Sukeban Games

Developer Diaries from the Sukeban Staff (mainly just kiri)

Category: progress

  • Happy birthday Valeria

    So the next updates are going to be really fuckin’ weird. Thing is, a lot of time has passed since n1rvanna was announced, it’s the signature project and i don’t want people to speculate on things i can’t spill details on. In short, i can’t be as transparent as I am with project D.

    What I can say right now is that the development environment changed and we are currently porting the whole project to another engine. This won’t affect the content made, visuals or anything you can see on the outside that’s already out there (the game is not being remade from zero), but it does definitely mean the game will actually ship within our lifetimes as things will move ahead in a more consistent basis, even though i’ll give the impression that we are doing work that musta been done like two years ago.

    So the progress in this front is development of some tools, and how long it takes depends on today’s work. It’s likely that the week ahead will be dedicated to n1rvanna for this very reason, as we want to leave the game in a state where we just write nice stories, make pretty pictures and great music.

  • 12 six 20

    I know I said I wasn’t gonna show this area but fuck it, i finished it today since i didn’t have anything to distract me from it.

    still working on the cutscene editor, after that is polishing menus since they look hella ugly, and integrate the fmod behaviors.

    went back to the favela scene to polish a bit more as well and settle on a lighting model. looks like i reached a sweet spot and just need to start placing the artificial lights around the level.

  • woke up this morning

    planned the outline for a big story arc in n1rvanna (this one took a huge chunk of my day, damn!), D now has functional camera switching during dialogue and also character movement, now the animation triggers follow. Not as much as i’d like but on the bright side i fixed my sleep cycle again.

  • feelsgoodman

    so aside from some bugs i found i really like how combat feels now. everything is snappy, there’s excitement, strategy, it’s no longer mindless. i was able to cancel attacks by timing my own actions, take cover using other enemies, it’s really great, and some of these were unintentional in our design so it feels even better.

    still blocking out the last scene as i got sidetracked with other matters, such as updating the dialogue system and setting it up to work with the new interaction system. now newprogrammer is gonna do the final touches on it to allow fast cutscene creation.

    Like in the past few days i’ll keep working after i write this update. So basically go back to the scene, planning for the others, and decide what i’m gonna do with the first finished dungeon. the layout itself is fine, but lighting is giving me headaches, so i might have to re-do the layout again taking into account how this engine handles illumination.

  • Weekend progress not by me, small n1rvanna update

    So I took the whole weekend plus monday to do a game jam and the result was a nice vn! ( https://4331pro.itch.io/soulbrittle) It’s my first time writing something to completion and making music. Pretty proud of it even if I’m aware of its many flaws.

    Newprogrammer did continue and worked on a refactoring of the player character, and fixed missing menu features that inexplicably disappeared.

    Gonna keep working after this so I’ll likely start the last scene of the chapter and hopefully finish it too since it’s not that big.

    After that I’ll go back to the favela scene to set up jumps and playtest for flow. It’s a linear-ish stage so i don’t have to think about exploration too much, and i’m feeling like designing future stages like that.

    Last but not least: n1rvanna has been going through a rocky phase due to on-going health issues with its main programmer and we’ll be taking over its development as well, so he can focus on just writing while we do the heavy load. Hopefully this means a faster turnout.

  • second to last scene done

    small places are great because it allows me to bake detailed lighting quickly.

    next is the last scene and i already have in mind what i want to do. I won’t spoil that bit so don’t expect screenshots.

    Jump stuff is almost done. We only had to fundamentally change how characters are assembled but i think we needed to optimize that anyway. We have more freedom now as a result. Gotta keep debugging though.

  • six three twenty

    started late today, so i’m gonna keep working after i write this.

    Began blocking out the new scene from this chapter, new programmer is still fighting with jumps. to be fair we didn’t plan the way characters are constructed inside the engine accounting for jumps so things have gotten more complicated than we anticipated. hopefully it’s not gonna make us waste more time. At least i can use it in its raw form to keep playtesting moving forward.

  • Highway done

    Or at least the parts that are going to repeat the most. This area won’t see that much detail in the end since it’s gonna be like a chase and players won’t stop to look around. Next is the dead end and the destination, with that this chapter will be done and i’ll be working on the third one. Order hasn’t been decided yet.

    Still debugging the jumps, it’s a bit of a fight since this is a first for us and we have no idea what’s the right way to do this in unity. All fun.

  • not a lot part 2

    fixing bugs regarding the jumps, working on more characters and basically trying to finish what’s left of the current level with a fresh mind. i should probably hire a concept artist for the next game since i suck at anything that’s not charcater design when it comes to that aspect of game development. i say this because i work on the look of the environments just from photos without actually drawing anything down to get a feel on paper, i do everything on the fly trusting what’s in my head.

  • favela section almost there

    aside from some unfinished assets and features, this section is almost there. i consider levels “finished” when everything looks just barely like what i have in my head. Obviously there’s still a fuckton of detailing to do, but feel is important and if i can block every level with a minimum of atmosphere i can feel confident in case we have to ship on a hurry. I doubt this will happen but better be safe than sorry.

    There’s still a lot ahead, but the atmosphere is present, which is what matters the most.

    One feature we are making are jumps. Not ready yet since it’s being programmed right now, but the idea is to have small segments where you gotta jump between platforms action movie style. This is an rpg-ish game, not an action adventure romp, so you don’t actually need any twitch skills to pull off the jumps, it’s more of a scripted thing to spice up the traversal.

    Once all of this is done then it’s back to finish the cutscene editor and the next section of this chapter, which is a really long highway.