Hi everyone!
Today we have a couple of big news to share with you :)
Welcome to the team!
As you may already know, for the past few weeks, we’ve been searching and searching for an artist to join our team. As we’ve finished the functional prototype for “Project SpaceVille”, now “Midday-Mayhem” (our artist) has been needing some help with developing the semi-final art assets. Although we don’t really need much right away, we need to test and eventually finalize the look and feel of the game. And we’d like to do it as soon as possible.
After many weeks of searching and contacting people, we’ve finally found someone perfect to join the FAXIME team. Her name is Meera, and she specializes in developing 3D models. She’s also working with us remotely, but that’s not really a big issue since we’re already used to that. Everything is going great. We love her work and she is a really nice person. (smiles) We will post some of her work for you to see in the following days! (wink)
Launching the Insider Programme
Secondly, the moment you’ve been waiting for (we hope) is arriving! We are proud to announce that the “Project SpaceVille” Insider Programme will be officially launched this September 1st, with the release of the first insider build of the game!
On that same day, we’ll be at the Game Dev Meet @Porto for the second time, this time showing off “Project SpaceVille”. We’ll give a small talk about the game and our journey as an independent game studio startup. We’ll also publicize the Insider Programme, of course. (laughs)
Also, in some other great news! On August 31st, tune in on our friend’s Twitch channel, Miercolez (https://www.twitch.tv/miercolez) live at 9:30pm (UTC+00). He’ll be the first person playing the “Project SpaceVille” Insider Programme build. If you want to join there is space for everyone! (laughs) We’re really excited for this opportunity, and we can’t thank him enough. We hope it goes well, and that he doesn’t struggle to much playing the game (and finding those pesky bugs). (laughs)
Some real developments
Finally, on to some real game development! We recently went back to the inventory system, and realized that we needed to rethink the way it was implemented. Originally, we’d only planned for one inventory to exist, the player’s inventory that is. So we designed that system to be coupled with the user interface (UI). So, if we wanted to have another inventory for something else other than the player, the UI would need to be duplicated in order for it to work. You can see now why this might be a problem...
We realised that, in order for the game to be more realistic, it would be cool if your villagers had inventories as well, with items inside them, and with all the restrictions that would apply to a real player. So, we had to rebuild the inventory system from the ground up in order to separate the UI from the inventory data itself. This will also make saving and loading inventory data a lot easier than before.
This is a pattern that we’ll be sure to follow from now on. Data is one thing, and what you see in the screen is another. If you’re developing games (or any other software for the matter), make sure you remember this. Don’t be like FAXIME! (laughs)
Cya next time, everyone!
The FAXIME Team
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