Kandria
Building levels in Kandria takes a lot of time!
Last week of the month approaching, oh boy!
Nick
Well, at this point it should be obvious that we're not gonna make the original deadline. We're still gonna try to push out an early demo for our testing team, but yeah, the public demo for everyone is gonna have to be delayed by at least two weeks. The delay is not just caused by all the extra work involved in selecting a composer, but also in just how long it takes to make these levels. I haven't even managed to finish a first draft of all the chunks we have, let alone playtest and revise them thoroughly.
There's a lot of back and forth in drawing in parts, realising there's missing tiles, adding those, going back to draw more, and so on and so on. I also still have this very annoying reluctance to even get started working on it at all, which has slowed me down a lot the past couple of days. I'm also noticing that I'm wearing a bit thin, so I'm really looking forward to getting through this and focusing on another project for a bit after the demo release. Hell, I might even take a day off next week just to get my shit together.
Anyway, here's some preview shots of the new areas I've been working on together with Fred:
Aside from that and the usual bugfixing and support all else I've been up to has been selecting composers and starting on interviews. I've somehow managed to get the list down to 8 people to interview. Most everyone else should already have gotten an email reply by now. Again, I'm sorry if you didn't make the cut, and sincerely hope you find another cool project to join. I'm sure there's got to be something out there!
I've gone through 6 of the 8 interviews already, with the last 2 coming on Monday. So far everyone has been both incredibly talented and very nice to talk to, so this hasn't made the decision any easier. Still, it's been very nice to meet everyone and chat with them, so I don't regret this one bit! I'm going to have to figure out how to narrow it down to 3 people by Wednesday, and then invite those remaining 3 to write a 1 minute sample track. Naturally this is going to be a paid commission, so it's going to cost me a bit more than just my time. Still, I think it's going to be well worth it, and will give us a good look into how each applicant feels about Kandria's world, and what a finished piece sounds like.
We'll be sure to let you know how that progresses, and once the pieces are finished, we'll also publish those so you can have a listen. It'll probably take a few weeks for all of that to happen though, so please remain patient!
I'm going to keep this entry on the shorter side, since there isn't that much that happened this week that I can really speak of in detail. As a last bit though, I've finally decided to make use of the engine's palette swapping capabilities to make a few alternate looks for The Stranger. Customisation like that is always really nice to have and I think it helps a lot to help players empathise and feel themselves as part of the world to be able to choose what they look like.
Oh, and before I forget, we are still thinking about that level design contest, but we're probably going to have to move that until after we do our game jam, just to have more time to iron out editor bugs and problems, so stay tuned on that front, too! If you're interested in entering in that or playing other people's submissions, you can already join the discord though, where you'll be sure to be kept up to date on that!
Tim
My quest branch is now merged into the mainline, so I’ve worked on finishing the functionality of the side quests. The time trial quest is now working great, logging times in different score brackets (gold/silver/bronze) and tracking your personal best. I’ve written dialogue for the third main quest now and moved it’s location to the wider areas of the level, and fleshed out more side quest dialogue. There’s still a bit more dialogue to go, moving the other quests to their proper locations in the level, and some various “todos” that I left myself in the code. But I feel like I’m on the home stretch.
Fred
Since we're done with all the animations that we need for the slice of all the characters, I've been put onto tiling duty. I've made a bunch of machines and such for one of the central rooms of the first quest. It's a utilities room that deals with water and power, where a big fight will take place. There's still a bunch more tiles we need for other rooms, so I'll be focusing on that and polishing up the existing ones in the next week.
Outlook
More levels more tiles more polish more quests, more everything! I am too tired to even think of a cool way to end this email, so I'll just see you next week, hope you have a good one!