Posted January 01, 2023 by bitshiftgames
Hey everyone, and (almost) welcome to the new year. About time I shared some progress, so here it is: Mapping is done, and I can now officially say I'm past the 2/3rds mark with the game! I've also finished up a few other things, which I'll get to in a moment.
Some people might be curious why mapping has taken as long as it has. There are two reasons. The first is that "mapping" actually involves a number of things: the actual mapping itself, lighting, clutter, and a bunch of scripting and writing to put the "game" part of the game in as I go. Currently the first part and much of the middle can be played through, it's just not especially exciting as there's no defeat scenes in yet. The combat system is tested and up and running, as well as most of the fight staging and balance thereof. One of the three boss battles (two bosses, but there will be variations on the second) is also set and ready to go. One minigame is nearly set, another will probably wait until after initial release.
Long story short, I've been thinking of stage 1 as art asset creation, stage 3 as cg creation, and stage 2 as everything else. So, as of now, I'm 100% done with mapping, and about 90% done with "everything else" that isn't cg creation. I'll be finishing up those odds and ends over this month (January), but it won't result in anything new to show, so I thought I'd get this announcement out first. Once the event CG is ready I'll have to do some scripting and writing to integrate it into the game of course, and there will be fine-tuning throughout, but the bulk of things that are not the scenes themselves should be done by the end of January (and most already are).
So that's reason #1: "Mapping" actually includes a lot of misc stuff. Reason #2: There are a lot of maps, and they're pretty big.
Second point first. Here's a shot of one of the main exploration areas from CS 1:
And here's a shot of (most of) one of the many exploration areas from CS 2, to the same scale:
There's also quite a bit more. Not counting recycled areas, CS 1 had nine maps. CS 2 has twenty six. Not all of them are as big as the one above of course, some are smaller interiors, or just connecting passages. But a number of them are that large, or larger. As you can imagine, it takes a while to get all that laid out, lit, flowing properly and so on. But I'm pretty happy with the end results, and I think you will be too.
Now, as to the "other things" I mentioned at the beginning. As I was finishing up the maps and working on a minigame, I realized I was still short a few art assets, so I've been spending the end of this month working on those. One of which was a new outfit for Mezz! Take a look, if you don't mind spoilers.
So that's where things stand for now. Maps have been finished on time. I'll be finishing up the additional assets and a few programming odds and ends this month, and then dive into getting the event cg done. I've double-checked what I need, and while it's always hard to predict art speed, as far as I can tell, and barring something dire, I should be able to get the main CG, and some of the side stuff, done within the previously mentioned end-of-june deadline. Worst case I may have to roll into July to get some final scripting and play-testing done before it "ships", but I'll do what I can to avoid that.
Thanks to everyone for your support and feedback through all of this. It feels wild to be this far along, and I can't wait to actually see it finished and released.
