I hope the new year has been treating you all well. Welcome to our first studio update of the year for All is Fair in Dust and Air.
Lets get right into it today.
January we kicked off with our first major company meeting of the year. With a focus on our music team, we brought Syco and Gimmen together and really hashed out many of the pressing needs for the story. As well as planned ahead for segments that have not been completed yet.
The big emphasis that came out of our meeting was not only polish passes on the music but, also refining some of the transition sequences.
Gimmen, having experience working in games, brought a lot of good ideas to the table. He's even been posting some new music that may make it's way into the Neutral Arc (NA) and into an updated revision of our demo.
Our first meeting in February will be the followup of our music discussions in January. So far it is looking to be a very active month in terms of music development.
But that wasn't all we talked about at the meeting.
We also went into a lot of discussion involving the decal development.
Designs were sent off to Muse for approval in early January and we got back plenty of critiques and recommendations. Those came back and we decided to bring the decals back into development.
We looked at Muse's input, then back at our past and current designs. Then we looked at what we could change and improve. Some of the changes were not too major but, others we really needed to get a better idea for.
The biggest holding block for the decal designs has been their limitations on the ships in Guns of Icarus. Specifically the Mobula with it's unfortunate structure that cuts decals in half.
Example below:
Conn churned out some fantastic designs that looked great on all the ships, except the Mobula. Given it was only one vessel, we could have released it anyways. Many other decals on the store don't even bother with it.
But then, they don't always have characters like we do. We have to implement rather complex characters onto balloons that often only have simple designs. We want to be able to abide by Muse's decal rules a bit better.
However, there was one of Conn's designs which seemed to get around that and has helped finalize our style guide. See below...
Granted it needed some improvements so Calle wouldn't look like a mountain from a distance. But this design provides a style that can function even on the Mobula. It also falls in line with the factors that Muse gave us input on.
We're now at a point where we can pull Conn off decal development and back onto the backgrounds and keys for the rest of the NA.
So to finish up the decals, we send them back to the person who did many of the initial concepts, Faith.
While she is generally our concept artist, she was the first one tasked with designing a decal for the campaign.
Development on those will continue into Feb and we look forward to posting updates as they get approved.
For the first batch of decals to go for the backers, we are planning a series of six. One for each faction with the heroine of that faction appearing. One of the heroines will be a bit of a surprise as she doesn't appear in the NA.
But this is to go forward to the future where we are planning to add more in time. However, how we decide who gets added may be done via a future poll. This area is still in discussion.
Moving on from the decals, work was updated on day two of the NA. One of the major key images for Calle moved forward. Also for Conn's reassignment, he's getting started on the major key images for the final parts of the NA. It is one of the most important images that closes out the initial story and begins the branch into the main story arcs.
Speaking of story arcs.
Moving Gwynevere's story into the engine has been going well.
It has actually grown by about 12,000 words as some major updates have been implemented.
While it still isn't in it's final form, we're getting good experience on what it is going to take to move all our stories on over into the engine. Enough where we will be bringing the other stories into engine one by one immediately after this one.
So with that said, till next time!
In the places with lots of snow right now, keep warm and safe! If we could send some of this California heat your way, we would!
See you in the skies!