next »

[Copywright]

Congratulations on the Steam page! I can't wait to see the colored version of the map

Thanks I appreciate it!

I'm back to TigSource with a massive update -- it's been some time! We are working towards launching an alpha in August, followed by a Kickstarter campaign!

We have a lot of content, so I'm am splitting the alphas into episodic content. Chapter 1 is what releases in August.

Battle System & Battle Sprites

We've made a tremendous amount of progress on our battle sprites. To void a huge post, I've taken the courtesy of combining them all here:

https://imgur.com/a/tSoOe0q

The process of putting them in is already underway:


video: https://streamable.com/qxvf8l






I am focusing on hooking the sprites into the existing system based on Mecanim Animation Events. Then, I'll polish over their timing and the speed of the battle scene.

I've heard feedback that calls the battle scene too slow, so we'll be adding a Hold Z key or gamepad A button to go 1.5x-2x the speed.

There's more battle sprites to come, but I am proud of them!


Dialog System

Our Dialog system is nearly complete.


video: https://streamable.com/56hmws

This is the starting scene of the game, the main characters riding a carriage:



I've written all the dialogue for "Chapter 1" and about 25% of Chapter 2. Chapter 1's dialogue spanned 48 pages in a screenplay sort of format -- I expect Chapter 2 to be way longer.

Anyway, our Articy integration has gone well. The last obstacle is queuing events to occur before or after a certain "Dialogue Fragment" is played.

Our solution for the time being, is "Ghost Dialogues". Dialogue Fragments that have no purpose but to queue custom actions in the game engine:



Once we've got a strong handle on that, I will be adding all the dialogue and using built-in and writing custom events.


UI

We have quite a bit of UI on the way:







Our UI code has been refactored nicely and we've begun with simple options menus:





World Map

This is actually STILL in progress. Understandably so, it's mega hi-res and has many unique locations. The following is a WIP focusing only on terrain detailing:




Preparing for Kickstarter

I've nailed down what our backer rewards will be and plan to shoot a video near the end of this month.

First, I want to create a good cinematic that will show before the game starts & at the start of the video:



It's based on the longer version I posted below. It's about 8 seconds and 58 frames, so I have an artist working to animate ti as pixel art:




This will be a series of 8 seconds fade in and out environments that'll play for about 50sec. I imagine we'll be starting with just the one, however.


Merch and Prints

I've found a good offshore source for getting some custom letterman varsity jackets done:







About 4 samples have been ordered for around $120 a jacket after shipping.

I learned a bit about textile manufacturing. To make the end product closer to my expectations, I took the liberty of having the embroidery on the jackets premade and the factory only has to plug in the files to their embroidery machine:







All thanks to Etsy.

We also have 100% hemp tees being made:




I'll be wearing the tee and the varsity in my Kickstarter video. I went to Kinkos and have a large print of the game's cover:



These will be backer rewards as well.

I've also requested the creator of our world map to send me the physical copy of the uncolored version.

With the game's cover, uncolored map, and my attire, we'll have a lot of great shots!


Mailing List

After speaking with BackerKit, they've sent me this:



About two days back, I took the time to add Mailchimp to the site and start our mailing list.

The website alone won't do, so I had an idea. Using my past webdev experience, I created a mailing list blurb that plays at the start of the demo:


video: https://streamable.com/yxz208

It will be skippable by holding Space bar or gamepad X for 3 seconds.

The idea it to turn all our alpha players into mailing list subscribers! It should be more effective than the website's by far! I pulled it off using Best HTTP/2 for web requests and using Mailchimp's API.


That's about it! Thanks for reading!

I'd appreciate anyone who likes the game and my updates to sign up for our mailing list!

[miroz]

I just reread the complete devlog, as I'm battling with the same issues in the graphics and AI departments. It's very informative, thanks for posting all your thoughts.

[Copywright]

I just reread the complete devlog, as I'm battling with the same issues in the graphics and AI departments. It's very informative, thanks for posting all your thoughts.

Thanks for taking interest! I'll keep on sharing, then.

It's been quite some time since my last update, I am happy to share our progress.


Kickstarter Swag








Our custom letterman jackets and custom white tees have been completed! The process was finding the right offshore factory that could handle the job.

I ended up having hi-res vector logos of our text game name logo and white horse logo, so it would print better on a shirt.

As for the jacket, I found a good digitizing service on Etsy and provided the factory with the files, so they could accurately print the embroidery of the horses and game name.

About a month later -- they're done! I am thinking I will sell these on mysterybabylon.io Post-Kickstarter.

About Kickstarter -- we are working on a demo that's about 70% complete. However, our Kickstarter campaign is nearly complete, setup-wise. I will be shooting the video this week.

Preview Link

To subscribe to our campaign, please visit here



Cutscene System

I have been tying together our scenes and porting a written screenplay into Articy: Draft 3. Articy Integration has been going well, we've made a system to trigger common and custom actions to happen at certain points of dialogue.




In the above sequence, "Harold" will speak. After he speaks, we move him to a given x, y Vector2Int that represents a certain cell in our Grid system. Chaining actions is supported, so Harold will walk to the point and rotate to look at a given direction.

This relies on a custom parser we wrote and usage of IEnumerator/co-routines. I can write a custom coroutine action for more complex behavior during cutscenes/dialogue.

Video examples of cutscenes: 1, 2




Art Dump






Fort Interior Battle Scene

[Copywright]

Pit stop to share an early alpha build!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kaRQCVNHHnsBW3NEEuV2PJjx19dQe1pP/view?usp=sharing

[Copywright]

It's been a while.

We've been working on bugfixes to our build, the link above has the latest.

We are adding gamepad support using InControl (Unity's new input system seems a bit too immature) & save/Load system using JSON serialization.

That build should be ready by this weekend.

Clip of latest gameplay: https://streamable.com/vb7x24


We've been looking around for publishers, sending our build out as a vertical slice. Excited about our talks with DANGEN & Shiro Unlimited, fingers crossed there.

On October 15th, we're launching our Kickstarter campaign.



We are sitting at 400+ Steam wishlists. A large reason being the Facebook Ads we're running, 175+ wishlists coming from those.


Before I can add more combat/cutscene content, I'll need battle animation sets (7 animations per set) of our two new units.

Benjamin 6/7, critical attack remaining.










Harold: 1/7

[wolfsden]

Your project looks great, but man those battle scenes and animations are incredible!

[Copywright]

Your project looks great, but man those battle scenes and animations are incredible!

Thanks @wolfsden . Still a big fan of Manafinder.

We are live on Kickstarter

Too early to to tell how it'll go, but I'm hoping we hit our goal!

Any and all backers are appreciated :]

[wolfsden]

Your project looks great, but man those battle scenes and animations are incredible!

Thanks @wolfsden . Still a big fan of Manafinder.

We are live on Kickstarter

Too early to to tell how it'll go, but I'm hoping we hit our goal!

Any and all backers are appreciated :]

FYI Your KS link sends me to kickstarter's landing page.

I was able to find your project though, best of luck!!!!! 

[Copywright]

[Beastboy]

Your project looks very fresh and unique

[Copywright]

Your project looks very fresh and unique

Thanks!





Also, I've done a walkthrough of our Dialogue System built with articy draft 3

[Copywright]

It's been a while, first post of 2022!

There's been a great deal of progress on level design and combat system changes.

Combat System

So, like most tactical RPGs, our unit (typically) took just one cell. Fire Emblem, Shining Force, you name it.

But, our tile size is 16x16. Our Characters are 35x48! The spacing was terrible:



Just, an unreadable grid. So, I drew inspiration from the Banner Saga! I noticed their characters tend to be 2x2, while the grid is smaller and more minute.

We refactored our grid system and added a new class: MultiCellUnit to handle units that are uniform squares AND irregular rectangles like a 2x3 horseman.

The end result looks like this:









Now, the usual unit size is 2x2. There will be occasional instances of single cell units, such as a planned mechanic for Summoner mages, who can summon familiars. An example, being a spell that summons three single cell floating eyeballs to attack their enemies.

It required changes to our pathfinding logic and AI -- plus UI as well. Checking availability for more grid cells became more expensive -- we were able to optimize it down to acceptable levels. We're planning a large battle map to stress test these systems.

Currently making the tweaks to existing combat to use this new unit size configuration.


Level Design

Since I last posted here, I've shared our preliminary level designs for our first non-combat, exploration focused town level: Bethany.

It was generally well received on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/rwi6zn/im_told_this_gives_off_ff6_vibes/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Suikoden/comments/rw8z4w/hopefully_this_gives_you_suikoden_vibes/

But, many commented that our levels lacked detail and had a great deal of open space. Our artist agreed and he's began doing mockups of each interior in Asesprite, and I'd make them real in Tiled.

Much better than my programmer levels, haha:


https://youtu.be/W69Pe6xKvAo


With this newly discovered workflow -- we are redesigning all the interiors of Bethany and then redesigning our Fort level's interiors, as well. From now all, this will be how we design all our levels. It's a workflow I'm familiar with -- at work doing web development, we have designers that give us photoshop mockups and we make them real.


World Map

Since we last posted here, we've began work on a pixel art world map to be used in-game. It will be how the user travels between locations.

The map will have 24 350x350 pieces, animated 4 frames.

Here it is at 6/24:




Concept Art

We're working with the talented Avyveris to handle character designs on our new characters for our beta. Until now, I've been using existing purchasable 3D models to design characters.

If you're not aware, our battle sprites are all rotoscoped based on animated character models captured frame by frame (using ss2D on the Asset Store).

Our writer took exception to this, since purchasable models tend to be generic... He wanted to have more unique characters.

So, we decided to get concept art for our planned characters to be able to give a 3D modeler. Since we won't really use them in-game at all but as animation bases, stylized models will do the job.

Here are some finished renders:








At some point, we'll be looking to get rigged stylized models to record battle animations on done for these concepts.


Voice Acting

Thanks to the discovery on Casting Call Club to be able to work with talented voice actors on an indie budget, I've decided to begin casting our characters to be voiced in-game. We're looking to deliver a fully voiced beta by April using the script we have and begin to shop around for publishers (though, we have a few waiting for a playable build :]).

Here's a look at some of our casted talent:


https://youtu.be/kgwHDyCLtDQ

Planning to begin recording sessions by next month. We're refining our scripts to prepare.

________________

That's it!

If you're interested in following our progress and seeing our development process: https://discord.gg/g2EcRnjAss

[Copywright]

Once again, it's been a while!

There's been a great deal of progress since I last posted.

Combat






Voice Acted Cutscenes & Dialogue






Longer cutscene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7jrH1MRb6g

Short cutscene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YROwP6WajcI


I posted on Casting Call Club and was blessed to find some really talented folks there! Fiverr is great as well, but I've been very meticulous about who I cast.

The game will be fully voice acted -- down to every last NPC.

It's a challenge, but it'll result in a greater degree of immersion.

In the information age, our attention spans are so short that we can't sit through dialogue heavy cutscenes anymore... voice acting helps alleviate that. Just image Disco Elysium with no voiceovers...


World Map

After four months, the map is complete! Current implementing it in-game.

[Alain]

That's a cool world map you created over the last month, great job!