June 22th of the present year marked the 11th anniversary of the first Demo released on Newgrounds of Mainasutto. I can't believe this game has been in development that long, I mean, a lot of things have changed since then, and I'm not even the same person I was back then, but the game have never "died" and I think it will never die until it is finished, and I will do my best to make sure that happens.
So yeah, this is the 8th newsletter of the game, and I will try to make it a bit more "structured" than the previous ones, since I have a lot of things to talk about and I don't want to make it too long and boring. So let's get started.
Pre-Production Updates
Why Are We In Pre-Production Now?
As I mentioned on previous newsletters, the game is in pre-production phase again, and this is mainly because of one thing and one thing only: I was 16 years old when I started this project, I didn't knew anything about commercial game development, and this game, even for its size, is a really ambitious project for a solo developer, and I was DEFINITELY not ready to make a game like this back then, and I think I still am not ready to make it now, but at least now I have a better idea of what I want to do and how to do it. So the pre-production phase is mainly to re-organize the project, re-think the story, the gameplay, and the overall design of the game, and make sure that everything is in place before we resume the production phase with what we currently have.
The idea is to cut as much content as possible, and focus on the core of the game, but keep and reuse as much content as possible that makes sense with the story I want to tell, and obviously, make sure that the game is fun to play and has a good pacing. And for this I have been working on a lot of documents with the help of a producer as I mentioned before, and not only that, but now that I'm older and have more experience in game development, I can pay people to help me with some of the work and get a small team to help me with the development of the game, and I think this is the best way to make sure that the game will be finished in a reasonable time frame.
I hope to finish most of the documents in the next 3 months, but in the mean time, while I'm working with documents, I'm polishing some of the systems that I'm 100% confident that will be in the final game, so we don't have to start from scratch when we resume the production phase. Along that, I have been contacting some of the artists that previously have worked in the game to see if they are interested in working with me again, and I have been getting some positive responses, so we can start working in the assets of the game while I'm working in the final documents in the next months, so I hope we don't lose too much time in the transition back to the production and development phase.
What Do We Have Now?
So right now we have a lot of "unfinished" documents, multiple in progress to be finished, and some that are mostly finished but can have some extra revisions. Currently we have a "Content Skeleton" document, a few "Organization by History" and "Organization by Content" documents, a "Storytelling Plan" and "Design & Development Notes", and a few more documents that are helping to decide what content will be in the game and what will be cut out.
I don't have too much details to add, but I can say that the game will be divided in 8 "acts"/"chapters", and, at least in the story documentation, we currently have 6 of them mostly finished and connected to each other. There 2 acts that we are discussing how they will be connected to the rest of the story, and what content will be in them, but I think we are getting close to a final decision on that.
Since the game contains multiple endings and paths that the player can take, this documentation helped a lot to decide how the player can interact and what are the limits to the game to "go back" and change stuff, and how the player can "unlock" different paths and endings. I think this is one of the most important things to decide in a game like this, since it will affect the story, the gameplay, and the replayability of the game.
Expected Timeline For The Future
Right now I think we cannot predict what the future could be, but since we already have some documents in the way, I think we have a better idea of what the project will look like in the future, and what's left to do. I'm hoping to be able to release a demo during this year but I feel it very hard. After talking with some people in the industry and presenting the game plan and skeleton, seems like if I keep doing this alone I still have like 3 years of work to do, so I'll be looking for some help in the future to speed up the development, specially in the art department and maybe I'll be looking for other GameMaker developers to work on some specific areas while I work on others, but I will talk about this in more detail in the next newsletter.
Goodbye Quests, Hello Notes
The Removal of the "Quests" Tab
For more than a year I spent a lot of time working in a system called "Quests". Originally this was going to be a system where the player could find quests in the world from different NPCs, view their progress, show locations a lot of complex stuff that I thought would be really fun to implement, but after a lot of time working on it, I realized that it was not really necessary for this kind of game, I was taking too much inspiration in open world games and MMOs that I didn't stop to think that this is not something really "useful" for a game like Mainasutto, and that it was just a waste of time to implement it.
So after it being disabled for a few months, I decided to remove it completely from the game and replace it with a simpler system that will be more useful for the player, and that is the "Notes & Journal" system. This is an easier way to get track of the story and what you have done in the game. I will explain it in more detail in the next section, but the main idea was to reduce the complexity of the system and show just the exact needed information to the player.
How the Notes & Journal System Works
The system is really simple, when you find a note or after an event/dialog in the game, the note will be added to your "Notes" tab in the pause menu, and you can read it at any time to revisit maybe options you didn't choose, or to read some lore that you may have missed. The notes can be sorted by "Newest", "Oldest", and "Alphabetical", the notes in every playthrough will have different order based on the order you find them in the game. Some notes will be "locked" until you find the next note in the series, so you will have to progress in the game to unlock them all.
As I said, it is just a simple system, but it's something that they did in the latest Momodora game, and I really liked it since it allowed me to get on track even after weeks of not playing the game, and I think it will be a good addition to Mainasutto as well.
(WIP Notes/Journal System in Action)
Notes also serve as collectibles, so if you are a completionist, you will have to find all of them to complete the game 100%. Some notes will be hidden in secret areas, and could lead you to fight a secret boss, find a secret item or even get a secret ending, so I recommend you to explore the world and find all of them.
Quality of Life Updates
Increased Inventory Slots
One of the things that I left out for a long time while re-working the "Equipment" tab in the pause menu was the inventory slots, before you ony had 21 slots for your inventory and couldn't pick up more items than that, even if the game had 100 items (as an example) you would only be able to pick up 21 of them, and the rest would be lost forever. Now the inventory has 70 slots and a scrollbar, so you can pick up as many items as you want and the inventory will scroll to show all of them. This is a really simple change, but it will allow us to add more "valuable" items to sell and share some more of the lore of the game through items that you can find in the world, and not just through notes and journals.
Pause Menu Scrolls
This one is just one of those features that just make the game look more polished, but doesn't really affect the gameplay. Basically, the pause menu now has scrollbars for the inventory, notes, settings and accessibility tabs, so when you move in the menus you the selector will not snap directly to the next option, but instead it will scroll smoothly to the next option. It looks better than how I described it, so I recommend you to check the video below to see how it looks in action.
Automation Accessibility Settings
Another quality of life feature added to the game is the ability to automate accessibility settings, by default this will be enabled, but players can choose to disable it in the accessibility settings menu. This section of "features" consist in 3 automated things that, in my personal opinion, can make the game easier to play for some players, but can also be a bit annoying for others. These are the 3 automation settings that are currently available in the game:
Automatically equip weapons in hand when the player picks them up and no other weapon is equipped.
Automatically equip souls if the player has no soul of that type equipped.
Automatically equip cloaks and amulets if the player has no cloak or amulet equipped.
And these are 2 more that will be added in the future but will need some more time to be implemented and won't be available by default:
Automatically "Skip Cutscenes" when the player has already seen the cutscene before.
Automatically restart the game from the last checkpoint when the player dies, instead of showing a game over screen.
(Most Quality of Life Updates in the Pause Menu)
Bug Fixing
Some long-time bugs have been solved this month, some of them were really annoying and I am glad they are finally gone, these where mostly related to accessibility settings, buffer inputs, coyote jumps, and things that affected platforming and movement in general. These are obviously not the only bugs in these systems, but I feel now that the movement now feels a lot more polished and responsive. Hope its worth the effort.
Dynamic Lightning & Shadow Casting
Why Adding It Now?
As a lot of systems in the game, this one is one of those that I really wanted to add long ago, but it was so far down into the backlog that I never got to it, I think for at least 3 years. So now that the game is in pre-production phase again, and we have some documents to guide the development, I decided it was finally time to add it before it was cut out of the game.
This is just one of those aesthetic features that I think will make the game feel more alive, and it's not really necessary for the game to be fun and playable, so it is technically a "waste of time" to produce, but I know you guys will appreciate it at the end, and I will also enjoy it as a developer, so I think it's worth it.
One thing I have to say about this feature is that you can choose to turn it off in the settings menu, so if you have a low-end PC or laptop, you can still enjoy the game without any of the performance issues this may cause. In the settings -> graphics menu, you can choose between 3 modes: "Off", "Partial" and "Full". The default mode is "Partial". The 3 modes do the following:
Off: No dynamic lights or shadow casting will be used in the game, this is how the game looked like before with just static lighting, this is the most performance-friendly option.
Partial: Dynamic lights and shadow casting will be used in the game, but only for the player to "cast shadows" around it's light emitter, this is the default option and the one that I recommend for most computers.
Full: Dynamic lights and shadow casting will be used in the game for most light emitters in the game, this is the most performance-demanding option, but it creates a really nice ambient lighting for most areas, especially in dark areas.
(Testing all options for "Dynamic Lightning" in the engine)
The system is in late development and already works in the engine, but it still needs some optimization and testing to make sure it works properly in all areas of the game, so some things may change in the next months, but the core of the system is already working and will be available in the next demo.
How Does It Look In-Game?
It's a bit difficult to showcase how it will look for all players in-game and in every area of the game, since everybody has different hardware and performance capabilities the next videos can be a bit misleading for your personal scenario, but here's the best I can do to showcase the difference between "Off" and "Partial" dynamic lights and shadow casting in the game. If you don't see any difference I recommend to use fullscreen mode.
(No Dynamic Lights vs Partial Dynamic Lights)
As you can see in the bottom right previous videos the "real" FPS counter is still over 500 FPS most of the times (even recording), getting even over 1000 FPS in some scenes, so the performance impact is not that big in "partial" mode, but it can be more noticeable in "full" mode. Currently we don't have any room that uses in full capacity the dynamic lights and shadow casting since the system was created recently and most of the current level design was made long time ago, but in the future and for areas that will be designed with this system in mind, the visuals will be much more impressive and immersive, or at least that's the goal.
Performance Considerations & Concerns
As you can see in the previous video, the performance of the game is slightly affected by the addition of dynamic lights and shadow casting. That's why I decided to add the 3 modes toggle in the settings menu, and allow players to choose the mode that best suits their system. In my tests on different devices, I found that the "Partial" mode is a good balance between performance and visual quality using around 5%-15% more CPU, while the "Full" mode is more demanding on the system using around twice the resources of the "Partial" mode. The "Off" mode is the most performance-friendly, but it sacrifices some visual quality.
I will continue to optimize the performance of this feature, but for now, by default, the game will run with dynamic lights and shadow casting "partially" enabled, but players can choose to turn it off or enable it fully in the settings menu.
Closing Thoughts
So there you have it, the 8th newsletter of Mainasutto, 11 years after the first demo was released, back in pre-production phase again, but with a better plan and a better idea of what the game will be.
I promise you I'm doing my best to make this game a reality, because it's not just you who are waiting for it, but me too, I want to finish this game and play it myself, I want to spend hours and hours exploring the world I created, to see the story I wrote come to life, and know that the characters and story I created are touching the hearts of you all.
So yeah, I will keep working on this game until it is finished, and I hope the wait is worth.