10 Feb 2022Developer post

Catalyst Wake Released!

Hello! Catalyst Wake has finally been released on Steam! Hopefully the wait is worth it. To celebrate the occasion, I've changed the main menu — one of the very few things on my list of "potential future updates". I will continue to support Catalyst Wake with bug fixes and additi

01 Jan 2022Developer post

Catalyst Wake Finished!

Catalyst Wake has been finished, and is now available to play on itch.io! It will be coming to Steam on February 10th . Obviously I can't link to the itch page from Steam, since it's against Steam's policies. But I suspect that doesn't matter, since if you're reading this progres

29 Dec 2021Developer post

Tomorrow

We're one day away from Catalyst Wake's release!! Just in case you didn't know this already, the game will be coming to Steam on February 10th next year, but is releasing on itch.io tomorrow. This is because the end of the year is a bad time to release games on Steam. The past we

23 Dec 2021Developer post

All CGs Complete

I completed 115 CGs this week, bringing the total CGs in Masks to 558. And with that, every CG in Catalyst Wake has been completed!! Even though I won't have time to extend the Summit fight sequence, I do want to go back in and revise some CGs I made. And I haven't post-processed

15 Dec 2021Developer post

15 Days

I completed 48 CGs this week, bringing the total CGs in Masks to 399! However, 27 of those CGs were only used on one particular shot. It's so many frames it's practically an animation, and took me about four days to complete. Once the game is out, you'll see why all that effort w

I completed 48 CGs this week, bringing the total CGs in Masks to 399!

However, 27 of those CGs were only used on one particular shot. It's so many frames it's practically an animation, and took me about four days to complete. Once the game is out, you'll see why all that effort was needed, but it definitely slowed me down this week. It's why I was calling it the most difficult scene I had left.

I don't have much time before my deadline — only 15 days. It's also a super busy time of the year. That's why I'm going into Turbo Mode™.

I have four scenes left to complete, and though they each have their individual challenges, I'm hoping to finish them this week.

I've created this helpful Venn diagram. As it illustrates, Set-Ups are the "true bottleneck" — the most difficult and time-consuming part of the CG-making process. "Set-Ups" are the catch-all term I use to describe the process of posing the characters, adjusting the camera angle for each cut, and rendering out the three passes. It also may involve additional modeling or textures if there are environmental elements or props in the scene.

Because of this, I'm doing them first. So I'll set up the four remaining scenes all in a row, then proceed to the lineart phase afterwards. But even if I manage to complete all these scenes in a week, that still only leaves me about seven days to do all the remaining music, sound effects, and voices, which isn't ideal.

However, the pressure of this deadline is likely going to make it possible.

You may be wondering, wait a minute, this deadline is totally arbitrary and has already been changed many times — why is it so important to release the game then?

Well, after I finished the demo and set this aside to work on my 10 year presentation, I lost a lot of the sense of urgency to get the project done. There were a few weeks where I'd planned to work on it, but ended up barely working on it at all.

The fact that "2021" is in the trailer is a good excuse to really nail in this deadline and say "This is it". Yes, I could easily update the trailer with "2022", and push back the deadline again, and it would probably be healthier. But that urgency would go away.

The other thing, which may be more relevant, is that if I have to push Catalyst Wake into 2022, it'll begin to overlap with the project I'm doing for this filmmaking class in January, and I'll likely be forced to set it aside for several months.

I made a commitment to myself spend less time on each project. I want to be releasing multiple things per year, even if that's sometimes hard to pull off. Looking at the big picture, one project that keeps holding up the others is destined to either be set aside or worse, cancelled, as has happened in the past.

I want to be able to move on to my other projects, because there are so many exciting things I can't wait to make. So, it's unfortunate, but pushing myself into overdrive sometimes is necessary. I will say this — Methods was a lot trickier to pull off because I had a weekly deadline and Catalyst Wake has been a much healthier experience overall.

Until next time!

— LockedOn.

You can visit www.lockedongames.com to see a backlog of progress updates.

Support me on Patreon to unlock exclusive images from the upcoming chapters of Catalyst Wake. I post something there every week.

Original post

08 Dec 2021Developer post

Pretty Soon

Ahhh the end is in sight!! I can feel it! This past week, I concentrated on the hardest scenes first. I'm currently halfway through what I've determined is the most difficult scene. I have four scenes left to complete after this one!! I completed 37 CGs this week, bringing the to

01 Dec 2021Developer post

Scene By Scene

Well after last week's somewhat depressing post, here's a much more exciting one! I completed 54 CGs this week, bringing the total CGs in Masks to 314. Of course, because I did the action scenes first, it doesn't take nearly as long to play as the other two yet, despite having al

25 Nov 2021Developer post

Sabotaging My Own Game??

This past week, I had a somewhat sobering conversation with a marketing professional about Catalyst Wake . But it was also really helpful. I've thought about some things, and I'm going to make some adjustments to the release schedule — more on that later. First of all, I'm pretty

This past week, I had a somewhat sobering conversation with a marketing professional about Catalyst Wake. But it was also really helpful. I've thought about some things, and I'm going to make some adjustments to the release schedule — more on that later.

First of all, I'm pretty surprised to have been approached by any marketing people at all, and they did so because they liked the look of the game, so that's very flattering. But of course, the amount of wishlists this game has (around 500) makes marketing it a super risky move. Wishlists are the most reliable way to determine if a game will do well on Steam, and the more you have, the better.

I launched my store page early for precisely that reason, it's a common indie dev tactic because theoretically the longer it's up, the more wishlists you accumulate. But when it comes to other things, I'm not so savvy. For example, they pointed out that my store page header lacked contrast and clarity, which is why I switched it out this week.

I used Thumblytics, a site built for YouTube videos, to sneakily do A/B testing for Catalyst Wake's new store page header.

When I pitch this game to interested parties, I can't help mentioning how little I expect it to succeed in the traditional sense. That is the most honest assessment in my opinion.

I follow the philosophy of "make things for yourself". I didn't set out to make a project that would necessarily be accessible or interesting to anyone but me. It appears I'm taking a huge gamble by basing this on my old animations — which almost nobody has watched — and my excitement for this largely relies on my own nostalgia for my old project, which a very small percentage of even my own fanbase feels.

And now we come to the sabotage angle. It was brought to my attention that my new planned release date of December 30th is one of the worst times you can release a game. By launching during the holidays, I would basically be sabotaging my game's chances to make any profit during its first week (first week profits are super important for Steam's metrics).

I had a difficult choice to make. On one hand, it would be nice not to kneecap my own project and make sure it has the best shot in the market. On the other — as I've established, I'm not exactly expecting big profits from this. I don't think I'll be able to break even. The real success will be finally finishing The Evolving World's story, learning the things that I did from this project, and getting to move on to my other projects. That has always been my personal metric for success.

So what I've come up with is a compromise. I don't like the idea of sitting around on a finished game.

Therefore, I will still be releasing Catalyst Wake on December 30th — on itch.io. However, it will be coming to Steam on February 10th. This is a lot like how my other games were released anyway, and it will be good to get feedback and iron bugs out before it's exposed to a wider audience.

It's too bad because I really wanted to be able to deliver it on all platforms at once, but it's my own fault for taking so long and procrastinating this much. I hope you can understand.

Until next time!

— LockedOn.

You can visit www.lockedongames.com to see a backlog of progress updates.

Support me on Buy Me a Coffee to unlock exclusive images from the upcoming chapters of Catalyst Wake. I post something there every week.

Original post

18 Nov 2021Developer post

1000 CGs

This past week, I finally reached the 1000 CG milestone. To be more specific, there are now 1012 CGs in Catalyst Wake . Now, quantity isn't an indication of quality by any means. However, when I started this project, I wanted to make a rather high number of CGs, and in the back o

10 Nov 2021Developer post

Waking Up

Hello again! I'm back at it with the CGs again, currently working on the first scene in Masks . It's a big relief that I already finished the biggest scene, as the other scenes aren't nearly as long, and as I complete more and more of them, I'm hoping that will create a "motivati

28 Oct 2021Developer post

Back to Backgrounds

Well, I'm about halfway through creating all the backgrounds I need. I also spent some time in the first part of the week working on another scene, which means Masks now has three scenes complete, out of twelve. The longest scene may be done, but I suspect it will take at least a

The Evolving World: Catalyst Wake

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