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ENG/ Review #1
🕑 Added 2019-07-26 16:01:43 +0000 UTCHi to all Patrons!
This is the first publication that is only for you! So we're going to try to do things right!
With the imminent release of episode 2, the idea is to make this post a kind of ticket to recap everything that has happened since the release of the previous episode. If you like, we'll do it before each new release.
We are not yet sure what format to adopt and what content is needed, so tell us in the comments or on Discord what you thought about it.
If everyone's ready, let's go for the 1rst report!
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The new rendering
We will start with the most important point, the transition in 3D of the characters during the dialogue/battle/shop phases.
This kind of change, it makes or breaks! We have tried to keep as much as possible of our drawn rendering, but the switch to 3D does not allow some of the tricks used in 2D.
Let's stop chatting, here's an overview of the rendering:
(Drawing on the right / 3D on the left. It's not exactly the same pose, so the mouth is open. It will pixelize much less in game.)
We are quite happy with the result because we had never managed to reach this level of detail on our previous project. As we have already said, we know that it can be a little disturbing for some people to switch from drawing rendering to 3D rendering: trust us, it will bring a lot to the game π
We talked a little bit about the benefits for us of this change (Weekly News #6), but now we're going to go into the details of what it will bring to Sunrise City:
- Life: Currently we work with 2D fixed poses: opening and closing the mouth and having poses follow each other to create a small impression of movement. It's nice but if we wanted real 2D animation it would take a lot of time (in addition to other constraints). So thanks to 3D the game will soon have much more rhythmed animations and it will give a LOT more lively side to the characters.
- Time (somehow): Making the poses is what takes us the longest, easily half of the planning. We're not really going to go any faster by switching to 3D BUT some things that are not possible in 2D, because they're much too long for us, will become possible. So in short: we will save time but this time will be used to add more content, so in the end the game and you are the winners!
- Choices of outfits: This is exactly the kind of content that would have been too time-consuming. So now that this is becoming possible, the idea we would like to set up is to propose to you at each new version a survey to decide on one or more outfits (for your avatar or other characters) that would be added in game just for the Patreons!
- Accessories: The outfits would be complete sets, the accessories would be elements that are present whatever the outfit (tattoos, jewelry...). For this type of content we would consider winning them in game.
- Haircuts: That's something we like! We still have some research to do to see how to set it up properly, but it would be cool, wouldn't it?
- Playing other characters: That's right! It's just a very small idea for the moment, but 3D animations can be shared between characters and it immediately becomes easier to have a character who has a whole range of emotions and animations. It doesn't do all the work because there is always tweaking and customization necessary so that not all characters do the same movements, but in the future it would allow us to make stories where characters that are currently secondary would be the heroes.
Here's an overview of what we're planning and we haven't finished yet, and you may have some great ideas for us!
We won't hide it from you, remaking all the characters in 3D will take us quite some time, it will happen as we go along. Already in episode 2 it took us a long time to make one. We're going to need a little time to set up the production system properly, but once it's good, it's going to be great! The objective is to have all the characters (those existing and those that will appear in the other episodes) completed at the end of the prologue.
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The Sunrise VN Editorβ’ 3000
The second aspect that took us a long time is the development of our own tool to set up the game. We use the Unity game engine, but Unity on its own is a gigantic sandbox with lots of tools but everything to do (in very short).
We first considered using ready-made plugins, but at that moment we found nothing conclusive (either too complex, or unusable because intended for a very special use, or much too expensive to start with). As we want to be able to offer you unrestricted content, we decided to create our own tool and it was quite an adventure to get to our first version that could be used simply.
But in the end, the result is that it took less time to set up (and improve) the dialogues of episodes 1 and 2 with the new tool, than to do the whole episode 1 with the old system.
So the bet was successful! We have our system that will allow us to offer you everything that comes to our minds!
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Text corrections
Since we talked about the tool used to set up dialogues, let's have a short comment on text corrections.
You have helped us well by tracking down the mistakes and other typos in the dialogues and interface. Thank you very much!
Promise, we make efforts to make the texts cleaner, and with more commas π.
The fun fact is that with the first tool we used to set up the dialogues, we sometimes had to rebuild an entire scene to correct a mistake. Wellβ¦ wellβ¦
(And again a huge thank you to Kite and Ciel for their feedback on the English version).
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Tutorial
While we're on the little things. We're going to talk about the battle tutorial again because we didn't give any more news about it.
In the end we didn't make any changes to it in order to focus on more useful tasks for the moment. The tutorial will actually undergo a more thorough overhaul later, which will make it more dynamic (the idea had first been discarded but Reyla brought it up).
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A word about the prologue
From the beginning we talked about the prologue (season 0), it's time to tell you a little more about it. As we have already said, it is used to set the basic mechanics and test many things before attacking the main story.
Currently (and we are trying to keep to it), the prologue consists of 6 episodes. Without going into too much detail (to keep a little mystery), here are the famous mechanics that have been/will be introduced:
- Episode 1: Dialogue system, 1st Combat System and Displacement System.
- Episode 2: System of Choice and Gallery.
- Episode 3: 1st Investigation System, Smartphone Menus (Character Stats and Contacts).
- Episode 4: Improvement of the battle system (Interface, Multi opponents and Potential).
- Episode 5: Replay System and Mission Menu.
- Episode 6: 1st "Dungeon" system and Companion System.
It is very likely that Season 0 will end with an epilogue that will allow us to correct everything that could not be done before.
If all goes well, season 0 should therefore contain ~2h30 of play time. We will then move on to Season 1, which will bring its part of features, characters, scenery, etc.
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The final word
With all the work that had to be done for episode 2, we couldn't find a suitable balance between work and exchange with you. We will try to fix this for the production of episode 3!
As indicated in the Weekly News #10, we will start a series of character sheets where you will be able to vote on Discord to choose the order in which the characters will be presented. These sheets will be an opportunity for us to go into more detail about the different characters, their lives, their ambitions and their relationships.
We are thinking about other types of content but it is still too early to talk about it. However, if you have any ideas about what you would like us to talk about, feel free to tell us!
That's it for this 1rst report! Tell us what you thought about it in the comments or on Discord, we'll be happy to discuss it with you!
Thank you again for your support and don't forget that you can help us even more by liking/sharing on Patreon/Twitter/Instagram!
-Sunny & Zack
