Greetings and welcome to another monthly studio report!
For the VLOG report, click below!
Activity continued into the month of October as we push towards Mac OS ports. The late breaking announcement from Tyrano of the first full patch since Strikeworks took back control over the western version of the engine, sent us into the atmosphere with joy as we realized it did a lot more than the patch notes detailed.
Specifically, updating the engine to function on M1 Macs. Which, frankly is huge after dealing with issues for the better part of the year. Really can't thank Strikeworks enough. They are even expanding support by bringing over some DLC for the engine in the form of new themes.
You can see the announcement here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/345370/view/3390673464969487399
If you have ever browsed the Japan site, you'll notice there are loads more content and mods for the engine that have never seen release in the west. With this DLC release, we'll hopefully see more coming over in time. Things are looking quite up for the future of Tyrano since Strikeworks is back in charge.
To go in line with that, progress on the Mac port is moving forward step by step. We're happy to announce that after discussing it further with Chris our Mac/iOS platform pro, we're going to use the Mac version to kick off an overhaul of the original game. The primary goal will be keeping the quality high but bringing the filesize down significantly.
Right now, we're looking at the UI elements to retain the same style as the PC port. However, given how meticulous Apple was with the iOS port, we may have to adjust when it comes time for them to review. This means we will try and do a release on both the App Store and Steam.
The PC version will be updated to 1.3 during this process. We're hoping this change in the file size is going to make Dust and Air a lot more attractive to people on lower end hardware. We're starting with Mac because a lot of Macs ship with 256GB on the low end. Which doesn't leave a lot of room for tons of games.
Moving on from the platform side of things, art development on Raven's Prayer took a huge step forward with the completion of a major key image for the story. It's even more of a big piece because in the process it finishes concepts and color versions of a few other characters at once. For more details on this, check the VLOG!
We're also happy to welcome Ingrid back after her hiatus to deal with a move. She's already started more content for Project 2 and we're looking forward to it as it moves through it's own development pipeline.
Altogether, with updates to Tyrano, we're getting hopeful again about seeing both projects through on the engine instead of venturing elsewhere. However, as with everything, time will tell... For November, we've got more character models on deck for both projects. Also like to shout out a special congratulations to Muse games for the 10th anniversary of Guns of Icarus Online. We certainly wouldn't be here without it and we're forever grateful for all the hard work Muse puts into their games.
Alright, that's it for the month of October! Thanks for sticking with us as always!
See you in the skies!