Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #36

Hey everyone! It's been just about a year since my last development log for the studio, and I wanted to use this Labor Day to make a post to talk about what we've been working on in the past year.

Previously, I've talked about how we made the decision to split Selatria into two parts. Due to the long development of the game, we wanted to show what we've done over the past few years and use this first half to assist us with funding for the second half of the game as we will not be doing any more crowdfunding for the Selatria team.

This brings me to the updated logo for Selatria. We took into account feedback given about the readability of the name of the game, as well as a subtitle for the first half of the game, so we came up the idea of such:


The first half of the game will be officially titled "Selatria: Advent of the Dakk'rian Empire", and we will have more information about beta testing below. Expect a new trailer for this to come about next week or so!

Beta Testing:

Beginning next week, we want to aim to put Selatria: Advent of the Dakk'rian Empire into beta testing. We'll have a limited number of keys available to give out for people to play for the next week or so to ensure everything is set and ready for the release date. Beta version data will not be able to be carried over to the final game. Those who have supported us on Indiegogo will be getting both registration keys for the beta test as well as the both halves of the actual game sent via email on launch day.


Development Team Changes:

Among the biggest change since our last development log is that Selatria is now being developed across California and Nevada. Shortly after the last development log, I relocated for new opportunities and used said opportunities to be able to help fund the projects we are working on in-house. Since then, we've brought on a new sound effects artist, an additional composer, several voice actors, and two new game designers for the studio team.

Here's a recent picture of our team from E3 2016 a few months ago.

Unfortunately, the side effect from all of this is that is time I would use to write about development went to commuting and traveling between California and Nevada instead.


Expanded Social Media Use:

Since last year, we've made lots of strides with social media. Deborah who is one of our leading artists for Selatria is now doubling as social media for the studio. We have now begun using Selatria's Facebook and our whimindie Tumblr to do posts on development of the games. I've also set up an instagram to where I'll post new info about studio and behind the scenes development on our projects. Be sure to like or follow our pages!

Facebook / Twitter / Tumblr / Instagram


Use of Organizational Tools:

Beginning in late-2014 we began having weekly standup meetings for the project and put those notes in a Google Doc to note project progress.

This year, we decided to switch to a new project tool called HackNPlan, which is a management tool similar to Rally and Jira, but meant for game developers. It's currently in beta phase, but I've found it to be essential to keeping track of all the different aspects of the project. The biggest help has been towards keeping track of bugs in the project as well as voice acted files that need review and retake.

Because of the distance and increased team members working from home, we began using Slack to keep communication and files in a good spot.


New Auditions:

We plan on having a new round of auditions for characters in the second half of Selatria later this year. We want to focus on finishing the roles of current talent before we add new voices to the roster, and getting away from having our current talent wait several months for feedback. We want to get a handle on the process first.


That about wraps it up for this development log. Thanks for sticking with us on this long development journey. Our team poured our heart and soul into this game, and we hope that it will be one of the best indie turn based RPGs on the market. Hopefully you enjoy it as much as we did making it! Until next time.

Believing that one person can fix things

Hey, so I wanted to temporarily bring my blog out of retirement because several nerves were struck this whole last week: In particular: The US presidential candidate Donald Trump's remarks that "I alone can fix it", the leaked emails at the DNC finding a way to sabotage Bernie Sanders' support, and my Facebook feed being covered with posts about switching support from Bernie Sanders to any other one candidate that feels they speaks to them, or hanging onto the thread that he still has a realistic shot at the presidency (and he doesn't.)

Now before I get comments accusing me of otherwise: I am a Bernie Sanders supporter. I voted for him by mail in the California primary, and his causes and beliefs align with most of mine. I was equally outraged when he did outperform Hillary Clinton in almost every debate and it was twisted by media companies to show that the opposite was true. I refuse to watch CNN to this day because of it. I sincerely feel that Bernie Sanders would have had a bigger shot to getting the traction and votes he needed, if the system we put together wasn't so stacked against him.

Now those reading are already listing alternatives to Bernie Sanders - I already know who they are. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, both well-spoken individuals who have impressive campaigns, and I can easily show you the chance they have to get a presidency. I can tell you how to make the gesture with your hand. Just make your index finger and your thumb touch together.

There needs to be short-term and long-term solutions to how to fix this disaster, and believing in one person to fix a giant centuries-old system isn't the way to go about it. One person isn't the reason why this system is broken, it comes from a messy foundation underneath. The short-term solution is picking the candidate who aligns with your views the closest, and has the best shot of winning (in my case, it's Hillary Clinton - yours may vary) but the long-term solution has to be to figure out why our choices have to be this way and change it.

The long-term solution can be solved in my opinion if we start low and work our way up. There are unknown representatives and local candidates running all of the time that have policies similar to the platform Bernie Sanders runs on, but no one really takes the time to sit down and research them. Do the research, vote for officials that have views that align with yours, work your way up the ladder. Fire/replace them. Fire/replace their boss. Fire/replace their boss's boss. It comes down to my main point. 

Those with power are only effective when the those under them are willing to let it happen.

In extreme cases, the people willing to let it happen may be kept/forced ignorant to this power through the use of surveillance systems, or harsh policies that limit education. In more moderate cases, the people willing to let it happen is because of fear, or that they don't think there's another option. Or in the easiest way, it comes out due to apathy or willful ignorance.

One person alone can't fix it. In fact it's scary to even have that opinion. If you want to change the system, replace the people responsible for keeping the system in place before the next-go-around. We should have had better candidates this time around, and it's a shame, but we also can't have the notion that one person needs to be kept so high on a pedestal. It's not that black and white.

End Rant.

Post Edit: I use Ballotpedia when making my vote for who to go for. Since I do vote-by-mail, I use this website to type in every name and figure out the platforms they stand on and see if they're worth voting for. It's not biased towards any cause, and it's definitely worth looking into. https://ballotpedia.org/

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

I'm not dead, and neither is this blog. More updates coming in November. Promise!

See you soon.

Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #35

Hey readers! It's been a few months, so I thought I should update with what's going on with the game studio.

ANTics: 

First and foremost, we released the iOS version of ANTics along with a new trailer! You can check out ANTics at our itch.io page! If you don't have an Apple device, we also have versions available for PC, and Android!

Special thanks to Jessica Jacuinde for putting the trailer together!

 

 

Selatria: 

State of Future Auditions

I wanted to start off by talking about the future auditions for the project. All future casting roles and auditions on hold while we work with the current cast on getting their roles completed with the project. Due to the large cast and amount of retakes, a large backlog of submitted lines and retake suggestions has built up, and that has taken higher priority than casting new people. Once most of the lines for the current cast are done and implemented in game, we will open up to more of our uncasted and missing roles.

Our goal is to change our recording development cycle for Selatria to which a casted actor can be compensated and completed with their role in a few weeks-couple months time depending on the severity of the role. Up until a few months ago, we were struggling with writing, as well as developing and editing. Since the story is written now, it takes a lot of burden off of us as we can cast with all of the scripts available to us.

And now for the new stuff!
 
I apologize for the long wait on new information on the project! We're currently fine-tuning the details of a new public demo for the game. This version will be 1.4 and will be the first demo we've released in about eight months! The new build of the game will include the new logo, various graphical improvements, new music, and some new features! Check out a preview below.  

Graphical Improvements!

The new build of the game will have upgrades to the look of the terrain and interactive objects.

 

Updated Environments!

The art shown was developed by Deborah Groves and Jennifer Gilliland. There will be more unique looking terrain and areas to explore going forward in development logs!

New Music!

Below is a new theme you'll be able to hear in the Pub areas in the updated demo build. Composed by Christopher Nuno.



Gameplay Changes for Upcoming Demo Version!


We have changed the term "Reserved Points" to "Reserved Selatria" in-game to better match the lore.

The Journal will be usable as an in-game item to be able to track player progress if they decide to stop playing for an extended amount of time and need a recap on what's going on. The player will also be able to get an inside glimpse of what's going on in the story from Mage's point of view.



And one last important picture, one that's been on the request list for many.

Players will be able to skip the intro with one button press if they would like to hop right into being able to play the game or if they didn't do too well in the Trial Cave and would like to start over quickly. In the last update, we had a menu button for this at the beginning, and it was cumbersome deciding through multiple windows. This actually took a while to implement, and I can't promise being able to skip every single cut-scene, but for extraordinarily long ones, you will be able to skip.

Possible Android/iOS/Mac release in the future:

Since the last development log, there was an announcement of a new RPG Maker engine coming out, RPG Maker MV, which allows exports to platforms other than Windows. Due to this new engine being in JavaScript rather than Ruby, it would be difficult to move Selatria over, but we also don't have enough information about the new engine to see if it's worthwhile. Music and story assets would be easy to carry over, but everything else would have a hurdle to it. So I'm keeping my eyes peeled and prioritizing finishing Selatria on the engine we have available.

Game Production being increased to three days a week from one!
For the last few months while going through a move, development of the game had to be cut to one day a week, while using the others to do managerial tasks with the team. As of this past week, it will be increased back to three days a week. Wednesday/Thursday evenings and Saturday noons. There will be a lot more content and more frequent development logs with the game as we get back on track!


That'll do it for this development log. Look forward to the new build of Selatria available to the public sometime in October!

Indie Game Developer "Bullying" Rant

So I am a member of a prominent Indie Game Developers page on Facebook. Fellow indies can post about topics related to the development of independent games, and others can comment here and there about the topic. For the most part, it's been very helpful, I always read the posts every morning and when I get off work for anything relevant to the development of indie games. Some of my team would probably notice I cross-post a lot of interesting articles that I find off of this group. Long story short, it was a group that I really felt connected to, and felt by contributing to the success of up and coming indie games made by other small people and small studios.

Until last night.

A post was made from a teenager asking for team members for a game he was working on. He was admittedly a bit naive, in the sense of he was promising unspecified payment for the game to his team members when it was done, without talking or how or when these payments would occur. The guy said he was 15 years of age later in this post, but what I saw in the comments were severely disturbing, even for "this is the internet standards". Grown men and women were bashing this poster, making jokes at his expense, editing this original poster's profile picture with making memes of jokes, and hardly any meaningful comments were given as constructive criticism to this individual.

I did my best to give this original poster the best constructive criticism that he needed to specify the genre and scope of the project and how exactly the team was going to be commissioned. But my advice was drowned out in memes, crude jokes, and harsh feedback that was, in my honest opinion, really uncalled for.

So I am going to be rescinding my membership to this group, effective this post. I considered posting this exact post on the Indie Game Developers Facebook group, but what would that solve? This post would be drowned in the same comments, memes, and brutal jokes that the post of this individual had to bear. Plus, I would not want the admins to bother dealing with people who are leaving anyway, I have the same philosophy with groups that I run. If they were on their way out to begin with, it's already too late.

As I was once a naive 15 year old developing crappy video games, I would see myself forever scarred if this kind of forum existed when I was learning the basics of independent game developing. We should be helping cultivate newer generations into wanting to make games and learning these skills and techniques that we're currently roughing out the edges. Those coming in to learn should have an easier time than we did.

A point can be made that I could apply to be an admin for this group, but I am busy working on my own projects and groups, I would love to given the time, but unfortunately that is not the case.

For all of the useful resources that the group has given me, I will cherish and use going forward with the team. But I cannot be part of a group that will resort to online bullying of its peers.

Thanks for reading.

Change in Life Direction: Part II

Change in Life Direction Part I (March 2015)

Hey all, it's honestly been a little while since I've had time to write down some thoughts. I thought I'd give somewhat of a large update to what's been going on with life. What better way to knock out two birds with one stone than taking the blog out of a much-deserved hiatus and updating?

Life and Relocation

First and foremost, since my last big post, I've up and moved about 200 miles north to Las Vegas. It's a move that I've personally wanted to do for about five years (it's really gotten to the point where one friend in particular said I was sounding like a broken record about it), so I finally found my chance and I went to act on it.

The final straw which caused me to want to move was me visiting my grandfather in Los Angeles and meeting with the composer for Selatria who lives not too far from said relative. I left in the morning to visit both people, and left towards home in the afternoon. It was a 3 1/2 hour drive to go 60miles. In that same 3 1/2 hour drive I could be going to/from Vegas, and so I looked for a way to go there. I've visited Vegas pretty often for the past 5-6 years coming for anime conventions and buffets, and we had one FFXIV guild meeting here as well.

I will say, I do absolutely love it up here. The heat isn't much of a change from what I'm used to, but the people are really nice, my neighbors are fantastic with helping me out (and I do the same to help them), and don't get me started on the food. I'm worried if I'm going to gain a lot of weight from pigging out at all of the local eateries. But I am balancing that out by picking up my jogging again. I am currently maintaining a 20 minute jog each morning around the condominium complex in order to burn off what I ate the night before. I am kind of concerned with my metabolism slowing down (finally!) and gaining weight, I'd rather stay relatively skinny and not let myself go. I'm currently living alone, but I may get a dog in the foreseeable future, so it won't be so quiet around here. (The companionship would be a nice plus!)

I'm currently heading back to San Bernardino roughly every two weeks to meet my family and my friends and catch up with the studio folks in person. I'll get to the studio and independent game development in a bit.

New career: Softvision

The new opportunity that I jumped for was a Software Quality Assurance Engineering position for a company called Softvision. I really enjoy it here. The co-workers are great, I get along very well with my bosses, and they have a great work hard-play hard mentality, which keeps me in high spirits throughout the work day. The casual, friendly atmosphere up here is a nice change from the position in the company that I left last January. Some of the newer QA engineers are straight out of university so I take time to help them out with learning the QA process, and I still have plenty of time to get work of my own completed. It makes them happy because they have someone helping out rather than reading a guide from a computer, and it makes me fulfilled that I am helping someone succeed. It's a win-win!

Especially with how I posted about my burnout episode with all of the unfortunate circumstances that caused me to resign from the last company I worked for in my last life update, I expect people reading this to be somewhat concerned about why I'd so happily take another QA job. I honestly believe this situation and circumstances is a lot different. The gracious relocation time I was given, mixed with the far less commute (10 minutes versus 2+ hours a day) and not having to deal with Los Angeles traffic on a daily basis was reasons enough to where I don't think I could suffer another burnout as badly as I did in January. Taking care of my own needs will be first priority going forward.

Independent Game Development

I set up a home office with all of my computers and I'm currently directing Selatria from here during the week. I make a point to work on studio-related work at least an hour a day. I try to aim for doing it when I wake up before my jog so I am going to the office happy, but if I get up later, I will focus on it when getting home.

Going forward, for at least as long as I have the ability to, I am going to fund the games we create in the future on my own without having to crowdfund or rely on external financial support. I would like to commission people out of pocket to do assets for the game to continue production, so they can be studio IPs. Due to existing contracts with Selatria, this cannot be done, but the next game I will direct will be doing this.

As for Selatria, the game development is coming very nicely. We just finished writing the story last month, the music is almost complete, and we're in the midst of casting the remaining voice talent. The game development and art is going to take the largest amount of time to complete, and that's not something we want to rush. Selatria will be done when it's done. I am looking into porting the game to Android/iPhone/Mac with the new engine coming out, but with the announcement that it's going to be in JavaScript instead of Ruby, that's going to be a massive undertaking. Not to mention upscaling the art to match the new resolutions. I'm currently thinking about it, but I don't want to be discouraged with putting out the game as it is for PC, and working about a version for that sometime after release. We'll see how it goes.

I am going to start looking into streaming my development for games next month as well as get in touch with the Vegas Indie Collective and meet/network with other indies out here. May establish new connections and team members! :)

Viva Eorzea

Viva will be coming up on its 5th anniversary in September. Crazy! I've been leading this group for a fifth of my real life years. I will say, there has been many of times when I've considered stepping down, but I am glad to been involved with keeping the group together this long. I am looking forward for having our third real life group meeting in late-October or early-November.

I also think I made the right decision moving the FC towards a progression/achievement group. Doing everything the game had to offer multiple days a week was one of the major contributors to my burnout earlier this year. It was causing me to get agitated during events easily and super mad over little things. I lost a few good friends over it, too. Since January (?) or so I've been keeping Viva events to two days a week, and it's done wonders for my mood and patience.

We also have our own guild airship! The FC voted on Facebook for the name "Flight Club", so it is as so.

The Viva Airship - Flight Club

Here's to many more good years to Viva!





Frequency of Blog Posts going forward

I'm not sure why I'm currently sticking with the title of "Grover's Semi-Daily Rants" when I'm clearly not posting every other day. Going forward, I'm probably going to be making only a few long posts per month rather than a lot of short ones.  I like to rant and have a large information dump available rather than a few short bite-size pieces. We'll see how it goes.

I hope that was a sufficient life update! This sure as hell couldn't fit in a simple status update or twitter post. 

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Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #34

Hey everyone! Back with the 34th Whim Independent Studios development log!

A few weeks ago, the team and I had a chance to attend this year's E3! Given that a lot of team members work remotely, this was the first time a lot of our team got to meet each other face-to-face. Following last year's picture, we took several pictures this year of our team.

From L to R: Vee Ceballos (Voice of Melanie), Geno Quesada (Logo Designer), Deborah Groves (Selatria Co-Artist), Matthew Estrada (Co-Lead Game Designer), Christopher Nuño (Composer), Michelle Deco (Voice of Morgen and Leonari), Jennifer Gilliland (Co-Artist), Myself (Producer/Director), River Kanoff (Voice of Luis), Paul Vela (Administrative Director), Ryan Homme (Writer), Jonathan Dishaw (Co-Lead Game Designer), and Gerren Willis (ANTics Lead/Programmer)

Above is our picture with Shadoe (far right), our Sound Engineer

And above is our picture with Paul Diggs (left), the modeler for ANTics!

We will be making another appearance as a team at E3 next year. Hope to see you there! Now for some new information on our ongoing projects!


Selatria:

Updated logo!

With some team and player feedback, we have decided to modify Selatria's logo once more (shown above!). The new logo emphasizes the pronunciation of "Selatria", shows the colors of the two opposing Selactic sources, and addresses concerns about the readability of the previous logo. The updated logo has also been developed by Jennifer Gilliland.


Changes to $20 Indiegogo Tier:

I wanted to start off with my most important point. Those who have supported us in our indiegogo campaign in 2013, we are going to be making a change to one of our tiers:

For the original $20 tier, we originally promised exclusive content releases one week in advance as well as access to previous tiers.

We as a team found that it was hurting our visibility of the project. Given the expansions to our team, and new personnel on our team handling social media, we have decided to change this tier. We will be providing a virtual book showcasing character and monster art from the game as well as previous tiers. For anyone who contributed to the $20 tier and would not like this reward instead, we will be happy to offer a refund.

For this time, the other Indiegogo rewards will not be changed, and we will provide/ship the rewards as they become available.


New Art:

Some of the new pirate antagonists you may encounter in Chapter 3! Character Design by Deborah Groves

Oh yeah, and not to mention this fellow:

The three characters I posted above are all voiced by the same person! Look forward to more information about these characters in future development logs!

Next development log will show new screenshots/videos of the project! The environments are in the midst of a redesign and it will be fair to show things when it's more final. (Including before and after screens)

New Music: 

We are nearing the end of having the whole soundtrack composed. Some themes you may have played in previous demos have been converted from .WAV format to MIDI in order to save file space.

Here's a preview track of one of the themes that will be heard in Chapter 2. Composed by Christopher Nuño




And another theme that will be used later in the story, a video of it in development!




Story and Game Design:

We're happy to say we are currently writing the ending to Selatria. After four and a half years, we're wrapping up the main details to the main scenario of the project! When that is complete, we'll be moving on to developing side stories for each of the characters.

Every main character will have some sort of unresolved issue set out during the main scenario that can only be resolved through doing the sidestory quests of that character, after which they will be rewarded with that character's signature weapon. The signature weapons will have unique art and graphics as opposed to the other weapons you can buy from stores.

Due to storage and progress constraints, while the main scenario will be mostly voiced, the sidestories of the characters and any sidequest content will not be voiced.

New auditions available soon:

I take the blame for the wait on this one. Over the past couple of months, we've had to recast some voice actors who were dropped for not finishing their role, and we're having to balance the upcoming and current casts with auditions we've received while putting together auditions for the roles we're planning on replacing. We apologize for the wait on auditions, and we're going through the last batch.

The next round of auditions will cover any missing roles we did not cast from the last audition round and offer re-casts for roles that were cast and dropped from the project. I do not have a set date for when this will go live at the very moment, but it will be during the latter half of July.

We will also be changing our policy for incoming voiced roles that they will not be fully compensated until all lines are done for the project. When we've had to cast roles in the past, we didn't have a time line for when the story and dialogue would be completely written, so we have had to leave our voice actors waiting over months while being compensated while we were writing new lines and chapters for these characters to voice.

Pre-Orders and future Promotions:

For those who missed our Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns and would like to obtain the rewards we offered in the past, you will get the opportunity to do so. We will be offering pre-orders for Selatria when we are in the testing phase once the game has been fully designed/implemented and we are deciding on a release date.

We also have a plan in place to be able to get the game at a discounted for participating in a Share/Retweet/Reblog campaign, details about this will be made in a future Development Log!


Thanks for reading! Until next time! :)



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