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[GekidoRising]

Hey guys! I want to get into the habit of posting smaller but more frequent devlogs after the last post I did took a total of three hours to whip up (editing + uploading video, writing post and recording gifs/screenshots).

Earlier this week, I implemented slow motion effects into the explosions! I also tweaked the art on all of the explosions to make them look 'thicker'. Here's some demonstration!







Here's that last one in high resolution!

I also briefly teased the idea of having a slow motion effect kick in during the brief silent gap in the music. On the one hand, it looked really cool (albeit a little subtle without the music to actually back the gif up):



But, unfortunately, the sad truth is, it doesn't actually play that well, at least in my brief experience. I would love to get others to playtest it to make sure it wasn't my previous experience with the song wasn't messing me up, but by having slow motion controlled by the music, there's suddenly a slow motion effect that the player has no control over. It threw me off when I was play testing because I wasn't expecting it, which resulted in my positioning not going as planned. In order to make my explosive attacks effective, I had to anticipate the slow mo and be in position well before the actual attack came out. Bottom line, it just did not feel intuitive.

Which is really sad because honestly, when backed up by the music, it does look really cool :C

Anyway, I added one more slow motion event: Getting hit!



As you can probably tell, I haven't actually finished coloring the damage frames, but hey, I'm not really planning on showing Riff getting hit in the kickstarter trailer anyway.

That aside, this effect is actually super beneficial to the player because it gives them a second to gather their bearings. In fact, right now, it's a little too beneficial, but only because I have many more plans for OnDamage effects!

[GekidoRising]

At last, the harsh realities of game development have come to surface; I have coded a feature that will not be in the final game (or at least it won't be on by default)! I might as well go over it for the sake of completeness but I'll try to be quick about it!

After restructuring the camera class, I thought I would play around with it for a little while and see if I could come up with some neat camera effects! I came up with three different effects:

A zoom in on attack:



A explode effect:



And finally, what I refer to as the breaking bad camera, a passive sway:



And I have to admit, I can't say I really like the effect! It might make for some pretty cool trailer shots but really, actually trying to play around it is somewhat dizzying. Perhaps I still need to spend some time messing around with it but I think for now, I'm probably just going to leave it off by default (which is nice because the camera sway really drives up the filesize on these gifs hahaha)

Anyway, for now, here's the video log for all the stuff I added:

[ActualDog]

The gameplay's looking real juicy! All the polish you've been putting in is having a huge effect, I'm really into your explosion effects especially.

[leblackdragon]

Very nice and detailed log! I am impressed. Lots of useful info, and I love the concept. It resembles something I'm working on too. Definitely watching you.

[GekidoRising]

Thanks a lot guys! This really put a smile on my face a few nights ago to see your comments!

ActualDog, it's good to know that I've been taking the explosion effects in the right direction! If you don't mind me tooting my own horn, I feel like the slow-mo and effect tweaks have made a huge difference and I'm so happy with it!

leblackdragon, thank you very much! It's a nice feeling to know that my often excessively verbose posts do have a home here! Also, I'm kind of curious actually. By 'something you're working on,' do you mean A Cat's Manor or a separate project altogether? I'd love to know because I'm also on the lookout for other games in this style since rhythm action is something I've wanted to see for years now.


As for updates, earlier this week I took care of a bunch of extremely boring but very necessary features, such as pause menus, an unpause transition (which goes back a few seconds in the song and leads up to the point where the player paused, so that when the game resumes, they already have back their sense of rhythm), and very very temporary death handling.

So, after spending all this time polishing graphics and special effects, it's finally time that I move onto the task which I've been most excited to tackle! Rather then endlessly elaborating on it, I think I'll just leave it at...

THE DRAGON COMETH

[leblackdragon]

leblackdragon, thank you very much! It's a nice feeling to know that my often excessively verbose posts do have a home here! Also, I'm kind of curious actually. By 'something you're working on,' do you mean A Cat's Manor or a separate project altogether? I'd love to know because I'm also on the lookout for other games in this style since rhythm action is something I've wanted to see for years now.

Dude... be as boringly detailed, as loathsomely technical as you want to be! You're at home here. Your post already solved for me an issue that I have been pondering over since August 2014!!! So by all means, continue what you are doing! 

I've been planning my followup to a Cat's Manor for quite a long time now, and is planned to be a rhythm fighter. Although the direction I'm taking is a bit different from yours, it's still fascinating and educational to see how you handle the rhythm element.

[GekidoRising]

leblackdragon, it's actually really cool to know that my logs actually helped you solve a problem you were having! I have to admit, I'm actually rather curious what problem this may have been (mostly so that I know what to write more about in case other people are having the same problem) but I will not delve too deep. I'm just glad to have helped!


Before I go over the updates I've done over the past week, allow me to explain that last gif I posted. Previously, Avadra basically has a presence throughout the entire cutscene, mostly arguing and shouting, but as soon as the cutscene ended and the gameplay started, she completely disappears. POOF, just gone out of nowhere. I thought it was a little disappointing really, the person you're supposedly entertaining not even being there!

So, I've finally decided that it's time to actually add Avadra to the gameplay! I'm a little over half done at the moment but it's already made a huge difference to the mood of the scene! Right now her behaviors are pretty simple:

THE DRAGON CHASETH



THE DRAGON WATCHITH



THE DRAGON CHEERITH



THE DRAGON CRINGETH



The cheering animation also comes with two other poses which are randomly selected. I'm not going to deny that they're slightly cheesy but I kind of love it hahaha

So, with those animations finished, it's time that I move onto the REAL fun stuff, as in, the entire reason I've decided to implement Avadra in the first place!

Now, as much as I'd like to go over what that actually is, every attempt I've made to write it out has been far nerdier then actually looks in my head so I think I'll just let actions speak louder than words and have it up in the next post!

[GekidoRising]

Basics aside, it's time we move onto the ACTUAL purpose for implementing Avadra! You see, as much as she loves watching her newly discovered fan put on a show for her, she's someone who wants to get a little more involved then that. So, for that reason...

THE DRAGON SUMMONETH!



After all this time, we finally have an explanation as to where the Ways were even coming from! There's still a lot of tweaking that needs to happen yet such as when they get summoned and how many, but it's definitely much nicer than having them spawn on the other side of the stage for no reason!

And the best part; that's not all there is! If you manage to blast a significant amount of Ways away, then...

THE DRAGON SLAMMETH! the dragon may or may not also jammeth



Again, some tweaking needs to happen because right now, this only happens if you have one way left on the screen which is actually REALLY difficult to come by with how the AI likes to keep its distance if Riff is already fighting others but damn, I have to admit this animation is satisfying! (not shown is the screenshake effect which would increase the gif size to rediculous levels)

With that finished, that brings us to a strange but important point in the game's development! The truth is... I'm out of ideas! That sounds like a bad thing but really, I'm referring to this:



That's all I had planned for polishing the game! After about... has it really been four and a half weeks!? Man, I'm already falling behind by a bit but ANYWAY, just like a month ago where I've implemented all of the large features into the game, I've finally reached a point where I've implemented all the medium ones! After all this work, it's finally time that I sit down and play the game...

and play the game...

and play the game...

and bug fix and make improvements! But also, play the game.

Now, I'm fully aware that as the developer of the game, I'm probably the worst play tester for it, so with that said, one of my first objectives is to make a publicly available alpha build of the game that doesn't require developer knowledge to play! There's a few things that need to happen before I can get make it available though, so I'll probably be getting started on implementing those first (along with fixing prominent bugs)!

For now though, have the slightly-shorter-than-usual development log of Avadra's implementation!

[io3 creations]

Love the rewind option after the pause menu!  I remember having difficulty with getting back into the rhythm with Patapon.

The combo power up also reminds me the "FEVEEEEEER" mode in Patapon.

I agree that adding a dark outline to Avadra will give better contrast to the character.

[GekidoRising]

I've made some progress towards the playable build but as the big day of the kickstarter campaign approaches, I've decided that I might need to temporarily divert my focus to generating promotional materials. For that reason, I decided that it was high time that I finally generated some proper references! It's been almost exactly a year since I drew the last ones so I think the timing is appropriate!

Anyway, without further ado, here they are! (click for full view!)

I gotta say, these are taking a bit longer than I expected so I might need to calm it down a little bit because right now, the plan is actually to do another three! "Who for?" you may ask. Well, perhaps that's something I'll save for another post *EXCESSIVE WINKING*


I must say, it's so strange to see the size of the tasks shrinking as the game is further developed. I've been telling people that about a month ago, I've finished all of the large features for the game, a few days ago I finished all of the medium sized feature and now I'm at a stage where every single feature I'm implementing only takes a few hours at most.

It's neat to be this far, and I'm definitely a lot closer to having a playable build but the references are taking a little longer than I'd thought. Anyway, I've already gone over this so I'll just quickly go over what I've done!

Or rather, since all these tasks are so small and mostly boring, allow me to just drop the entire list of stuff I've got done and go over the neat stuff.



My favorite thing that I've added on that list: The audio dip. Whenever Riff got hit, I really wanted to illustrate the impact and while I haven't gotten the full effect yet, the audio dip is definitely a huge step in the right direction. Rather than explain it, have a four second video instead!





In all honesty, I actually quite like the effect! The reason I say it needs to be taken further though might be a little controversial but I feel like it's a necessary: Whenever the player is hit, I don't want them to just take damage, but I want them to be thrown off their rhythm as well! Supposedly, in a situation where Riff is keeping his cool and slaying Ways to an innate sense of rhythm, nothing would be more jarring then a literal slash to the face (and much worse later on).

Before the audio dip was implemented, getting hit the first time didn't matter much at all really, as long as you weren't surrounded when it happened. You could literally keep tapping in notes as if it didn't even matter. This is most likely the "dev who's played their game for months" speaking here but I'm pretty sure without the audio dip, I could probably survive pretty long with my eyes closed!

And while the audio dip is still a step in the right direction, I feel like it's not enough. I'm tempted to experiment with other types of audio distortion, but it's important that I don't tread to deep here, otherwise I might ruin the entire song in the process!

Anyway, here's some quick notes on some other stuff:

• 1080p texture pack: The cutscene textures were all originally 1440p. Loading them took about a million years which I started getting tired of so I decided for myself, I would just make a 1080p pack! When the game is shipped, I'll probably have a system that checks what resolution you're running the game at and loads the appropriate textures afterwards.
• Loading screen images: At the moment, it's just screenshots of the cutscene. For the final game, I'd love to do detailed shots that portray the general plot of that level but for now, this'll do
• Volume sliders! Yaaay!

There's... not actually any voice overs right now but I figured I might as well add them in while I have the chance!

[SuperHatchGames]

You've got some nice effects going on! It's a novel idea too, it'll be a challenge to execute but looks like you have a solid plan!

I personally would like to see the backgrounds (builings/scenery) given a bit more stylisation; maybe play with the colours to give your characters a bit more visual punch? Looking nice though, good work 

[GekidoRising]

SuperHatchGames, I do actually fully agree regarding the stylization and visual punch. During playtesting, I actually did find that the characters still had a strange sort of artistic blending with the environment, especially the Ways, though that may be more or less attributed to the fact that their color was too similar to the roads. Admittedly, part of the reason the stylization isn't really there right now is partly due to straight up artistic inexperience on my part in the sense that, honestly, I'm not exactly sure I know how I can pull that kind of stylization off! That's a bit of a poor excuse though so I guess, as you suggest, it's time that I try and play with the colors a little bit! Almost all of the stage art is atlased too so it actually shouldn't be too hard to mess around with either.


In preperation for the comings weeks, I decided to do up a few more references for the characters that show up in GODHOOD! Some of these characters don't really show up until later on in the story but I figured that it would be ideal if I gave any artists I could be working with as many options as I can. My plan was basically to see if they had any sort of preference to which characters they wanted to draw and then formulate a plan from there.

I also drew these references because I really wanted to draw these references. In hindsight, it may not have been the best way to spend a week, but at least I had a lot of fun designing characters that I really had not gotten around to designing yet!

Anyway, enough rambling, here are some references!

(Once again, click for full view)



First off we have a character who's there from the start, Mike! He hasn't really shown up yet in this devlog but only because I decided that, in the cutscene, I would forgo the part he shows up in in favor of the much more exciting altercation between Riff and Avadra. If I get the chance though, I would love to go back and pseudo-animate the part he's in seeing as it gives that very altercation much more context!

Anyway, here's some notes on him, without trying to spoil too much:
-Riff's closest albeit nervous friend
-Is the only person who knows the plot to the story Riff is writing (other than himself, obviously)
-Is a much better artist than Riff
-Has been helping him here and there with his story, providing him with concept art
-Thinks Avadra is a really cool fictional character
-Thinks Avadra is literally the most terrifying non-fictional character he has ever seen
-Is absolutely horrified that the connotations of Avadra's arival. Slightly curious, but mostly horrified.



Next up, we have Awe, a Will! A relative of these fellows!

Glancing over that reference, I realize I haven't actually said much about what the Ways actually are. In all truth, I sort of have the same problem in the story itself too; I'm trying my best to come up with a not ham-handed way to explain what they are...

For now though, I'll just quickly say that they are a purely summoned species created to carry out a specific order. They are most literally the physical manifestations of the will of their creators! They're appearance and abilities varies greatly based on many different vectors, from who's creating them to what purpose they were created to fulfill.

Anyway, that said, meet Awe. He's pretty much the most fun to draw character I have ever created ._.

Here are some very brief notes on him (even less spoilers this time seeing as he shows up part way through):
-While Wills are generally not very intelligent, the more complex, stronger Wills tend also to be smarter.
-Not that much more intelligent though because this guy would probably spend most of his time flaunting
-I am not exaggerating. Awe is so full of pride that no matter what task he is summoned to fulfill, he will do his damnedest to make sure he is not subtle about it
-That said, with his size and strength, it'd be pretty difficult not to be subtle
-Perhaps "wings" is not quite the right word so much as gliders. It'd be pretty difficult for him to take off without some sort of propulsion.



Finally, we have a character that shows up much later in the story: Roguer!

Here is his character description:
-*DERANGED LAUGHING, SCREAMING AND GROWLING*

[GekidoRising]

After a good two weeks of polish and week of reference drawing, the time has finally come! There is now a publicly available alpha build of GODHOOD!

Try it out here if you're interested!


As for actual updates to the game, once again, due to the nature of polish being polish, most of the stuff I've added over the past week has been mostly very boring so once again, here's a plain old task list screenshot because I'm too lazy to type it out:



So basically, I've implemented the menu-pocalypse. It feels good actually to have all of this stuff available in game instead of needing to tap dance around the config to get anything done.

As for the Way AI stuff, that stuff was just some small tweaks to ensure that Ways don't run face first into a wall when trying to evade Riff. Also, if you explode a bunch of Ways, the ones that were watching in the distance should try and take their exploded friend's place.

Obviously these changes aren't quite as interesting as the stuff I've been doing for the past few months, but as I said, such is the reality of polish I suppose! I always feel so very strange about posting a devlog with no actual screenshots, but alas, here were are!


So, with all that said and told, I guess you could say that, after months and months of development, I've finally arrived at a place where I'm actually comfortable with the game in its current state! No doubt, this is a huge accomplishment and I'm absolutely thrilled, but I'm not throwing any parties yet. There are still a lot of issues and bugs in the game that will need to be resolved later, but at the moment, I'm approaching a much MUCH more pressing matter:

THE KICKSTARTER

For now, there isn't much to say because I've JUST transitioned out of the development. For the next few weeks though, it's time to go full force into the great unknown: marketing.

I have lots of plans and things that I need to do, and I'll probably elaborate on these in another post since it's already getting pretty late as it is, but I do intend for this devlog to be exhaustive, including the outer facets of game developement!

For now though, I've been slogging away on a quick side project for GODHOOD! I figured that since I currently don't have any voice actors, the cutscene is pretty difficult to watch and thusly, there is really no good way at the moment to convey the game's story!

So, for that reason, I've been extrapolating the game's cutscene into comic form!

(click for first page!)


I figured this would have two nice effects:

1) If I encounter significant difficulty with finding voice actors for the game, then this is most likely how the story will be conveyed instead. The player will basically be presented with a comic slideshow that they can read at their will!

2) It provides me a means of expressing GODHOOD's story, regardless of the game's success! I know that may sound a little strange, but really, half of the reason I want to make this game so badly is because I do sincerely, genuinely, want to tell a story! At the moment, if the kickstarter campaign is a failure, the comic is basically my backup plan for what I can do while I wait for my next opportunity. If the kickstarter campaign is a success then... I'll probably still be posting these comics! Really, I don't see the harm in having GODHOOD's story publicly available... once it's ready at least. There's still obviously a lot of wrinkles that need to be worked out yet.

For now though, the most pivotal point of this game's entire development is coming. And once it comes, it will mark either the end of a 2 year long chapter in my life, or the beginning of another!

[GekidoRising]

Looks like it's been about a week since my last post and since I'm sort of stuck in a planning phase of sorts, I figured I might as well come here and write up a not so quick post on what's been going on and what's going to happen.

Now that I've completed the alpha build of the game, I've decided that it's finally time I shift my focus over to marketing and by god, I've learned how daunting it truly is! I understand this may come off as a little bleak in contrast to all of the happy development I've been doing for the past three and a half pages but I am REALLY out of my element now. To say the least, it's a learning experience!

Anyway, I'll try to keep my rambling to a minimum and we'll instead focus on the progress I've made as well as the important matters at hand!

First nice thing that I've done: I've finally whipped up a quick alpha trailer showing off about a minute of unedited gameplay! You can check it out here:





I decided that it was high time to put this together because after a good two years of development, I've finally gotten around to posting the game to IndieDB and itch.io!

http://www.indiedb.com/games/godhood
https://gekidorising.itch.io/godhood

Honestly, it was actually so nice to have this uploaded now. I finally feel like I have a somewhat presentable area to show the game off (no offense, TIGSource)! Furthermore, it's proven to be a good chance to assemble more concise descriptions of the game as well as a storefront description.

Also, for itch.io, it's pretty neat to get actual analytics on where people are finding out about your game and for indieDB, it's also cool to see how your game ranks compared to others! Seeing 256 out of 33K games was definitely a little bit of an ego boost though I do realize that with only 5 views that day, that isn't too much of an accomplishment. Still, it's nice to finally have my game posted elsewhere!


So, with that stuff aside, I think it's finally time that I make a post completely explaining my kickstarter plans. I've been referencing it for ages now, all the way back to the end of November (when I actually thought I would have the kickstarter ready for January lol) but I don't think I've ever actually explained my full plans.

Long story short, after plotting out the budget of the game, including programming+art, music, potential voice acting, donation incentives and kickstarter fees, plus the additional 50% no-idea-what-I'm-doing indie bonus, the total estimation for the game that I WANT to make is...

$75,000 CAD

...or about $57,500 USD

EDIT: Budget very very adjusted as seen several posts below this one

yikes...

I've been doing a lot of research over kickstarter stories and post mortems and I'm starting to realize that this might be a little tougher than I would have hoped, especially considering that I don't really have an established follower base.

Entrepreneurial friends that I've told this to mostly share the testimony that there is indeed basically 0% chance that I succeed in this endeavor. Personally, I like to be a little optimistic and think that I at least have a small chance of success, especially if I nail down the trailer and incentives the way I dream of doing so, but perhaps this is the time that I stare upon my creation and say, "maybe I should tone this down a bit."

Regardless of my success chance or what adjustments I make to the goal, I still feel as though the best course of action would probably be to see the kickstarter campaign to the end. Right now, my timeline has that happening in about two weeks from today, but I've been wrong on more conservative estimates.

As for what's happening right at this instant, I've spent my time basically arranging donation incentives along with planning the trailer for the game. It's definitely a big change to have shifted from focusing on one task at a time to working on multiple tasks in parallel, but I can't deny that it's definitely a learning experience! Truthfully though, I'm mostly learning that I should have started a lot of this stuff much sooner!

I don't want to dive too deep into what I have planned, as I don't want to generate any hype for something that might not even end up being in the trailer or in the kickstarter, but there is one donation incentive I can at least be happy about, regardless of whether the campaign succeeds or fails:

I'M GETTING A CUSTOM PLUSH MADE OF A WAY EEEHEHEHEHEEEE!

[io3 creations]

Yeah, comparing your amount to other kickstarter projects' and your lack of established followers/fanbase would certainly point to slim to none chance of success.  However, depending how you go about it, I think you can improve.  On the plus side, you have a fairly unique qameplay mechanic. But on the other (and this is just a guess), the potential target market might be smaller. 

So, one questions is, can you find people who like this game?  One approach is to try and contact YouTubers/Twitchers and have them play your demo.  That can give your game visibility and I've seen it save a few Kickstarter projects.  Just mentioned Nelo on the Mable & the Wood devlog.  You can see the chart http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/magicandmirrors/nelo/ 
and the bump near the end is when the game was played.

Overall, it'd still be better to scale back to have a "reachable" target and ideally have some kind of follower base.

Perhaps others can give better suggestions as to what websites/people would be most interested in mentioning or playing the game.  Just as an idea, horror games were featured on horror related sites so you might be able to go in a music/rhytm direction.  Especially, something like Patapon might be a good place to start.

[GekidoRising]

io3, yeah, I can't deny things look pretty bleak. There are certainly a lot of things I can do though to improve my chances, but with that, there are still a lot of considerations I'd need to make!

In regards to getting streamers and lets players to try the game out, I would love to do that but I am admittedly rather apprehensive. The way I see it, there's just not enough stuff actually done in the game to make it actually presentable. While the first half of the first level is there, that's only about two minutes of content at most. Everything else needs a huge update in terms of assets. The main menu only has a plain image background and the cutscene is lacking so much art and sound that I feel like it would turn more people away than actually bring them in!

If I could find youtubers who are okay with only doing a quick segment on the game as a part of a larger video covering multiple games, I would be totally cool with that but then I'm not sure how much the game would attract if it only had such little air time. Still, this would be by far my best bet, so I will indeed have to keep an eye out.

As for scaling back the target, there are definitely ways I can do that. The first thing I can think of would be massively scaling back the cutscenes and stages. I could very easily bale on the pseudo-animated setup I have now in favor of a standard "two stills of characters that change every so often and text boxes" setup. As for stages, instead of making them 3D, I could probably adopt a simple orthographic 2D background. It'd be a shame but I think it might be necessary at this point to ensure that I've got a chance.

As for websites, I was at first skeptical of this because I figured that a rhythm game website might be rather rare, but now that I've put some thought into it, there most definitely would be sites for this kind of thing! If Stepmania, DDR and FFR can all accrue decently large fanbases then there must be somewhere proper to look!

Thanks for the tips!


As for the past few days for me lately, things have still been incredibly busy! As I said in my last post, it's strange to be working on so many different things at once and I can't deny that seeing as it's my first time, things are pretty stressful!

I'm at least a little more settled now though as I've finally started all of the things that I wanted to set in motion. Something that I'm really looking forward to completing some time next week: An official trailer for the game!!! I've plotted out everything I need for it and I literally can't wait to see how it turns out.

There is one thing though that I can't deny has been bothering me for a bit lately. Earlier this week, I opened up auditions locally in my home town to see if I could find two voice actors for Riff and Avadra for the trailer! I sent a few job ads to the local acting groups and theatre study schools here in town and I've even put up a few posters in one of the artist hangouts! The part that's worrying me so far though is that I've gotten three inquiries about how to audition and only one audition so far. I'm believe that there are a few people who are waiting until the weekend to submit an application, but I'm starting to believe that my best bet might be to open up auditions online as well and delay the due date on them. For now, though, I might leave them be a little longer!

Apart from that, things still seem to be moving forward at a good pace. Yesterday was wonderfully relaxing as I was able to just sit down and work on some art I needed for the trailer!





Today I'm going to get started on... more art that I need for the trailer! In total, I need about three more shots and then I'll have all the art that I need ready to go!

[GekidoRising]

THREE WEEKS!? My god, have I been working on this marketing stuff for three weeks now!? Here I was like a month ago saying I should post more often and then I suddenly just disappear! Well, at least now

it's ready...

IT'S READY!!!

The GODHOOD kickstarter campaign is fully written up, approved and ready to be launched!

That's... not to say I'm going to do it right away, though. There's a ton of preparation that needs to happen; development logs need to be updated (including this one), friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends need to be messaged to see what help I can get, and I might even toss a few emails around to gaming press sites to see what I can make happen.

For now, I will say that I have indeed very heavily adjusted the budget of the game. Evaluating all of the work that I've done over the past many months, I've made some cuts to my plans and the new kickstarter budget comes out to:

$45,000 CAD
or $35,000 USD
or 31,000 euros

I'll get to the adjustments I made a bit later in another post (running a little low on time here), but first, let's get to the fun stuff, shall we? From the top!



The GODHOOD official trailer is (nearly) finished! I currently have the short version lodged in with the kickstarter video and I'll be probably making the final touches to the long version some time tomorrow (have to redo some audio balancing things that I messed up)! The above gif is the closing scene from the trailer and is basically an alternate angle of the CHAOS poster!

Creating the trailer was an interesting experience and it felt once the whole thing was actually tied together. What really made the experience interesting, though, was the fact that I got voice actors for Riff and Avadra!

A few weeks ago, I locally posted job ads for voice acting in and around my home town! In the end, I received 9 auditions combined for the two roles and eventually, I made a final decision and picked my two voice actors! A big thanks goes out to Chris Carson and Brenda Nichols for lending their voices to my characters, and another big thanks goes out to The Hill Sound Studio for doing the recordings!

It was a fascinating procedure and it feels odd that I was actually a director for about an hour. It was a ton of fun but I can't deny that it was actually very difficult! Props go out to people who actually do this sort of thing for a living because by god, directing really requires you to be talented to and above all, to be able to describe what you're looking for. My vocabulary has never been the best so I gotta say it was a tricky conundrum in the end!

And you know what. I walked out of that studio and thought to myself, "I FORGOT TO TAKE PICTURES GOD DAMNIT LOL."

Now, as much as I'd like to show off those voice acting clips, since I'm so close to finishing the trailer, I might just wait until I have the trailer uploaded instead. Besides, I'm not sure what the best way to host an audio clip is without making you guys download it so whatever, moving on.

As you may have noticed, something else I've contracted for the GODHOOD kickstarter is a brand new poster!



The artist, Chu, did an absolute wonderful job and I am absolutely thrilled with how it came out! The scene may look a little unfamiliar because it's actually a depiction of chapter 2! I don't want to get too deep into spoilers (as in, talking about mechanics before I even start working on them) but I will say that the game mechanics should get interesting when you're literally falling from the sky!

On a more silly note, I always liked those pie graphs that all the other kickstarters seem to have, but in all truth, I never really knew what was the best way to generate an animated pie graph like I wanted....

So I coded my own!



After all this time I've spent sending emails and worrying about kickstarters, it was nice to just sit back and code for a second. Even better, since I made it, I can do silly stuff like this:



Finally, a week ago, I decided that it was high time that I do up a brand new reference for the Ways since the old one was getting pretty, uh, old. I'm actually super happy with the result!



It quite adequately captures the odd texture that the Ways are composed of. In my head, I almost sort of imaging poking one would feel like an odd mixture between skin and soft clay, perhaps almost like squishy play-doh or maybe even one of those stress ball thingies. For the most part though, I simply like to leave it open to interpretation. Besides, with the way the Will lore works, they very much would feel exactly the way you imagine them!

Anyway, the interesting part of this reference is that I actually created it for a reason! Originally, I created to demonstrate the Way's appearance for one of the backer rewards for the kickstarter campaign, but now, I'll instead be using THIS:



LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT IT LOOK AT IT KJDFHLSDKJFHL

It is about 20" tall and it actually stands on its own! I've had it posed up in my room on my bookshelf for the past while and I ABSOLUTELY ADORE IT! It's been growing on me for the past few days and it always puts a little smile on my face every time I see it! Also, I like to squeeze its ears every so often. A huge shoutout goes to Castlekeep Creations for designing and creating the plush!

Anyway, I have much more to show yet by means of trailers, stretch goals and other donation incentives, but I'm heading out soon and this post is, as usual, getting long enough. I'd also like to also add how thrilled and terrified I am for the upcoming kickstarter, but I'll save the emotional gunk for later hahaha

[nathy after dark]

Wow, that's some exciting and stressful stuff! Here's an article about market research that I wish I read much earlier in the process than I did. Maybe you'll find it useful:

Understanding Your Game Through Data

I mention it, because I think the strategies in the article will definitely help you figure out the best places to put your marketing efforts and build the follower base you'll need to succeed in the Kickstarter, like io3 said.

The game looks like it's come quite a ways since I last checked in! Nice work, and good luck.

[GekidoRising]

Just a quick thing for this update, but I added to the front page, the OFFICIAL GODHOOD TRAILER!!





Having this actually finished is an incredible experience! Despite what I perceive as my shortcomings as a rather amateur developer, I can't help but feel proud of what I've created. it's wonderfully exciting!

p.s. thanks for the advice, Natman! I'll be sure to give it a closer look once I get the chance.

[GekidoRising]

After two an a half years of development, it is with great pleasure that I announce...

The GODHOOD Kickstarter is live!