Welcome back, and a thousand praises to you, Your Majesty!
This is our fifth My Lovely Empress dev log from the teams at GameChanger and Neon Doctrine. We hope that this series of behind-the-scenes peeks at the process of game development gets you excited for when My Lovely Empress launches on Steam, Switch, and Xbox tomorrow!
In case you missed out on our previous dev log, check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2052990/view/6717768028435109214
We’ve talked to concept artists, writers, animators, and even the director, but now it’s time to shine a light on the programmers! Here to give us our peek into creating the backbone of My Lovely Empress are GameChanger’s programmers, Alvin and Anas!
As a far larger game than My Lovely Wife, My Lovely Empress came with new and significant challenges. For Alvin, the most headaches would come in the form of Empress using 3D models instead of the 2D sprites from previous games, which resulted in numerous problems GameChanger had previously never encountered before—an unenviable position to be in when every programmer knows discovering and fixing one bug means ten more are hiding underneath.
Anas even estimates that the change from 2D to 3D even resulted in the greatest technical challenge to the programming team, as everything from dialogue windows to the Yaoguai chamber to the very script needed to be refactored to support the new 3D models. Programming and art even crossed over as disciplines here, as how the 3D models were rendered to match the game’s ink brush art style needed collaboration with Neon Doctrine’s own animators to get right as well.
There was even more work to be done besides coding game mechanics and new features. The huge increase in Empress’ scale meant that everyone from game designers to artists and narrative designers had to be able to add or modify assets to the game themselves without breaking anything, which needed the programmers to create that system themselves.
To top it off, a bigger game also meant that optimization became more important, as GameChanger prioritized allowing Empress to run on older devices that could previously play Wife and Daughter. In the end, Anas estimates that the overall workload for Empress was a staggering three to five times larger than Wife thanks to all these factors!
It’s not all difficulties and overcoming challenges however, as both our programmers had their favorite features they had a great time implementing into the game. Alvin’s favorite would be implementing character expressions and voices, as it meant breathing digital life into Raswan, Audi, and Yozhman’s beautiful character designs. Meanwhile, Anas’ favorite feature was the dynamic environment of the map of Ashuwa. Being able to change the face of a continent through disasters and diplomacy alike felt great to implement, as Matthew’s animations and Rizki’s environment art were just so fantastic to watch!
As possibly the least understood discipline of game development, Alvin and Anas also wanted to leave a few words for laymen about video game programming. For Alvin, programmers are the wizards of gamedev, the ones who turn designs from words on paper into reality through a tiring, difficult, but immensely satisfying process. Anas on the other hand, wanted to offer advice to anyone looking into trying their hand at coding themselves: bugs and errors are inevitable, so prepare for them already. Additionally, don’t forget to create a custom script editor to help other developers in adding to or editing assets in a game engine, and remember to take a sip of coffee and listen to a song you love while coding.
We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into My Lovely Empress’ development,
My Lovely Empress releases tomorrow, August 21 2024, on Switch, Xbox, and Steam.
Wishlist here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2052990?utm_source=homepage&utm_campaign=devlog&utm_medium=steam
~ Neon Doctrine 👑
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