Hope everyone had a good start to the year. Unfortunately as I type this it looks like I, "gone and caught a sniffle!" +10 if you can name where that quote comes from!
Work in the month of February went well. Our music team meeting was very good and they're on track with development of the new tracks needed. This includes revising and reworking some of the old tracks that we had to rush out for the alpha demo.
It's a wonderful experience to be working with the composer who created many of Guns of Icarus's most iconic tracks. Then getting to tell him that his tracks made us sit in menus longer just to hear them... At the very least it gives him a smile to know how much his work is appreciated. I have to give Muse a lot of credit for the people they hired to work on Guns of Icarus. They really found some great ones. I can't wait to see the tracks he brings forth for Dust and Air as production continues.
Moving onto art, a major key image we teased last year, was finished. Now I won't show you the full image. For that you'll have to play the full Neutral Arc.
However, I will toss this teaser image in. Those that remember the concept image from last year, know this is an image involving Calle.
Georgy started it, then put it on hold while we worked on the campaign.
While his schedule got very hectic over the holidays and new years, he picked away at it and it was completed early in February.
After this image, there is one more major Calle image on the schedule for the day two section of the story. Production before that shifts onto her character model which will be the last main heroine model from the neutral arc part of the story.
Aside from Calle, production on Day Two really isn't that far off from completion. What is left is mostly supporting cast. If you've played our demo and seen the trade conference scene, the Speaker would be an example of a supporting cast member.
They aren't always important enough to have a name. Supporting cast members sometimes may even die in the next scene. Those that have names, often have them for a reason.
However, giving them at least some kind of model in the game is part of what we do. Even red shirts are people too! Well before the monster of the week eats them...heh heh.
To give you a more visual representation of where Day Two is right now. This chart has been made up. It represents the percent at which various assets are at before Day Two is completed.
Because many assets are shared across the other days, the completion of Day Two will have a direct effect on the others that remain. In fact, aside from character models, the other days are, in some cases, at a further along state than Day Two.
Day Two not only has more content, but it also has more new models. Once it is complete, Day Three and Four sit at only about a handful of character models left. Just two of which are needed to complete both of those days. The rest follow up with the closing scenes of our story that then branch into the start of the story arcs.
Speaking of story arcs, Gwynevere's story arc is just nearly complete in being added into the engine. Current word count is at about 93,000 words. Which is up substantially from the roughly 75,000 count it was at. Once it is complete, the writing will do another polish pass on the NA where we will implement some of the formatting that we learned from loading Gwyn's story in.
Nothing that the player will see, it just helps more on our end with future organization of the story arcs.
March looks to be a busy month as we begin this and also continue working on the music side of the development. I look forward to bringing the studio update to you in April on how we fared in March.
Then lastly on the decal note, Faith has worked out some new concepts for us. This is a little progress shot of her work.
She's been working very hard developing these this last month and is at the point where she is looking at bringing them into a digital format. After that we'll forward them to Muse for a final check. So till next time! See you in the skies!!