Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #47

Hey all, back with the 47th development log for the studio. For this update, we're going to talk about progress on our games and infrastructure for the studio. A lot of this might be a bit boring if you're not interested in what goes on under the hood, but I guess the point of a development log isn't really to entertain but instead talk about what's going on. Anyhow...

Selatria

Progress on the Selatria project is going well. The most difficult aspect of the project is still managing the large amount of voices, what needs to be done, and what needs to be re-cast and re-recorded. Shadoe, the sound engineer of the project, has taken to going through the last main character's voices and sending me a list of what needs to be retaken there. While I go through the long backlog of voices for side characters and recurring characters and approve/send emails out as needed. Here are some new screenshots from Chapter 4.

The new cutscene developer Donald Alfieri has come up with the basis for a lot of these new cutscenes for the second half.

Changes to Shopkeeper:


Currently Shopkeeper can die based off the player's actions or if they're careless or don't choose to buy goods from them based off the previous actions.

I was ignorant to some very negative tropes that this contributes to and I'm making some changes and what I feel are needed retcons to the character. We've begun work already on some of the points you see below, and all of these are going to be implemented by the time Selatria is ready for release. For future games, I want to do better on this and do better research on people of different backgrounds/orientations/communities so something like this doesn't happen again. I personally feel embarrassed that I didn't know about these aspects of the community and I want to make sure it gets changed.


Negatives removed/planned:


• Removed "Shopkeeper's Dying Will" item that would appear in wherever you let him die.

• Removed permadeath aspect. You will be able to see Shopkeeper in every scene he's supposed to be involved in.

• For places where his bones used to be if you let him die, it will just be nothing there assuming he somehow escaped or got free.


Positives planned:

• A "rewards" like system for if you buy the goods and stop him from getting angry, you get permanent discounts on his wares starting at 5% per positive interaction to a 25% discount cap

We have more additional further changes in mind to the Shopkeeper character, and we'll announce them as they become available.

Dastardly Dairy Debacle

We're still making some progress on The Dastardly Dairy Debacle, but there's some last minute hiccups before we can bring it to Google Play. More information on this game will be in next month's development log.

Improving the infrastructure/implementing proper source control

Up until now, we've been using Dropbox and Google Drive for our version control for game development. (I know, really bad/amateurish on our end.) While we've attempted to use more professional version control like GitHub, we've noticed it was rejecting some of the assets for our project that wasn't code-related, so that wouldn't work for us.

After messing with Perforce and trying to get in contact with them for the Indie Studio pack and having to jump through hoops and emails to get a price point, we've settled on Plastic SCM/Gluon for the version/source control tool for the studio. I wanted to make sure we got a tool that everyone can use without it being a hassle, and I'm really happy we settled on the choice. I thought I was going to have to fight to get this all set up but it was extremely easy and straightforward. Why didn't we use this sooner?

We ended up going for the Cloud Server option for us.

E3 and future conventions

E3 was handled a lot better this year than it has in previous years. While the industry only hours, there was time to actually get some dedicated playtime in but it wasn't enough of a time block to be able to see everything. (Each popular game was a multi-hour wait, even including industry credentials.) I hope next year they take more of a stance similar to Tokyo Game Show and have an industry-only day and then two full days for the public. That would be the best compromise to making the exhibition a better event.

For future conventions and events, some of us will be at the Las Vegas game jam next weekend and Gameacon Las Vegas at the end of the year. Next, Salt Lake Gaming Con? LVLUPEXPO 2019? More to come in the next development log.

Until next time!