Devlog #10 Artwork optimization, Admin work & New designs sneak peek

It has been a while since our last update, dated by the end of May, which sounds almost like 3 months ago. So it's really about time to share some news of the game with everyone again!
 

Game reconstruction updates

We have made great progress on the code rebuild, 85% of the existing code has been rebuilt, which includes another 3 extra new levels that we haven’t fully tested yet. Also we’re still busy working on preparing the Alpha Demo ( for exclusive backers ). It is going to delay a bit ( at first we thought we could have it released by this month), and this is due to the extra time we need to apply for debugging and testing before we send it out to the players. As a very small team, we can honestly say that we are lacking of almost everything, including game testers but we are tying our best to get help from everywhere we can. It's a bit slow, we know, but never does a day goes by without us working on LUNA.  
 

Artwork optimization

Game development takes time, and as time goes by, some of the old graphics in the game might have looked good enough by then, but as we learn and grow, as the game gets proper, you can’t help to think “it’s not good enough now and it needs replacement to match the new quality”. But if we continue replacing everything all the time like the ship of Theseus, the game will take forever to finish, so we are still trying to keep a balance. And here is one updated graphic comparison from before and now.

                                                                      &nbs…

                                                                          A shadow crow animation. Before & After.

Admin work, marketing meetings & other “I have no idea” stuff

To be honest these are sometimes the hardest parts in indie life because they have almost nothing to do with game development, and we’re all newbs when it comes to “terms and conditions”, “marketing strategy”, “legal knowledge”... stuff like that. But sadly this is also an important part that goes along with game development. 

During the past few months, we’ve been busy arranging meetings with some potential publishers and media, in order to help us find out what’s the best way for LUNA to be introduced to market in the future. Recently we’ve been given a chance to broadcast our game on a live stream in the popular Chinese gaming website VG Time, as well as taking part in the ChinaJoy games festival. In the future we will also be preparing in advance for attending game festivals like GDC, PAX, TGS and game competitions such as SXSW etc. 

Additionally, by sharing problems and struggles with people in the game market, it has also helped us gain a broader view of the indie game market. This has and will continue to affect certain decisions during the game production, such as adjusting the length and difficulty of the game. 

All these preparations will eventually take up some game dev time, but it is needed and even crucial in the long term.  
 

New level designs sneak peek

Back to the more important things, we are also working on some new level designs. These are the precious happy times which really make us feel rewarded as indie game developers. So less talk, more pictures. Here are some graphics from some of the new levels that we really like, and hopefully they will be enjoyed by players later. 

                    More information about space, dimension and background story to be revealed soon

                    More information about space, dimension and background story to be revealed soon

Devlog #9 Unity Event, Sound Design & Game Reconstruction Updates

One year ago, we launched our game  campaign. Since then, both LUNA and Lantern Studio have grown so much and became something more than we thought we could be! We surely could not have reached where we are now without all our lovely supporters. As we will be continuously working hard on LUNA, we’d like to say thank you again for being incredibly patient and understanding. Thank you for all the warm support we've received during the past year!

It has been a while since our last update, so here are the things we’ve been working on during these days.

Unity - Unite 2017 Shanghai

This month our team attended this great event where more than 4000 game developers could gather together, to meet up with the Unity experts and industry leaders to explore some of the new creative potential of the Unity engine.

We also met a lot of other local indie game teams during the event, shared our experiences and the challenges faced during the game development process and, last but not least, had a good peek at what other great new indie games are under development at the moment, and hopefully in the future we could give each other more help and support.

We have been introduced to a lot of exciting new technologies for the Unity engine by the Unity dev team, don’t wanna bore everyone with too much tech terms, but for example we’re thinking about using the new Unity Analytics tools for our upcoming Alpha demo, which could help us get the best of all the feedback and data received from the players in order to bring out the best gameplay experience.

Sound Design

It’s time for sound FX to be professionally designed and modified into our game. Together with our game reconstruction, we are now switching to a more effective way for our sound designer to work more closely with the level development. By using the FMOD sound engine, now the interactive parts of the level and its sound design / editing can synchronise much better than before.

Game Reconstruction Updates

Half of the existing levels’ reconstruction work have been completed. According to the plan, there will be 7 levels which is about 25-30% of the whole game content included in our Alpha release. We should be able to give a bit more information about it in our next update, so stay tuned guys!
 

Devlog #6 Refinements Results & SHCC

Refinements Results 

Walking cycle

The walking cycle is usually the most basic and also the most difficult animation to deal with. We realized the jumping/jerky issues of our boy character’s walking cycle is due to his quite dramatic up-and-down movement and big step. So we retouched the animation by referencing more game characters' walking cycles instead of the traditional cartoon/animation movement. The new walking cycle by its own might seems less exciting than before, but once it's been placed in the game environment, it turns out to be a lot smoother and pleasant to look at. 

 Also we realized the camera movement in some of the levels would magnify this jerky issue. More research will have to be put into fixing this issue later on.

Art material size optimization

The build of our game is getting bigger everyday, and this could be worrying. No player would like to experience crashing before even starting the game. So the earlier we start looking into this problem the better. It’s tricky to want to maintain the hand drawn/organic feel of the game's art without using big chunks of background drawings. So, this month we chose one of the new levels we are developing, and tried to find a balance between using seamless and original textures for building the background. We are also trying to get the color effect right by using multiply layers with blending adjustment in Unity. There will be more challenges to take, but the first attempt turned out lot better than we expected. (see image below)

                                                 Before (left) & After (right) Optimization

                                                 Before (left) & After (right) Optimization

SHCC

Last weekend we’ve been invited to Shanghai Comic Con to showcase LUNA (with 2 new demo levels added) along with many other great indie game teams. For all the people who came around to say hi and left us great suggestions, we really appreciated all your support! Hope in the future we will have more chances to bring LUNA to other game show exhibitions in different countries.

                                           Had our first time exhibition stands design experience in SHCC

                                           Had our first time exhibition stands design experience in SHCC

For the new month, we are planning to start the development of a new level next month. The gameplay we designed for this level will give us quite a few technical challenges as it involves quite a lot study about the physics of shadow movement. Also, players could expect to experience some good old action gameplay mixed within the puzzles.  
 

Devlog #5 Storyboard & Gameplay Design Refinements

Is that you? 

During last three weeks, the Team has finally met each other in person for the first time. The four of us have been working together closely for about one year, yet still we found it was hard to put the face and voice together when we met. It was a very interesting experience.

Thanks to our friend Fred, we finally had some co-working picture. From left to right: Betty(Artist), Fox(Manager), W.Guan(Programmer) and W.Qian(Musician)

Thanks to our friend Fred, we finally had some co-working picture. From left to right: Betty(Artist), Fox(Manager), W.Guan(Programmer) and W.Qian(Musician)

Although in this day and age long distance communication has become a common way of co-working, especially usual for indie teams, still there is nothing more productive than a real time, face-to-face communication. This has indeed become both an advantage and disadvantage for many indie teams. We’ve avoided the high cost of renting a studio or buying office equipment, but sometimes we really do suffer from the feeling of isolation and sense of disconnection, due to not being able to see your teammates very often.

So during the two weeks of intense meeting this month while our artist was in China, we had the opportunity to sort out quite a few important gameplay and design issues that troubled us before. 

Storyboard

The draft storyboard for the four major cinematic clips during the game is almost completed. We now have the visuals of the key events, locations and characters’ background stories. This will help our musician to work in advance on some new music compositions. It is important that the visuals be delivered to everyone as complete as possible. It might seem like just the artist's job, but the mood and emotion of the story can help other teammates to have a more complete understanding of the game. Everything needs to be shared and discussed.

                                                                  some of the storyb…

                                                                  some of the storyboard drafts

                                                          Example of one completed storyboard

                                                          Example of one completed storyboard

Gameplay and design refinements

According to the previous work plan, during the meeting we have finalized the theme for all the rooms (levels). Each room now has its own function and content. Also, we don’t want to put any objects that don’t relate to the environment of the room, just for the sake of the puzzle. As much as we don’t want to have the puzzles standing out too much from the theme, we also have to consider the feedback we’ve received often from players, that no one likes to click through the entire screen to find a clickable object. This could be one of the biggest challenges in the design part.

Furthermore, in order to provide a smoother gameplay experience, we are also going to re-adjust the difficulties between levels. For example, in the early stage as the story still remains a mystery, the puzzle difficulty curve might be a constant upwards curve.Then during the middle stage, as the puzzle requires more complicated cooperation between characters, we are then going to adjust the difficulty curve or even reduce it a bit. Meanwhile as more cinematics kick in, the story and all the mysteries will be slowly revealed. We even would like to break the puzzle pattern completely at this stage, in order to switch players’ attention more towards the storytelling rather than just focusing on the puzzles. In one word, we hope LUNA will not only be experienced as a series of puzzle challenges, but rather an interactive story, delivered as a game.

Along with the gameplay details of the levels being continuously refined, we are going to start optimizing some old problems, such as the walk cycle and oversized texture issues. 

Devlog #3 The Shadows & Interactive Objects

Great News!

LUNA has won the Best Visual Art of the Year award in the Indieplay 2016 games festival (Shanghai, China) last week! Woohoo! ╰(*°▽°*)╯

Like many indie game studios or dev individuals all over the world, sometimes it could feel quite isolating and daunting during game development. It's not easy to be a one-man band, so it's always nice to meet other game developers to bounce ideas, make connections, and most importantly, to show support for each other.

Trying to take a baby step for LUNA in the industry, we (Lantern Studio) submitted our game’s demo 2 months ago to Indieplay 2016, one of the biggest indie game festivals in China. Regardless of whether it would have won anything or not, it would already have been a great experience for us. During the last couple of weeks and the 2-day festival show, we met many game industry experts, individual developers, indie game studios, and indie game supporters. To our surprise, it could not have ended in any better way, as LUNA won the prize in the Best Visual Art category! This is such a huge encouragement for a small team like us, with still many miles to walk. We thank you all for keeping believing in us.

Okay, now let’s get back to the dev log. 

The Shadows  

You do notice that our game has a small subtitle call “The Shadow Dust” right? So what is it? If you have tried the demo, you must remember the shadow crow in the beginning. In fact, these shadows will be playing a huge part in the latter part of the game. It has also a lot to do with the character’s past and the mystery about the tower. So during the last month, we focused on developing the “shadows” side of the story in some of the levels. Here are some animations and concept art about these things from the dark side.

                                                                      &nbs…

                                                                                       Shadow Creature - Concept Art

                                                             Shadows among the Paintings

                                                             Shadows among the Paintings

Interactive Objects

LUNA is actually not a typical point-and-click game. With no dialogue/text to read and click through, it relies heavily on the interactive animations, music and randomly popped up effects to keep the player entertained while solving the puzzles. So we were also trying to get as many items in the background clickable as possible. Many still object are now being animated, designed with new sound effects and mini-game features. We hope they will add more fun and magic into the game world.