always tight (for good reasons, the company has to live, has to take a risk without knowing the market's answer, etc...) and I just wonder why actually?

Sorry for spamming the thread if my comments are considered as such. All the best anyway, I do hope this project will get funded, it's very original game with huge potential. 

[gimymblert]

yeah even though you pay less than full price, you should evaluate based on real price, it will cover uncertainties

[oldblood]

Apologize if I came across as terse. Not my intention, just felt obliged to comment. I appreciate your well thought response.

That's also one of the chances I see behind crowdfunding, e.g. "sparing no expense".

I think the quote above summarizes the differences on perspective. Kickstarter has never been about "sparing no expense" and creating the ultimate budget for the game. KS has always been about "what is your minimum goal you need to complete the project". This may be a bad thing, but its the nature of the platform. But there is a big difference between "bare minimum budget" and "sparing no expense".

Won't derail the thread further, apologies Polygonzo!

[Zizka]

I have to say you have balls of steel asking for over 10k, I admire you! I hope this gets funded. Will be following the ks for sure.

The way I see things, it's a team decision. A musician might prefer to make 400 bucks instead of nothing at all. It depends on the people and what you're willing to risk to reach your target. Steel Assault barely made it at 8k and it's a quality game. It understandably puts to question how high is high enough.

I'm not saying the musician shouldn't get paid but as a team you meed to discuss those things and reach an amount which is fair without risking a ks failure. 400$ does deem low but they might have a private agreement (usually is with cash) about royalties too.

It doesn't derail the thread, it's interaction and it gives the game visibility. It's all good I think.

[Polygonzo]

I totally don't mind you guys talking about it here. Funding scope is tricky and different for every project. Compared to when I was working professionally, 13k is practically slave labour but it's a joy to work on this game. It is it's own reward for me. Plus I have enough of a safety net that I won't end up on the streets with 13k. Also my musician friends come from the local DIY scene. They tour and usually barely break even. We all do it for the love of making things. This does mean that it can be harder to convince people of our "professionalism". I'm hoping my progress so far can assure people. If not, I'm going the publisher route. All I want to do is make Happy Hell dammit.

[SirNiko]

I really like the new video showing the desert environment.

[Polygonzo]

Thanks SirNiko I hope to show off a couple other environments during the KS as well.

I've started to work on a more "final game" mission that rewards Spooky Poo with a Good Thing, as you suggested a while back. I'm not sure when that will be finished though since I have plenty of other stuff on my plate, but it's work that needs to get done anyway. For now, I've been allowing the press to just play my prototype (actually it's public on my site and itch.io, I'm just not broadcasting it). The few people that have played it (with the knowledge that it is a prototype) have been pretty positive.

I still haven't had a MAJOR media breakthrough yet, but Destructoid did run a small article on the game and it's already brought me over a dozen backers in the last couple of hours. I know that's not very impressive, but I hope this is the beginning and not the end of attention for Happy Hell.

Meanwhile I try to release a KS update every other day (and more if possible), and the Greenlight process is chugging along. At 26% it's not setting the world on fire, but I'm optimistic about it getting on Steam...if I can continue to reach more people.

Speaking of the desert footage, I'll repost here for anyone interested (it's not very action packed, more about Heck Points).

[SirNiko]

Looks like you managed to hit your goal! Congratulations!

[Zizka]

Wow you did it! Major props! It was an ambitious amount. Well done! 

[Polygonzo]

YAY!



It was looking doubtful for a while there. Saw a HUGE surge of backers in the last 16 hours. Some people streamed the game on Twitch for the first time!



It was crazy. Still didn't get any significant exposure from the press except for one cool blogger at Destructoid. And Kickstarter must have felt weird about Happy Hell. It was consistently buried in the listings the whole time and never received a Staff Pick. Lame.

Still, it was a great learning experience and very humbling seeing that level of support. Taking a bit of a break now then back at it.

I'll be posting here in the future, cheers!

[gimymblert]

I was kind of worried you wouldn't make it precisely because you use questionable aesthetics (even to me, i'm not fond of satanic imagery and your character is kinda like a racist sambo) also using the nazist black triangle (arbeitsscheu) on your head, lot of things to spell discomfort.

But hey I overlooked it for the other qualities.

[Polygonzo]

I was kind of worried you wouldn't make it precisely because you use questionable aesthetics (even to me, i'm not fond of satanic imagery and your character is kinda like a racist sambo) also using the nazist black triangle (arbeitsscheu) on your head, lot of things to spell discomfort.

But hey I overlooked it for the other qualities.

Yikes...no racist/nazi stuff intended at all......the Satanic occult stuff sure, but I don't play around with racist, sexist, homophobic shit 

[Quicksand-T]

Congrats!

If Spooky Poo had red lips he might resemble a Golliwog or whatever, but right now he resembles more of a 30's cartoon anthropomorph archetype.

[gimymblert]

I was kind of worried you wouldn't make it precisely because you use questionable aesthetics (even to me, i'm not fond of satanic imagery and your character is kinda like a racist sambo) also using the nazist black triangle (arbeitsscheu) on your head, lot of things to spell discomfort.

But hey I overlooked it for the other qualities.

Yikes...no racist/nazi stuff intended at all......the Satanic occult stuff sure, but I don't play around with racist, sexist, homophobic shit 

Don't worry it doesn't "mark the bad side"

The black triangle was a badge used in Nazi concentration camps to mark prisoners as "asocial" or "arbeitsscheu" (work-shy). It was later adopted as a lesbian or feminist symbol of pride and solidarity, on the assumption that the Nazis included lesbians in the "asocial" category.

I thought it was for the bolded part (note the italic part too)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_(badge)

But it can be confusing as the context and collision of satanic stuff and various symbol used by far right skin head is kinda troubling. Fortunately you don't come out as such guy 

And congratz, hope you can now the game you dream of 

[Polygonzo]

Very interesting. I'm glad I know about that now! I'll be mindful of this aspect of it going forward.

[Polygonzo]

Well I'm sure not very good at frequently posting updates around here! I have been busy though. The last few weeks have been spent focusing on honing Spooky's moves/controls and that of the camera. I want to make sure I have a very solid action foundation before I get much further into things like level design, quests, NPCs, UI and all that.

In the video below you'll see some new abilities like wall kicks, wall shimmy, wall climbing (yeah I was really getting into raycasting-wall stuff), long jump and butt stomp. The animations are pretty rough right now (someday I'll add cool effects to them too).

The video's actually over a week old. In the meantime I've been working more on the camera: first-person perspective and generally making it less disorienting when tracking Spooky's jumping movements. This has required a lot of maths and I'm not very good at maths. Still, it feels good to have to know how all the nuts and bolts of the game work together (though sometimes, because the game is getting rather large, I forget how I coded things weeks ago and have to do a quick relearn @_@)

I've also worked out how to orient Spooky's rotation to the terrain he's standing on. While I need to smooth it out a little with animation/rotation clamping, it does feel better to me, like he's more integrated with the environment. This also led to some custom coding for dealing with uphill-downhill momentum, again using Mario 64 as inspiration. It's getting there! Hopefully in two weeks I'll have Spooky and the camera feeling ace and can move on.

Oh, and as I get the KS backer rewards in order, I've been playing with some slight tweaks to Spooky's design, basically just his mouth. This kind of has to do with what Gimym JIMBERT brought up...because I really don't want people to think of that kind of thing when they look at Spooky Poo. Happy Hell is 100% accepting of all peoples, especially those weird enough to take the plunge!



Let me know if you think the more feline mouth is better or worse in your opinion (I want Spooky to be cat-like, but not a cat, definitely not human...just a weirdo like Gonzo).

Alright! Hopefully I won't take as long to share my next update. Cheers!

P.S. I've taken the prototype down from my site. It will be replaced once I get a new stable build.