Hello everyone, and happy new year! I say this for each blog post, but it’s been a reaaaally long time! Almost one year without writing here. A bad year for blog communication then, but on the bright side, it has been a good year for the developement. [h1]Back To Zefyr[/h1] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38727857/2ef34e6ab9593b90e9c5b9a7424b74c2f8396af0.jpg[/img] A nice hand painted title screen. And you don’t see it but it’s animated. After working on & updating various little games for a while in 2020 & 2021 (mainly in order to get experience in marketing and releasing games), I spent 2022 working back full time on my main project “Zefyr, A Thief’s Melody”. And YES, that’s the new name! Actually, I’ve changed multiple times trying to find something that would fit all the requirements: [list] [*] good description of the main game feel [*] easy to remember [*] easy to find on google/steam/whatever [*] no confusion with other game [*] no problem with legally registered trademarks [/list] Believe it or not, it’s not that easy… [h1]Game Update[/h1] First of all, I’m gonna talk about the visible part… Here’s some cool new stuff for the game: [list] [*] I’ve been focusing on making the game main quest fully playable for people other than me. This includes creating quests & feedback to understand what happens, maps, dialogs, better level design and lot of signals & feedback to guide the player through the whole game. [*] I’ve upgraded some of the old-school textures thanks to material maker, and reworked some meshes & graphics [*] All islands are now visible from anywhere in the world [*] I’ve worked on a new title screen (you’ve seen it above) [/list] Here are a few screens for you: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38727857/ab3dd91cba4a549055774b7fe8c8e710ac39724e.jpg[/img] We can see very far away islands now. This adds to the openness and freedom feeling [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38727857/5cea0c8e22701386f493df25141300f6f88ccf4a.jpg[/img] Just riding a turtle near Chapter 4… [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38727857/1c1540b0f31d176f375b98c0b4366b5f5d42117c.png[/img] New sand texture & improved vegetation! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38727857/c66bac05437179c97d3027c5714145c2aa0b8014.jpg[/img] A chase with a pirate ship. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38727857/709d4dc1e8d7cb3e9a8d25723ba8b9137772f20c.jpg[/img] A boss with a life bar And I’m currently testing it with a few super early testers. I can now say that somebody else finished the game. It’s been really interesting to see how new players react to everything in the game. It made me tweak and improve a lot of things. Sadly, all upgrades are not as visible as the previous ones. [h1]Dev Upgrades[/h1] In 2022, I’ve also upgraded the production pipeline of the game: [list] [*] Newer versions of tools (Blender 3.X, Unity 2019 LTS, Material maker 1.0, Inkscape 1.0, Krita 5.X, Cinemachine…). That’s the problem of working on a project for a long time. You must have stable and not-too-outdated tools. It is not very visible to players but it is super important for me as a dev to always have healthy prod systems, easy to tweak and modify, with a solid base. [*]Change the AI from A* pathfinding back to native Unity pathfinding [*] Clean & strongly structure all the asset database to be able to easily update / fix problems [*] Big production clean: less code, more efficient, remove unused tags, easier to read and to navigate files [*] LOOOTS of bug fixes (between 1K & 2K) [/list] [h1]Communication[/h1] I’ve started to learn stuff about communication: [list] [*] I’ve created a “pro” presskit for online specialized press. You can [url=https://www.oneiricworlds.com/en/]check it out here[/url]. [*] I’ve started to post on reddit. I’m still very new to this; many posts were barely even seen, but [url=https://www.reddit.com/r/jeuxvideo/comments/w9a4pb/hop_jose_enfin_partager_un_bout_du_jeu_sur_lequel/]one [/url]or [url=https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/vpqnmf/ive_been_working_on_a_colorful_adventure_game/]two [/url]got their way to decent stats. [*] I also invested quite some time in my (French) [url=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDFK32mrX8ry2tsChXQzOhQ]youtube channel[/url]. I’ve been wanting to share my way of creating games for a long time, and this year I published ~10 videos mainly about graphics & dev logs. It’s in French, but the last ones have subtitles that can be translated by youtube. I’m particularly proud of [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEhFPOT3RAs]that one[/url] and [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QJnvH-4jQw]that one[/url]. [/list] Sadly, you may have noticed it, but I was very bad at posting on my blog, steam and patreon. [h1]Coming in 2023[/h1] So what’s up for this new year ? [list] [*] Last level: I must still work on the last level of the game which is still prototype. [*] Audio & Music: I have to make a big work on these [*] Side quests, polish & test: make the game shiiiiine and tweak all the little stuff that will make it lovely to play. [*] Lot of communication: social media, press, influencers, you name it, this year I must promote the game [*] Ideally, I would like to craft a few protos for my future games and see what’s worth it. [/list] And that’s it for 2022! I wish you the best for this new year coming, and on my side, I’ll do my best to meet my goals with hopefully a release in Q1 2024 🤞. Peace !