Hi everyone! Here is the February update for what's going on at whimindie. Note that some of this information will be cross-posted to our Spellbearers project page on Kickstarter for our backers.
--- Spellbearers
In last month's development log, we showed off some initial shots of Level 2, this month we have a giant update on the progress of the level, which we're tentatively calling "Pagosia". The Spellbearer has a mission to go through Pagosia to find the lost Spellmaster Goniah, who they believe might be peril.
Our team has been hard at work this month to put some of Pagosia together. And we a new preview picture and some brand new footage to show you. (Do note that while this is a good representation of what the level looks like, there is still some polish needed to be done before we consider this final.)
What kind of other scary threats will you encounter in Pagosia? I'm excited for you to find out.
In last month's development log, I talked about Selatria having Achievements, and we also plan on implementing Achievements for Spellbearers as well. Though we're only at a conceptual phase at present, we have started scoping out the art needed for the user interface for achievements. As with the other user interface elements, Jessica is currently working on the mockups for this before we move into implementation in-game. Do note what you see here is rough and subject to change.
This was a great collaborative effort by the team. The music you hear from Pagosia is from Christopher Nuño with vocals by Julie Seechuk, the terrain art was developed by Parker Colon, and the props and additional art was developed by Deborah Groves and Nikolai Gilliland and VFX by Zion Jones. The Achievement mockups were developed by Jessica M. Jacuinde. With game direction and implementation by Gerren Willis.
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Selatria
The main focus over January has been separated between cutscene development, achievement implementation, and finishing up incomplete work. From a development standpoint, we're currently prioritizing developing areas that are tied to achievements and cutscenes and then going back and filling in the blanks and tying the game together. That's the tough part.
I do have one shot of concept art for one of the upcoming dungeons that I can show. This was done by one of our newest artists/mappers on the team, Kevin Picotte.
And here are some enemies you will encounter in some of the final chapter. This art was developed by character artist Deborah Groves.
...Hmm, they have both Selactic energies in them. How is that possible? Wasn't the Dakk'rian source destroyed? Interesting, indeed...
Hi everyone! Happy New Year! I wanted to give a monthly update of what's been going on at whimindie. Note that some of this information will be cross-posted to our Spellbearers project page on Kickstarter for our backers.
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Spellbearers
For this month's update, I wanted to share some updates to the team. We were able to bring on two additional terrain artists to be able to ramp up art development of Level 2 and Level 3 simultaneously. One artist, Parker Colon, is working on the terrain art for Level 2, and the other artist Kevin Picotte is working on the terrain art for Level 3.
For Level 2, we plan on going for an icy aesthetic. For Level 3, we are going for a fiery aesthetic.
Here is an early look of Level 2 with some of the new art implemented. (Yes, the ice is slippery!)
Do note that we still plan on making tweaks and changes to the aesthetics and what you see here is a work-in-progress.
We also have some shots of enemies you'll see in Level 3 - these were created by character artist Deborah Groves:
For the second half of December, the Spellbearers team took a much needed holiday break to relax and hit the new year with stride. We plan on resuming development next week. Please look forward to more Spellbearers updates in February!
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Selatria
This upcoming January 3 will be the 10-year development mark for Selatria. The team and development methods have changed quite a bit since then, and we're finally close to the finish line. A big push for the end of 2020 was to finish the majority of the game's battle system. Unfortunately, we're a bit behind schedule, and there needs to be a few adjustments and testing for the battles before we can call it fully complete, but a lot of the heavy lifting is done.
The main development focus for the next few months are going to be polishing the last of the battle system, to finish the cutscenes for the main scenario, finishing any incomplete voiceovers, adjusting the last of the voices, doing necessary re-recording/implementing of audio, developing a trailer for the full game and achievements.
Achievements?
Yes! We were able to get achievement support for Selatria -- and we plan on launching the full version of the game with Steam achievements. We are estimating there may be about 60 achievements for the entire game. Details on how this will affect save data carried over from the first half will be explained in a future development log.
And some new screenshots with some of the areas/dungeons/cutscenes that have been worked on during the last month.
A year ago today, I was with my close group of friends in a garage in Highland playing Overcooked talking about how we were going to tackle what we *thought* were going to be our hurdles of 2020.
Oh, how wrong we were.
We all had to make sacrifices of some kind this year, more than we might have been used to. It would be hard to find someone to say that their life *hasn't* changed this year.
For me, I am incredibly lucky. My family is OK, my close friends are OK, and I'm OK - but it also was a wake-up call for me to try something different. To not take opportunities for granted - to use the time working from home and not commuting to learn a new skill or to get that exercise or work on my projects that I didn't have time to do. I'm less fatigued and less tired.
I'm hoping the tech and game industry will continue to trust and hire people to work remotely/from home. It will really open up a chance for me (and others) to move or live anywhere... as long as it has good internet. Something I really never considered before 2020. And I think embracing technology and more opportunities to work remotely were one of the very few wins of 2020.
I hope 2021 is better for everyone - We can all really use a win next year. I'm glad we made it through 2020.
Hi everyone! I hope you all had good holidays so far and are staying safe. I’m going to resume doing monthly updates on our projects aiming for the first of every month to give some updates on what we’ve been working on. Note that some of this information will be cross-posted to our project page on Kickstarter for our backers.
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Spellbearers
We were able to reach our goal on Kickstarter, and we are very grateful! One of the first immediate issues we wanted to tackle from our prototype demo with funding is to improve the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) for Spellbearers. The reason why this is a priority is that a good UX and UI will be the foundation for implementing the character selection screen, where we will implement the story, a better first impression for pitching the game, and makes for an improved polished experience overall.
To accomplish this, we brought on Jessica M. Jacuinde to the project who is a talented graphic artist and video editor who worked on our prior projects and developed our company logo and trailers. She joined the Spellbearers project in the last month and was able to begin work on the mockups for the UX.
With Jessica on the team, she was able to turn initial mockup flowcharts from this:
into these!
Here’s a preview of the new title screen - Note that the illustration is a placeholder - And is subject to change and further polish.
Here’s a look at what the character selection screen will look like.
And here’s a look at the new pause screen. Note: The map functionality will be integrated into the new pause screen instead of being navigated through a separate button as you currently see in the demo build.
We are doing conversion work now to turn the mockups into actual gameplay elements, while the actual game may look slightly different than the mockups you see here, this will give you a good idea of what we are going for in terms of the look and feel for Spellbearers. In the next update, we'll talk a bit about some of the story and some of the level development.
If you haven't taken a look yet, be sure to look at some of the visual updates our game director and lead programmer Gerren Willis was able to implement from our earlier update.
Please look forward to some of these visual updates to be implemented in a new demo early next year.
And if you haven't played our existing demo yet, please give it a try! We would love to hear your feedback.
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Selatria
Work also continues on Selatria. Our immediate goal for now is to finish development of the battle system and all of the boss battles by the end of the year, and the cutscenes for the main scenario early next year. I'm happy to say we're on track of reaching both of these goals. For the battle system, we have just the final boss and some extra boss battles that are left to implement (in the design phase), and for the cutscenes, we have two more sections of game and the ending to implement.
Due to COVID-19, we had to postpone being able to record and implement voices for a time, but our sound engineer Shadoe was able to implement a new setup where they can continue to record and edit voices outside of the studio space, and we're regained momentum.
While I'm still a bit wary on announcing a release date at this moment, I'm happy to say there's a light at the end of this almost ten year long tunnel.
And some new screenshots from Chapter 5, which is currently in the polish phase. The theme of Chapter 5 is all about going back home and liberating the towns from the Dakk'rian Empire. The Empire continues its invasion onto Faylien soil, and our heroes must work together to plan some kind of offensive to reclaim the towns one by one.
And what's this? They have flying boats? This has to be a bit unfair...
In the next update in the new year, I plan on showing some previews of boss battles and how some of the combat will differ for the full game.
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Thanks for your support, and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, and join us on Discord! Until next time!
With this development log, I want to give a quick post to talk about the launch of our Spellbearers Kickstarter.
Art by Lucia Eun Hyeung Lee
Earlier this year, we announced our next title "Spellbearers", a medieval twin-stick shooter that is inspired from retro classics such as "Smash TV" and "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past". Before shutdown and current social distancing measures took effect, we got to demonstrate the game at LVLUPEXPO and received a lot of positive feedback. We were also able to open the Playcrafting "Global Game Night: Los Angeles" show with the game to really positive reception.
For the past year and a half, we've been financing the game on our own, but due to stresses and reduced opportunities stemming from COVID-19, our dream scope of the game is being cut short. We would like to be able to get the funds to see it through, so we turned to Kickstarter to make this happen.
As Producer of Spellbearers, my job is to coordinate with Gerren, the game director and programmer, and the art/sound/QA teams to be able to ensure that we get consistent progress on the project and to meet the goals and deadlines. We have a very talented team working on this project which is a combination of team members who previously worked on our other released games such as "Selatria: Advent of the Dakk'rian Empire", "ANTics", and "The Dastardly Dairy Debacle".
I hope you enjoy the playable demo and the rewards we have to offer. We have more to show on this game in the future, so please look forward to it!
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For those looking forward to the full release of Selatria, we are still giving the project the love and care it needs. As most of the art and music has been completed, these team members are spending most of their efforts on Spellbearers development. We are still putting our full effort into implementing cutscenes, doing voice-over retakes and implementing boss battle encounters in the project, and I aim to have some more Selatria information and updates later this season.
Until next time!
-- Producer of Spellbearers Producer/Director of Selatria Grover Wimberly IV
Incoming rant! I feel like I'm posting about this every five years or so.
So in July of 2015, I relocated to Las Vegas for an awesome career opportunity - Las Vegas has small commute times compared to Southern California, tech jobs abundant, and 'all you can eat' buffets for miles, and cheaper living expenses. (Don't get me started on studio apartment prices in Los Angeles.) And it's close enough where I can take a 2.5-3 hour trip back to Southern California to meet my team. On some weekends, I would beat my friend to San Bernardino from his work in Los Angeles leaving at the same time. Anyway -- For the next five years I got to live the awesome bachelor life, and I don't regret any of it. (Ok, well, maybe SOME of the buffets.)
The COVID pandemic really has me re-thinking my direction. Now there's no commute times at all, tech job opportunities are remote and a lot more sparse, and buffets are non-existent (who needed all that processed food anyway?). Why am I still in Las Vegas? There's not much of a reason to be when all the things that enticed me to the city are not really relevant to my situation any more.
Based off the inconsistency of how the government and business leaders are handling this, (of course none of us know what's going on), how am I to trust them with what's going to happen to my opportunities and my life in the next three months? Two months? Next week?
I'm not going to.
I say this as I sit here with Selatria being worked on constantly for the past 9 years. I don't think I've been giving the project what it needs to really get it done, so since the pandemic started I began really crunching down on finishing the damn game. When things were going well, I saw the studio as something that I could rely on as side revenue or extra money when I'm older. But if I can't trust our economy to get through this depression we're going through, I can really only rely on my own projects and my own aspirations.
During what was to be E3 week, I took some time off from my day job, went to San Bernardino and locked myself in the (physical) studio for a week just hacking away at the Selatria backlog. Where do you draw the line between things you feel need to be cut and things that are essential? I used that time to figure that out. A lot of stuff I've been sitting on I finally got to sit down and work on it, but I still feel like it needs some more time.
As of this writing the metrics consider the game to be "93% complete" with about 178 tasks left to go. If I had to give a more accurate non-metric number based off my gut, I'd say Selatria is more 70-75% done. We still have about one chapter's worth of boss battles, cutscenes and dungeon design to go, and those are the hardest things to implement. This past month having taken a week off, we were able to get 83 tasks done. It's a bit of an outlier given the normal month was like 50-60 tasks a month. So that means about 4-5 months left to go? I wish I could be that optimistic. The closer to completion, the harder it gets to finish.
Our Selatria HackNPlan Metrics
Instead of treating the studio as an increasing hobby, I've been pivoting to make it something where I can actually rely on it to be a business that I can employ others and eventually myself. I'm going to be changing some things to make this happen. I'm going to be stepping down from the IGDA Las Vegas board and resigning my position as chair in August to relieve some of my responsibilities there and going to be spending more time working from the studio physically (but socially distant) in San Bernardino. I'm not going to leave my existing day job for these plans, but I'm going to redesign the studio area so I can seamlessly go from my day job to studio work after the day ends and really continue my pace of hammering out this progress and then move on to some new project ideas I've had brewing on paper. I love the Selatria project and I appreciate the team's ongoing work, but I'm also really excited to finish this and move on to different non-RPG projects after this is finished on a different, more modern game engine.
I really want Selatria, Spellbearers, our future projects, and our other partner projects like Corpse Castle to take off so I don't have to ever be in a situation again where I have to wait for the company I work for or the government to tell me what's going to happen to my opportunities or my income, and not have to be in a position where I have to worry about extremely unreasonable commute times.
I'm extremely fortunate that I can just kind of do things on a whim and still young enough to do it where it doesn't impact anyone except me. If I wait too long and just continue taking this for granted, I feel that I won't be able to do it as easily. But I guess that's the spirit of whimindie and why we have our name, right? I'm excited for this change.
We'll make our own opportunities. And with that, I'll leave you with a fitting quote from Futurama that explains this in a nice tl;dr.
I've been getting that hopeless feeling in my day job again. I think it's a mix of frustration, burnout, and uselessness. Not based off my personal ability and skill, and not even based off my immediate team members, but mainly because my equipment doesn't work, and no one really knows why and can't really help during the pandemic. That's all I can really say without breaking confidentiality. I really feel like I need some time off to recharge...
...So I've scheduled a week's worth of vacation for my day job in a few weeks (June 8th-12th) to knock out a significant portion of Selatria's progress. A hardcore Selatria game jam, if you will. I aimed to do this at some remote location but due to COVID traveling that far to an unknown location is just too risky to do this time. So I plan on being in the San Bernardino studio just knocking out tasks going off a priority.
Reviewing content in Testing column and doing whatever it takes to be marked as Complete
Knocking out In-Progress tasks I can't do in a normal workday or too tired to do without stopping.
Giving a LOT of detailed feedback if the task involved is not something I have the skills to do myself.
Start throwing in tasks from backlog that I never had time to get to if I really want this done by November.
The goal is to try and get a first draft of the entire game by year's end and I might be swinging an axe to cut things down or change it as needed.
I'm really excited for June and seeing how this is going to go, and really moving the needle on getting the game done and rid of a lot of tasks in the backlog.
I know it's weird to say that work is the one thing that'll really clear my head, but I feel like these mental blocks to get the game done is one additional thing hampering my personal growth and getting a whole week to sit down and work on it without having to wake up at ungodly hours in the morning or walking around for a convention will really allow me to recharge and flourish.
