Developer's Log - June 2022

Hello everyone,

I'm going to keep this update fairly short, as it's primarily meant to serve as a check-in for June's progress. Unfortunately, further bug fixes and gameplay mechanic improvements means less visual changes to share.

Additionally, I am disappointed to admit that life has gotten in the way, and the time I've been able to put towards development has be heavily reduced from what it was at the beginning of the year.

However, I am currently investigating some options that may permit me to get a little help with the project in order to mitigate the loss of progress I've had in the past couple of months. If all goes well, the pace of development should improve.

Release Date Change
I'll start by ripping off the band-aid: I have set Chapter 1 of the game's release date across all sites back to "TBD". The anticipated release for the end of this year was already a pretty soft deadline, but I'd like to call it early to ensure anyone following the project and expecting to play a full game by the end of this year is not mislead.

It has been very challenging to uphold the same momentum I had a couple months ago, and I'm just not certain that I can pull through for the rest of Chapter 1 at the same pace. Game development is kind of like running a marathon--and I've used up a lot of energy sprinting with both the demo release, maintenance, and other things discussed in the prior log.

I think the new date won't be terribly far off--Spring of 2024 is feasible. But I'm not going to set any formal dates until I am certain.

With that out of the way, let's see a little progress.

Mordin Village Progress
The next area of the game, Mordin Village, continues to be worked on. Being the first real "town" area, it will have a lot of additional characters, some side quests, and a big portion of the main story.



The base maps are finished now, and just need to be polished and have the actual events added to them. I think the new structure of the town is much more fitting, and makes it feel like home. Also, by splitting the map up into a couple of separate areas, it will help prevent any lag present in the original.



And here's an in-game shot:



NPC faces have been put together as well. My goal for the various towns of Astravia is to give even minor characters a bit of agency, and not have them be just scarecrows that sell you items. Nearly every member of Mordin Village will have their own personality and distinct relationships with other members of the town.



Engine & Features Progress
I was able to address some pretty big problems with object collision (i.e., walking into an enemy or door). In the demo, it was pretty apparent that certain enemies would seemingly cause a battle to start even though they were several tiles away from Oliver, or the doorways would trigger in an unusual way. This will no longer be an issue.

I have some improvements in mind for wall collision as well, that will hopefully both help with performance and also some various issues reported with clipping. These are pretty intensive, and will take me a bit more time.

The battle system changes discussed in the previous log are still being worked on, and just a few more features need to be added / tweaked.

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That's all for now. As always, thank you for your patience and continued support. I know many of you are eager to play more of the game, and I am so eager to share more of the world with you. I hope to have more fulfilling progress updates in the future.

-Jaiden