Monthly Video – February 2020

As I mentioned when I announced this project, monthly builds will be monthly videos for a while. This is the first one!

As a rough guide to what is in the video:

• first 14 minutes are about my systems for pre-rendered environments in unity
• 8 minutes in, I show a panoramic pre-rendered environment
• 14-24 minutes I talk about rendering in blender with some substance material stuff too
• 24 minutes+ I basically waffle about wanting to figure out more of the game before I make much more stuff

If you have any questions or things you want me to cover next month, just let me know!

Also I say it in the video but I want to say it again here; thanks so much for your support! Without the pledges from all my patrons there’s no way I’d be able to work on a project like this! <3

Sophie’s Screenshot Saturday #3

So this week I have mostly been figuring out pre-rendered panoramic environments (which exist in a few games, but I don’t know of any that combine realtime 3D in them with occlusion).

Also I spent a few days improving/simplifying my camera system (it had some annoying issues before but they are gone!), and also also I’ve continued to jot down LOTS of notes.

You can check my full notes >>>here<<< (I don’t think I’m gonna dump them in these posts anymore. it’s getting out of hand :P) Heads-up though, starting this week the notes contain stuff that could be spoilers!

For the next week, I’m planning to familiarise myself with some blender rigging/animation tools, as well as unity’s mecanim system (I’ve only used the legacy animation system until now). A game like this will likely need a bunch of preperation/understanding for character models so that’s something I need to do.

7DRL over, I didn’t finish a game!

OK yeah so I might have been a bit too ambitious, but honestly I’m still really happy with what I managed! Two weeks ago I kind of got an idea for a game and a world the game could take place in and now it is actually kind-of taking shape!

That shape being, a tabletop RPG that (if you want) you can play with the computer being your GM, so it’s both TTRPG and a roguelike. And I know what you’re thinking “Sophie that is exactly the same as the project you were working on when you started your patreon.”

And you’d kind-of be right, BUT I have a much better idea of what I’m doing now, I’ve gotten over my absurd dislike of dice (Which you might have noticed since I am now a designer of dice?????)

honestly, my older rogulike approach was mostly to just take the *aesthetics* of a TTRPG and just make my idea of a roguelike, this is much more about cool role-playing in a cool world. I’m just, way more excited about this. Plus eventually all the cool stuff about that project (like different characters/AI having their own mental picture of the dungeons ~as they appears to them~) can be part of this project too. And for now I’ve done away with stuff that can leech a bunch of momentum and development time like 3D models and stuff, now it’s all crappy drawings and little plastic stands to hold them. If I want 3D models I can add them later (and honestly, I do want to add them, I love modelling cool 3D fantasy stuff)

anyway I should probably talk about what I did and didn’t manage to get done for the jam. Stuff I did and am super happy with are a character creator (automatically fills out your character sheet!), properly implemented all the main systems (objects/characters, properties, actions, map tiles, GM, UI), you can move around the map and perform basic actions, there is some simple procedural generation, I even learned coroutines and got them in at the last minute so an action can pause and wait for you to roll your dice IRL before it continues.

So that is all really cool, and I’m super happy I managed to get it all implemented within a week… buuuuuut of course that is an absurd amount of stuff and so I couldn’t do other things as well as all that, things like enemy AI, a looting/trading system, and even weapons don’t… do anything yet. Honestly I’m still thinking about how I want them to work in terms of the action system (specifically, should each weapon have one attack action, or should some have multiple, eg a sword that you can use and choose between a slash and a thrust?). Point is, there is still a lot left to do.

Anyway, I’m not done with this yet! I’ll be taking things a little easier to recover from pushing myself so hard over the last week, but I’ll keep working on this and it will probably be this month’s WIP build, if anyone is interested in that 🙂

oh and I even started work on a Player Handbook type deal because I’m a huge fucking nerd 😛

Hope you’re well <3

New Project Announcement!

I’ve been hinting at it for a while but my next project is going to be a PS1-era style RPG, with pre-rendered backgrounds, 3D (maybe turn-based) battles, a mix of characters who save the world. Think FF7-9, Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Cross – but by me and HD.

It’s the kind of project I’ve experimented with before, but always had to abandon because I needed to pay for food and stuff (human needs are SO annoying!). I’ve developed all the skills I need for a project like this but it’s absolutely going to be a challenge – it will take a lot of work and a lot of time.

Honestly, I don’t know how much time it will take yet, I don’t even have a vague idea. A year? Two years? Twenty years? Hopefully once I really get into it I’ll have a better idea, and I can adjust the design so it’s something that can be finished reasonably.

The thing is there’s no way I can make this without your support, so I want to let you know what you’re getting in for as soon as possible; there are going to be a couple of changes to the patreon:

For All patrons:

• I’m planning to post a huuuuuuge dump of screenshots, renders, notes and such every single Saturday (we can call it “Screenshot Saturday” or something :P). This will partly replace me dropping every single thing I do on twitter to make sure you’re getting cool secret stuff, but also make sure you’re kept up to date with what your pledges are enabling (something I’ve not been great at until now tbh).
• Access to my GDD (Game Design Document) once I start it. This will be a living document that describes the game I’m trying to make in as much detail as I need.
• The same old stuff as ever – whatever you can access now, you can still get. Plus as usual any jam games I make or little prototypes, systems, etc – I’ll make sure they are available to you.

For $5+/Monthly Build Patrons

You will still get work-in-progress builds, but they won’t be monthly anymore. This is for two reasons:

• Monthly builds take up a not-insignificant amount of my time and energy. They usually take a few days to prepare, some almost a week. I love sharing playable builds with you but if I keep this up, I risk spending a third of my time working on builds when I could instead be adding to the project.
• I might not even have a build ready in the next couple of months – I want to take all the time I need to prepare, ensure my tech is solid, build a workflow etc. I don’t want to rush towards having something “playable” at the expense of cool stuff that might take a bit more time.

You will absolutely still get builds and I will make them for you as often as I can (if for no other reason than I love sharing my work with you! <3), but they could be a while.

Instead however it’s going to be monthly videos. I’ll talk in-depth about how things are going, what I’m working on, design philosophy, etc. And I’ll show you gameplay footage, behind-the-scenes blender stuff, explanations of techniques I’ve figured out… Plus if you have any Qs I can address them in detail in the next video.

I know that in a way, for the time-being at least, you’re getting less for your money… but I hope it will be enough and I think it’s going to be better for my work too. BUT if you have any ideas for other things you want to see from me monthly, I’m super open to hearing them!

Thank you so much!

I just want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of the support up to now, I’ve been able to make things that never would have been possible without you!

I hope that you can continue to support me with the new project and with these changes to the patreon, but if not I still want you to know that I love you for all the help you’ve given until now and that I am so grateful you thought my work was worth your pledge <3

About the game itself

It’s still in its very early stages, but tomorrow will be the first ‘Screenshot Saturday’ so you can see just where I’m at with it. (spoilers: it’s mostly notes, ideas, and testing blender tech).

The main goal however is this: I want something that rivals a PS1 Final Fantasy game in terms of scale and quality, whilst using modern techniques to have awesome HD pre-rendered environments. Also I want to tell a really good story. Which might be the most difficult/ambitious part of the project but we’ll see how it goes 🙂

Monthly Build 2017/11 – Robin Platformer!

Another month with a build of a not-quite current project (sorry!) but hopefully you don’t mind because it has a cute little robin <3

Next month’s build may or may not be roguelike stuff again depending on how long it takes me to finish Dead End and if I have any energy left after doing so…

Anyway! Windows/Mac/Linux downloads below, video of me talking about this above. Thanks for your support, I hope your November is going well! 🙂