Hello there,
Here’s the usual update of the last month(es). I mainly worked on NPC & marketing during January & February.
I – NPC (Non Playable Characters)
During the past weeks, I upgraded my old placeholders for the NPC (the characters you’ll have to interact with in the game). For each NPC, I need to work on:
- Visual design: I usually start with doodles on my sketch book. I try to also get an idea of the basic color scheme.
- 3D Modelisation: I tend to reuse old model parts if possible (hands for example)
- Texturing: I paint the textures in Blender and/or Krita and map them on the character
- Rigging (creating the skeleton): I almost always start from another skeleton that I copy and scale/adapt to the new character morphology. I might encounter difficulties for the clothes especially (be sure they dont collide with the limbs for example). Some designs are more exotic than others regarding this point, and it might be a difficult problem to solve.
- Animation : I create at least one idle animation, and usually 1 or 2 more (speak, variations of movements, …)
- Integration in the game: I have to put the NPC in the game, and be sure that evertything loads & links correctly
- Coding the presence logic: depending on time and actions done by the player, the NPC are not at the same place at the same moment.
- Coding the dialog logic: depending on your actions, the character won’t say the same things. They can also create new quests or complete some. They can add items to the inventory, change story key points, …
- Dialog & names localization: for each line, I have to translate it in French and English.
- Avatar: I have to paint a 2D version of the character that will show in the dialog UI.
- Now that I have all my workflow and tools set up, it generally takes between a few days and two weeks of work for each character, depending on the complexity and originality. This doesn’t include the debug of course. I sometimes find problems much later.
So in the end, I added/polished 8 NPC. Here are a few screens:
There are still other ones to create of course, but it’s starting to be nice.
II – Marketing
Regarding the marketing:
- I still work on reddit ads. They bring some regular visits to the Steam page.
- I started to contact streamers (youtube/twitch) to market the demo. I had to update my presskit with recent screens & logos. I reached out to 50 people, but it only ended up with a few videos. However, they are really nice (like this one, or this one (in French) for example) and the streamers were happy with the game. I need to keep on working on this.
- Finally, I keep on trying to enter festivals. I recently took part in the Ninja & Pirates festival on Steam, but it wasn’t that successful for me. I also applied to the Cozy Family, WASD Curios & the Mix. We’ll see what comes out of it.
III – Bug fixes
Not a lot to signal here. Mainly:
- arrow collision fix (this was a tough one, I couldn’t replicate it on my PC, so a big thanks to “Les Indés Primés” channel for helping me)
- now saves in turtle mode
- a few textures fixes here and there
This allowed me update the demo on Steam.
And that’s it ! The game is improving little by little. As usual, thanks a lot for your support and patience.
Take care