An Open and Honest Update

It's about time I explained the current state of Luminesca. The project has now been running for over a year and, for better or worse, where I am now is nowhere near where I planned to be by this time. Focuses have shifted, certain constraints have arisen while others have relaxed, and my general outlook on the project has changed.

In this post I'm going to highlight changes to some of my former intentions and explain how they came about.


Full-time development

By far the most significant change to the development is the amount of time I am dedicating to it on a weekly basis. The key purpose for the IndieGoGo campaign was to raise enough funds that I could take some time out from work and dedicate all my time to Luminesca. I raised a notable amount from the campaign for which I am hugely grateful, but the high cost of living meant that this money pretty much only covered the time I spent promoting it. Perhaps this was a lack of foresight on my part, perhaps I should have been more prepared and financially stable before starting the campaign. This is something I actually deeply regret because I have been unable to fulfil my plans as quickly as I had hoped.

What this meant was I had to go back to full-time work and shift Luminesca's development into my free time. This has significantly slowed down development, I can't deny that. On the other hand I have picked a lot of very valuable skills in my new job which I can apply to Luminesca, and it will be a much better game for it.


Project scope

I had high hopes for the game in its early days, and a lot of this was probably due to over-ambition and naivety. Luminesca was planned to be a 4-6 hour game with 3D graphics, hopefully delivered to a variety of platforms such as Xbox Live Arcade and iOS. Since then I've come to realise what a massive amount of work this entails and have re-scoped the project accordingly. If I stuck to the original plan I think the game would simply never see the light of day, or at least not for a very long time. I don't want it to take that long, I don't want to get to the point where I'm sick of it, and I don't want to keep the IndieGoGo funders waiting.

I'm now looking at a much more focused design, closer to 1-2 hours in length, using 2D art which is much quicker and easier to produce in the quantities I need, and I'm aiming to develop only for PC/Mac/Linux at this stage. If the game is successful I will consider other platforms, but it would take too much time and effort to work them into the plan at this stage.


What comes next?

• I will continue to develop Luminesca in my spare time.
• I recently cleaned out the Unity project folder as it was getting bloated with obsolete code and art assets. It was becoming too big for what it needed to be. This reboot has given me a jolt of enthusiasm and made the whole thing far easier to manage.
• Some of the IndieGoGo funds have gone into purchasing Unity extensions - namely 2D Toolkit and uScript - which speed up my workflow immensely, so this is getting faster and more productive.
• I now have a much clearer idea about how the full game will take shape and I'm working on a demo of the opening sections using my new 2D art style. As soon as this is ready I will make it available to everyone who donated. I really can't wait to show off all the ideas I've come up with in the last few months!
• To all the people who donated: I have not forgotten about you! I will continue to work towards making the game the best it can be and making your donation worthwhile.

All I ask of you now is patience. It will be worth it!

2D Lighting System

Today I got a new 2D lighting system working. The old system was simply a big black square with a hole in the middle. The drawback of that system was that it only supported one light at a time, but the new one allows an unlimited number.

Please note that in this video the glow from Lum's esca does not grow when you collect planktids. This will change!

For those interested in the technique I used: it's really simple! I just attached a flat plane to each light source with a glowing sprite material. The material uses a Particles/Additive shader. Behind all this is another large plane with a semi-transparent black texture applied which darkens the background. The foreground rocks and creatures and all rendered in front of the glows so they are not obscured.

Happy New Year!

ENTOMBED

My daily commute by train has become a great opportunity to sketch up some concept art for some of the key moments in the game. Thus:

Development of the game has picked up again in recent weeks. The 2D art style is working really well for me and allowing me to get my ideas implemented much more quickly and painlessly. One of the benefits is that concept art like this can be recreated in the game far more accurately than it could using 3D assets.

I've set myself the goal of creating an introductory sequence made up of about 15 rooms, which will ideally act as a kind of new pre-release demo to replace the old IndieGoGo prototype build. I plan to use this demo to show off the darkness effects, demonstrate how the world will be explored and start to introduce the story.

More news to come in the next few weeks! Follow Luminesca on Twitter or Facebook for the latest.

black jellies in motion

I previewed the 2D art style in my previous blog post, but here's a video of it in motion:

The video demonstrates two key features:

1. The dangerous black jellies, which close in on light sources and constrict your movement. Their poisonous tentacles slow you down and make you easy pickings for the ominous, eyeless maws.
2. The use of light to create more dynamic situations. The brightness of your light now affects how far you can see in the dark and changes your relationship with other creatures. If it becomes bright enough you can scare away weaker enemies like infant jellyfish.

I'm making headway with refining the story and trimming out the superfluous parts, which is helping to shape the overarching level design. This in turn is helping me decide which gameplay elements (creatures, obstacles, etc.) no longer fit the game, and I'm building a much clearer idea of what Luminesca is about. To me, this is a very important part of its design.

And finally, some good news. I'm working on a new playable prototype which should be available via certain digital distributions platforms. If you pre-order the game you can get early access to this for a discounted price. If you donated to the IndieGoGo campaign you will get a key to download it at no extra cost (this is essentially an updated version of the 'preview build' being delivered in a more secure way).

2 new screenshots to start the week

tardy update

Sorry for the lack of updates, etc. etc. I'm going to be open and honest about where Luminesca is at the moment.

The donations the project received via IndieGoGo were incredibly generous and allowed me to spend time developing an actual working prototype, which has helped me more than I could have possibly imagined. But the funding only lasted for so long and I've had to return to full-time work so I can pay the bills. Unfortunately, progress on Luminesca has slowed down quite a bit as a result.

But it hasn't stopped completely! Luminesca is incredibly important to me and has been slowly simmering for several years in one form or another. Developing a working version of the game has opened my eyes to a lot of realities about the project, from high-level project management issues (e.g. it takes a lot of time and effort to make a game on your own) right down to the nitty-gritty quibbles (this camera is too close, and that move speed is too slow).

Ultimately, I decided that I wasn't happy with the direction that the game was heading in and that it had grown into something quite unmanageable taking my budget and time constraints into account. So I've taken a step back from the game, looked at what wasn't working and now I have gone back to the drawing board. Here's what I've come up with:

As you can see I've gone back to 2D, this time using a plugin for Unity called Orthello. I came to the conclusion that 3D art is not my forté, and implementing it has a tendency to increase the number of bugs and graphical oddities tenfold. 2D art is simple, clean and (most importantly) quick and easy to create. This means it's way more manageable for a one-man team and I have a much greater chance of actually finishing the game!

I'm not showing off the game in motion just yet as there are still some kinks to iron out, but I'm already feeling much more confident about development and I'm progressing much quicker than before.

What do you think? Do you like the new style based on this early look?

initial level design

I blocked out an initial layout for the whole game world so I could run through it and get a feel for its size.

The image shows the main path through the game's various zones. At the moment it just represents the shortest path from A to B but will eventually be weaved into a more complex network of intricate tunnels and caverns.

On previous projects I've often spent a lot of time recreating detailed level design sketches in the editor, only to find that the scale is way off throughout the whole level. One of the things I love about Unity is how easy it is to quickly chuck in a load of prefab shapes and copy and paste until I have a simple layout ready. Then with one click I'm swimming around in the game engine and very quickly getting an idea of whether it feels the right size or not.

The world of Luminesca is still in its early stages but it feels like a good size; it's big enough to give a sense of grandeur without being so big that it's unreasonable to try and fill it all with enough detail.

The next stage is to look at each zone individually and start implementing the main gameplay and story beats. I'll start with the mid-game section before book-ending it more simple and more complex versions of the gameplay.