Hello all, we are implementing some changes in the way we communicate with you, so this post will explain what is our plan in this regard, as well as the focus of our short term plans for the game and what we completed this week. Let’s jump into it!
Better communication
The first step we’d like to take is to increase the frequency of the development posts, such as this, that we deliver to you. We’d like to try to write a new post every Monday, or turn it into a bi-weekly update if the frequency is too much, stating what we worked on and what our short term focus is going to be for the next week.
We also intend to communicate better on the outside platforms. Many of you are already inside our Discord, or are following our Trello or watching the streams, however we’d like to make it easier for people to follow the updates on the game, which includes outsiders.
As a first little step, we updated the patron page description, (thank you Mad_Shell for writing such a nice description!) and we’d like to improve it further with images in the future.
We are also looking into having an official website for the game, and possibly a newsletter so that the busier people can be delivered the latest news without having to hunt for them.
We have heard the feedback from you patrons, and we’re trying to be more active outside of the discord, and we’re going to welcome suggestions and consider them as we go in terms of communication.
The Razorclaw village will be back
We are currently focusing our efforts to recreate one of the old locations from the previous version of the game: the Razorclaw village, where you’ll be able to move around and see the various characters idling around at different times of the day. The efforts to make this possible include:
- Completing the new environment restyle in 2D, with dynamic light and night/day cycle.
- Setting the foundation for the first part of the story, writing dialogues, creating props and places, restoring the content present in the old version of the game.
- Removing the placeholders for the main character movement and fine-tuning the animations.
- Designing, drawing, slicing, rigging, and animating 10 characters that will have a great variety of idles in the village, so lots of art is being made. Because creating art to dress these characters, and rigging requires a lot of effort, We may limit the directions of the characters for now but will expand them in the future.
And after this is done:
- Patrons will be able to choose who we focus on next for kinky times when this first stage is completed.
- We are also starting to define the main aspects of combat, which will be the next main focus after the village.
Engine Developments
While switching back to 2D, Unity was nice enough to release an entire overhaul to their 2D support, including a new lighting system, new 2D renderer, and shader editing tools. This paired with Kuja’s incredible art is returning some stunning results.
A Content Editor window was added that keeps a consistent layout across every level in the game and organized hierarchy for interacting with the levels. Each tab gives you access to tools to edit the level however you please and get a overview of each of the different components. Now its as simple as configuring the Content Editor for Collision and the Doorway, and you can press play and have the full game running nearly instantly in which ever level you want. Kuja is learning this tool along with Unity and is implementing levels in-engine instead of working entirely in Photoshop.
https://i.imgur.com/nBf8BWb.png
Now that more artists and designers are able to work in the engine and without much technical requirements, I thought I’d give visual scripting a look, with Unity’s recent acquisition of Bolt it only means more and more support for the tool in the future. We’re loving the tool for implementing quick in-game logic and responding to events triggered by the game.
Below is an example of our Bolt implementation to Tiki torches reacting to the game time and also configuring itself when you enter the level.
https://i.imgur.com/0N49kYX.png
https://streamable.com/pv0l0y
On a sadder note, our previous developer James has left the project, James implemented audio and animations and did an incredible job with setting up our sex-cutscenes and creating a layering system that allowed us to layer characters accurately. We’ll miss him but the game must go on! We’re now getting a fresh new programmer up to speed with the project. Documentation and code refactoring is being done to make this a seamless transition and has taken away some resources from the development but overall has lead to major code changes that consolidate responsibilities and makes working in the game so much easier and understandable. This effort at documentation will be very useful in the future.
What have we done towards this goal this past week
Lots was completed! The whole team worked steadily every day, and the following list includes only the progress achieved last week: (please check our Trello for the complete overall list)
- Docs listing the idles in the Razorclaw village.
- Docs listing the first batch of animations required for combat.
- 3/4 Front View – Male Razorclaw.
- Completely re-did the first waterfall.
- Concept art for two of the original RZ Village characters.
- Razorclaw hunting outfit concept front view.
- Fixed Crawling Hands to fit better the wrist part of the forearm.
- Adjusted Crawling hands and imported them into LOKR_Female_Side rig.
- Added missing images to the Male_Front and Male_Back rigs (tail and private parts).
- LOKR_Male_FrontSide rig has been made, and is ready for setup.
- LOKR_Male_Front limb bones have been created.
- 3/4 front walk and run, side crawl, push and pull animations for female character (first iterations).
- Male Razorclaw front rig now has all the main meshes, and can move the head in 2.5D.
- Added a Skeleton, Meshes and Weights to the LOKR_Male_Back rig (using the front view as a guide) so things match up.
- Internal documentation about the project is being made and kept.
- Fixed and extended the developer dashboard in the engine.
- Added a couple Visual Scripting integrations to the engine to support a reactive game, being used for tiki torch on/off cycle.
We’ll publish a separate post displaying a collection of artwork, wips, gifs for patrons only.
We couldn’t make this possible without our patrons,
Thank you for your continued support,
The Tribe team
