Producing and Directing comments

Me: You know, I don't really do a lot of hands-on game development. ...Or at least as much as I'd like to.

Jon: That's because you're both a PRODUCER and DIRECTOR.

Me: ...Good point.

They're not just titles, I'm want to make sure the game is heading in a good direction as well as making sure we get everything settled with the publisher and patches. I think next project I'll take more of a creative role and leave the production side to the end. Well, at least, make the game, let it sit for a while during which I'll market it and build hype, then announce a release date and send it out to the world. Doing it all simultaneously is taxing.

Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #46 [E3 2018 Edition]

Hey all - back with a new development log. Pre-E3 edition. For this June update, I wanted to make sure we had our own big announcements to show to go with E3.

Selatria

After seven years of development on the game, we are finally going to be completing our work on Selatria. We are currently aiming for a release date in late-2019 for the full Selatria game. As promised before, any progress from Selatria: Advent of the Dakk'rian Empire will be compatible with the full final release. Here is some promotional art and some new screenshots!

To accompany this announcement, we have a few new people on the main team to introduce or switched their roles. Donald Alfieri has been brought onto the team in the past year to join me on mapping and designing the cutscene movements and porting in the script for Part 2. We still have two more sections of script to port in for the main scenario before we can consider that leg finished and move 100% of our effort to cutscene designs. Dominique Hodnett is a brand-new addition to our team, and we have been working together on Wednesday nights and Saturdays to complete the content of Mage's journal and some side stories involving the main characters you will get to experience in Part 2. Leigh-anna Griswould has been behind the implementation of the voices into the cutscenes, and last but not least, Timothy Blanchet has been behind the scripting of some of the new features that you will see explained below.

Some new features:

-The journal will now open automatically to the newest page. As mentioned in the last post, we now will have an indicator that briefly popups when the journal is updated. When selecting the journal from the main menu or the items section, it will now highlight Mage's current thoughts dependent on your progress. I feel this will be good for players who take a long break between play sessions or are waiting for the new release and forgot where they needed to go.

-Quick Save will also be coming in with the 2019 update. Quick save will allow for shorter play sessions by being able to save and close the game at any time. However, when a quick save is loaded, that data is deleted from memory. This was a requested feature from different forums given that most games these days have save anywhere functionality. But due to the nature of the game, we don't want to have our players stuck in a situation they can't get out of. So we set up a compromise and implemented Quick Save.

Also to note, you will start to see more video footage from upcoming scenes that our team has worked on implementing, and I will be cross posting this to our new forums and on our Steam discussion board.

Regarding the new release date: Previously I have been concerned about giving away release date windows due to naively announcing an August 2012 release date for the full game back when we started.  Since then, we have better project management protocols in place and up-to-date metrics on where we are and what we need to do to be able to get there. I feel we've gotten to the point that if we can't finish it in the next year, it will simply never get done. I'm really hoping you'll continue to support this project as you have been as we go into our final year of development. For those of you who have supported us on Indiegogo, we will be making further announcements for physical rewards and fulfillment before the end of this year.


The Dastardly Dairy Debacle

After a few months of fixing issues and pushing back on release for The Dastardly Dairy Debacle, we're currently doing final checks on content implementation and we are aiming for a new release of this summer. For now, we've uploaded a new theme from the game, so please take a listen. Please also take a look at some new screenshots as well as a new song composed by Christopher Nuño!

We also have a new Whim Indie interview available regarding music creation and a new interview by Jabari for the J-Tendo show (if you haven't seen it yet).





Before we end for this month's update, I'd like to show some highlights from our time at LVLUPEXPO this year. We had a great turnout and we hope to demonstrate our games at the convention next year as well.

That's it for this update. See you next month or at the E3 show floor!