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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