Very good mix I listened to while writing this entry.
Big milestone, gamers: I’m done putting together the game’s sixth and seventh chapters. That means the game is playable from start to end. Well, it will be on Monday, when we do some plumbing and start linking chapter 5 with 6, and 6 with 7. It’s minutes-worth of work.
Let’s grab the list from last month to see where we are.
- Finish remaining enemies (create models, rigs, textures and code behaviors)
- Remaining normal enemies that use custom models are kind of finished, we just need to add more classes to an existing group, then throw them into the last level.
- Finish implementation of fights and puzzles for the last two chapters (this would make the whole game playable from start to end. Alpha build?)
- This is done.
- Finish remaining boss fights (create models, rigs, textures, code their behaviors and design the fights)
- This is what we’re gonna focus on moving forward. It’s by far the most challenging task at this stage of development.
- Environment and asset polish (includes baking final lighting for all maps, getting rid of placeholder models, etc.)
- Will do after we’re out of the woods with the boss fights, but I’ll keep tweaking every level and animation etc. here and there until the very end anyway. It’s a perpetual work in progress.
- Sound polish (finalize music mixing, environment sounds, sound effects, etc.)
- Only one level has proper sound design and I need to lock in with this. Shouldn’t take me very long with June’s help.
- Implement and polish remaining cinematic sequences and narrative sections
- Will work on this throughout August in between boss fight design and testing.
- Heavy QA, balancing.
- It’s ramping up this month.
- Hit beta state. This will kickstart a different roadmap towards the game’s release.
- I’ve no idea when this will happen. Well, I do, I just don’t wanna say.
The incredible part of it all is that we’re a whole month ahead of schedule. Our forecast was to reach this stage in September, but the 7th chapter is an oddity that was also mostly functional since last year. And things could have gone faster, but July was mentally taxing. Still is! My July just keeps going on and on.
Recent experience does make it very clear where the bottleneck is, though. If we ever make a game like this again, I’ll definitely hire a level designer that can also help with game design. I’m wearing way too many hats that I’m happy to wear, but it makes development take such a long time, and I’m running out of it. There’s just not enough time for everything I wanna do in life. I need to stop messing around and learn how to delegate more.
Going back to development talk, chapter six was challenging. Like, REALLY challenging. It’s still in a rough state, but I finally reached a point where I’m sort of happy with the way it flows.
The thing is that many of these battles really do push players to use all items they’ve been holding onto, and also makes them tweak Reila’s build in a way previous stages didn’t (for the most part), so I’ll apply the lessons learned here for early battles. It’s gonna be fun since it’s a matter of numbers and fun enemy combinations.
Chapter 7 balance is still funky, as enemies only deal very little damage on fully upgraded armors. I gotta sit down and do some proper math.
I’m excited to start working on bosses, story and and atmosphere stuff. It’s what I do best, and the forecast is very optimistic. The game’s release is no longer in some nebulous future. It hasn’t been for a while, but you know what I mean.
One step at a time.
Here’s a cute Anna I drew (forma de .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND)
In unrelated news to 45PB: If things go well, this second half of the year should see some very interesting collabs involving va11halla, as well as a merch thingie (unrelated to va11halla) that we’ve been meaning to push out since December. Hope you guys like it.
See you all next month, and pray that my terrible July ends soon.
Shoutouts to Daniel of the Lamp #weebobeebogaming