We're a few months after the initial release now and I want to personally thank everyone that supported Shinogi Chess Club 2: Resistance and tried it out! In this post I'll talk about a new patch to the game and some upcoming content to look out for. Without further delay, let's take a look at the latest update to the game which was just uploaded today:
Update Details
Patch Notes (1.0.2)
- Fixed rendering bounds for several characters
- Fixed helmet culling issue in the intro cutscene
- Crashed a car into the Investigation Club Room (out of bounds)
The fixes here are pretty simple as they mainly related to rendering issues that you'd barely notice unless you were looking for it. During the intro cutscene, a helmet prefab had its LOD settings set a bit too generously when it comes to culling the mesh completely, which becomes an issue when you adjust the graphics lower with the in-game settings. Since you can adjust the LOD bias, it means objects can use lower-detailed versions of themselves at closer distances, and this even extends to the "completely culled" state. I didn't catch this originally because I test too often on the higher settings.
A similar system culls out skinned meshes (i.e. rigged characters) when they are not on screen; the problem is that the bounds used for this calculation are based on best-guess since rigged characters can technically have parts of themselves far away from the origin. In Unity, the solution is to update those bounds every frame to account for the animation using a special flag, and I had missed setting it for a few clothing items on characters; mainly for hair and bows, etc. This is kind of hard to spot but it meant that in extreme situations with certain camera angles, the clothing items would be culled. In version 1.0.2 this is now corrected, and it's always possible that I missed a few more of these but in a game with so many static front-facing angles it's not often that it actually causes an issue.
Finally, I did indeed crash a car into the Investigation Club Room level, but you'll have to work hard to find it. Expert players who have played my previous games should know what to do here :)
Soundtrack Release
If you enjoyed the music in Shinogi Chess Club 2, you'll be glad to hear that the official soundtrack is releasing in just 1 week on Steam! Be sure to check it out here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2634490/Shinogi_Chess_Club_2__Soundtrack/
What's Next
The past few months I've had some time to relax, research new topics and technologies, and catch up on stuff that I brushed aside previously due to the intense work involved with building Shinogi Chess Club. I've also been beginning to research and explore ideas for my next main game, but I'll hold on to that secret for now :)
Those of you who have completed the game will know that more Shinogi Chess Club is coming, but for several reasons it might take a bit before I return to produce that extra content. For one, interest/sales for both Shinogi Chess Club games have not been as high as I would've liked and I can't realistically support myself in the future if I'm investing too much in ideas that aren't taking off. Also, I definitely need a break from this storyline and gameplay concept; programming chess AI can get quite tedious and overwhelming :') Finally, the whole fiasco involving Unity's policy change has shifted a lot of my focus into other technologies and the series may move onto another engine for its next entry. This would entail a huge effort porting the existing logic and assets, so it would make more sense to do this only after I've gotten some experience creating something new in said new engine.
So what IS next if not that? To start, the RobProductions official website will be getting a huge overhaul sometime soon. I've been very hard at work making it match my style preferences a lot more and building it to become much more scalable and stable for the long term. The main change is the fact that I'm hand-coding myself in Typescript/React as opposed to using Wix. If you know anything about web development you would understand that this a huge undertaking and has eaten up a lot of my time the past few weeks, but it will hopefully be well worth it once complete. The new site will be something I'm actually proud of and represents me much more than the old one, and will also be easier to edit and cheaper to maintain. Alongside that and the recent rebranding I've undergone, I'll be aiming to create more YouTube videos and posts on social media explaining my development process and ideas. I also have a TikTok now!
Additionally, it seems like for now my game projects will remain on Unity (unfortunately) due to workflow differences that are too steep to adjust to for the types of games I tend to make. To explain more specifically, the engine I would like to use (Godot) has been progressing slowly in the areas that would make it easier for me to develop my projects, and I don't think it will have the full feature set I need to make content as quickly/cleanly as I could in Unity. Those of you that know me personally know that I aim to create a wide variety of games with plenty of playtime in each entry, so the extra time learning/recreating my workflow for a new engine is a high price to pay for me specifically. I anticipate that in the next year or so, this might very well change as Godot improves and my understanding of it increases. At that point, if the engine has added cleaner ways for me to develop extension packages I could see myself having enough resources to shift my projects there. This is a vast oversimplification of the considerations I've had and I apologize for the long and boring rant, but that's where things stand right now.
With that out of the way, you might be able to assume that my next big game:
- Will be on Unity :( but will arrive sooner because of it
- Will be a VN-hybrid game since I mentioned needing to create similar projects to Shinogi Chess Club
- Will probably arrive at least one year from now, i.e. 2025
And you would be right in assuming that! But fear not, there are other amazing things I would love to do along the way which may or may not arrive before that, including:
- A free preview demo of said big project
- A tech demo focusing on high quality visuals and animation
- Smaller scale game stories that I've been tinkering with
- Video content showcasing behind-the-scenes looks at my games with developer commentary
So while there's plenty for me to do in 2024, I hope that this will be a period of great change which will elevate RobProductions into becoming a more established studio on the market. Be rest assured that I'm not going anywhere and I plan to keep releasing games and stories for as long a time as I'm able to. The best way to help my journey is to spread the word of my games, give them a try for yourself, and send in positive comments that lend support whenever possible <3 While I'm a long ways off from being able to do so, with enough financial support I may eventually be able to devote more of my time to projects which would be a huge blessing for me. For now, every little bit helps. As always, you can catch the latest news on Twitter @RobProductions and once again...
Thanks for playing!
- Matt