Selatria: Development Blog Update 5/30

It's been a long week, but a fairly productive one. I spent Monday working on getting the voices for Commander in at a recording studio. It went very well. Made for some funny recording moments, unfortunately Jabari got all of the funny pictures. Maybe next post?


Also: Here's some new concept art done by Erik Boismier and Jonathan Flynn. He will be a recurring antagonist throughout the story.

 

As for voice acting, we were able to put up a Mage introduction for our YouTube page. Check it out below!






I posted a preview of what to expect from (in a?) Selatria trailer that I'm working on for YouTube. I originally meant it to be for Facebook friends, but what the heck? I'll repost it here. Here's a hint: The main antagonist of the game is in the movie somewhere.




 

Credits:

Voice Actors featured:
Peter Lim Quon (Narrator)
Jonathan Martin Dishaw (Commander)
Jabari Smith (Mage)
Vikki Ceballos (Melanie)

Music featured: 

Christopher Nuno (Introduction) 

Luke Simpson (Trial Cave)
 

Character Art: Jonathan Flynn
SFX: Donald Brown
Storyline: Airen Blakovich
World Map Design: William Merriam

Producer/Director/Game Design/Storyline: Grover Wimberly IV

Co-Director: Jabari Smith

 

I got some great feedback from a friend, he suggested that some dialogue be modified for better flow. I'm going to see if I can get that in before the trailer is done. I want to have it done by June 4th, but it's possible that it may be delayed. It will contain the introduction, but also show actual gameplay as well.

I wish I could post some samples of themes in the works, as they sound extremely awesome. Luke Simpson recently finished the Boss Theme for the game which sounds absolutely amazing. Bosses are also going to have multiple forms, and he's now working on a theme that plays when the boss has low HP. From what I've heard him show me, it fits for the situation perfectly. I hope you guys will enjoy the music in the game as well. It's an entirely original soundtrack.

Here are some updated screenshots showing off some of the new monsters. Erik Boismier, our head monster artist, is working on getting the shadowing for all of the monsters, so it's still a work in progress.

Unfortunately the beta testing dates I had planned in a previous post have to be postponed to the middle-end of June. We have some scheduling conflicts of getting the voices for one of our main characters, and to release that without the person's voice would be disrespectful to the team and undermine all that we've worked on.

I want to release a complete chapter 1 of the game with voices/art intact. So thank you for being patient. :)

Until next post.





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5/20 Selatria Updates: Concept Art, Luis Character Reel, Auditions...

Commander Concept Art: By Erik Boismier and Jonathan Flynn
Logo: Derrick Frainee

I haven't had a chance to do any updates in a while, thought I should...


Here's the hopeful schedule for how things should turn out, if everything goes as planned:


June 3: Selatria Trailer
June 4: Closed Beta Testing Begins via special Dropbox invite.
June 11: Open Beta Testing Begins / Website Launches
June 18: Public Chapter 1 is open for all

Selatria Chapter 1 is nearing completion. Only after about 6 months of delays or so... we released some footage of gameplay early on and got this long-winded feedback from this individual, made us feel like we needed a lot more polish, so I pushed it back three more months.

I just finished developing all of the boss fights on paper, I'm going to spend this week working on that and the introduction cut-scene. You guys will like the voice for that, I hope! (Well, I did.)

I wish we had a dedicated sprite and environmental artist, but I still want to get the game out there. I'm hoping we can find these kinds of artists to help on the project once they see what we actually have done so far.

Between last post and this one, we also put a new preview for Luis, the old eccentric main character. Take a look/listen!

 Luis: Voiced by River Kanoff
Script: Airen Blakovich

Speaking of which, auditions for the characters I mentioned in previous post are now closed. We are in the deciding process of who is being cast, and I don't want to post who got the role here before they got the memo.

Anyway, that's all for now. Next time, maybe game-play footage...

Pictures of re-done scenes with fog below:

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Selatria Development Update: Voice Auditions, Existing Voices, and Music

An update to what's being worked on. :)

Casting has started for two new characters. Number 015, and the Guard. If you're interested in auditioning, please refer to the link below for lines. You can message Jabari (the original poster there) or email me your submissions/auditions at either:

ultknightgrover AT gmail.com
OR
wimberlg AT coyote.csusb.edu

The submission deadline is May 15th, no exceptions. More info at the link provided below.

http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/showthread.php?78198-Selatria-The-Game!-Casting-session-two!&p=1198203#post1198203


Overview of the characters that have open roles:


Number 015 will be a recurring mini-boss in the game, encountered near the end of chapter 1. Sent by the Dakk'rian Empire to finish what 016 could not, he is a foil to her changing ways, forcing her to acknowledge her past as a heartless assassin.

Number 015 Concept Art -- May be subject to change.

The Guard/Soldier is a drone for the Empire more or less. Can be voiced by either a male or female. (There will be modifications to the art below if there is a female casted.) However, I did get one submission so far that treated the soldier and guard as two different characters... Interesting interpretation.

Guard/Soldier Concept Art -- May be subject to change.

Existing Character Voices:


Here's a preview of Number 016, one of the main characters in the team. She is voiced by Kristyn Yearington, also known as ohnobones in the VA community.

I will upload new character profiles hopefully once a week. Next week, I will show Luis, the eccentric old man of the team who seems to like breaking fourth walls.


Music:

I don't think I've posted these themes on my blog just yet.

Dakk'rund Overworld Theme - It's a desert like theme. Hear any game homages? -- Composed by Jabari Smith



Zaya Tower - It's going to be a sidequest like dungeon. I particularly like this theme because it gives an increasing feel of tension. -- Composed by Christopher Nuno

The bottom theme is before we modified the logo. The T in Tria resembled something that may be potentially offensive. We don't have any form of religious connotations in the game, the design was a strange coincidence, so it was modified slightly.

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Character Art: Johan Flynn
Logo Art: Derrick Frainee

Selatria Updates / Sphere RPG Open-Source Engine

Hello, readers(?)

Going to split this post up into two sections. Progress on Selatria, and a pitch to anyone who might be interested in learning a new open-source game engine.

Selatria:

 Updated logo by Derrick Frainee  

I messaged most of the team, and they seem like they are able to make the deadline with no problems. I'm just worried about one more artist that hasn't responded. But we're really going to try for a June 6-8th release to time it with the E3 announcements.

Of course, Selatria won't be at E3 (I wish), but I feel like it's a goal to release something at the same time just for the sake of the team. Just Chapter 1, there's still five more chapters to go, but now that the groundwork for the program/design for the team attack system and reserved points system that I designer are mostly complete (may need some tweaks), the main hard parts are down and make us ready to proceed.

The inspiration for the project seems to come and go though. There are some dead moments (I admit) where I want to do anything but work on the game, but then there are other times when so many people from the team submit things and I really like seeing the whole thing come together. I'd have to say that's my biggest inspiration, when I see others submit their stuff, it makes me feel like I need to compete with their quality and fine-tune the things I've implemented thus far.

Here's a preview of what's being worked on. Apologies if some pictures have been posted before. I don't exactly have all too great of a memory.


**Screenshots are in development and are subject to change.**


Whim Independent Studios Logo: Derrick Frainee
Character Dialogue Portrait Art: Johan Flynn
Dialogue: Jonathan Dishaw, Myself
Sprites: Juliet Taylor, William Merriam, Myself

    

I'm aware the EXP bars in the last picture are a bit bugged at the moment... But yeah, hoping for a June 4th release, still. Hope you'll give it a try!

Sphere -- Open Source RPG Engine:

http://www.spheredev.org/wiki/Main_Page

Anyone have experience with JavaScript? I have limited experience with it myself aside from a Software Engineering course I took. This is an open-source RPG game engine developed using that language. It allows for cross-platform development, which is one thing that plagues my Selatria project, the fact that it is Windows-only.

I would like to eventually re-implement Selatria and its battle system on Sphere for it to reach a wider audience. Of course, I would need a much bigger programming team in order to get that done. I would also like to be able to teach new people programming (in JavaScript I guess) in the future to solidify my own personal understanding of the language.

Might anyone be interested in learning it with me over this Summer?

You can download the Engine and IDE here.

You can learn more about Sphere here.

Selatria -- Concept Art/Tentative Chapter 1 Release Date

I promise to get back more into the spirit of posting regular updates. I haven't had a chance to.



Shame for non-frequent updates... I know.

I have a whirlwind of things going on. I'm working on helping present a game to the IEEE Game Showcase in Orange County next Saturday. I never worked on the game, but since I let them know about the showcase, they invited me to the team and I helped put together the movie using fraps to get some of the gameplay footage while the designers compiled it into a YouTube movie for the presentation.

The game is called Lacuna Reaver, and an alpha implementation of the project will be shown there. Check it out and show support. We'd definitely appreciate it.

I'm also working on a Kinect programming project, but I'm not sure if I can talk about that publicly or not. So I won't.

Selatria:


The Selatria team and I are working on finalizing a lot of stuff for Chapter 1. The game has come a long way, and during the transition period, I didn't want to post a lot of un-finalized concepts in the transition period. We're nearing completion of the Chapter 1, which will be released FREE to anyone who would like to give that part of the game a try. The goal to have this available is the week of E3 2012, so Monday June 4, 2012 is what I'm shooting for. It's originally 7 months later than I intended (I wanted it done in December), but some criticism I got involving some early footage of the game I released warranted some postponement.

Just keep in mind, the whole game in its entirety, (Chapter 1-6) will cost something... as it won't be free-to-play. But it won't be more than $5 or so for a digital download copy of the game. I don't see anyone paying more than that for an indie game, anyhow. Here are some screenshots and artwork from the game. The artists really went the extra mile to come up with these in their spare time, and I'm really grateful to have such talent on the team.

Props to Johan Flynn for the character designs and coloring, and Erik Boismier for the monster concepts and shadowing.

I think that's about it for now. See you guys next post. (I'll try to post more frequently. And game-related. Promise!)

Selatria: Monster Art Implementation

Current progress, take a look!

Monster Concept Art: Erik Boismier
Coloring: Johan Flynn

Still here.

I'm still here. Somewhat!

I haven't been writing lately just because I've been swamped and had my hands in way too many projects to get the time to write nowadays.

Been spending a lot of my free time out of class in Eorzea with the linkshell trying to complete the new raid content for the 1.22 patch while I can.

Selatria's going pretty well, developing the Team Attack system among other things. I'm very happy about the project.

Going to be buying Xenoblade Chronicles soon. I just need to get off my lazy ass and go get it sometime.

Oh, and check this out.