Questverse February Report (with linux pre alpha demo) news

NOTE: Due to the fact which the IndieDB download of the game is very hard for non members, it is best to download the game here:

NOTE2: The game exe was recently improved, so if you use windows, if previously it didn't worked for you, it may now do.

NOTE3: I think it is now best to show news articles at each 2 months timespan, as the space map, quest and end user testing takes much more time than I used to spent until now. You can see updates at my twitter to the right and some images and videos may appear in the meantime between articles. Further notes may be appended here at this news article until then also.

Some may ask themselves why I hadn't shown the game demo on December or January as promised, well, at December I hadn't much time(christmas), now for January, around day 20 I already had the playable demo, but only for blenderplayer(which has not much protection); so, I figured I should wait to do the thing right, which was talking to BPPlayer(encryption, speed optimization software) creator(besides power shortages and others things which happened) and requested some cryptographic changes to its system, some of the improvements did get made, but others proved to be impossible due to blender nature. After those news I started right away working on the cryptography changes I required myself and made something reliable enough for now with two days of work.

Due to my desire of already present a demo, I applied my efforts on improving what the game already had instead of new content, I know I said I would already work on the game first quest, but nothing matches a 'good ol' demo. I tested and retested the rest though, and now I really will start working on the first Quest(currently on the space map, which comes right before it). The initial setup, logo, title, main menu, character creation, intro and space map scenes are already stable(I hope); except at the character creation, where I again found a nasty bug on blenderplayer and reported it(though I'm getting no feedback there currently), for now I already included a temporary workaround for that at that scene.

The current pre-alpha demo(so not really a demo yet) can be downloaded at the Download area above or the Latest Downloads area below this news article; and it currently only works on linux, as a windows version will require recompilation of blender into a windows machine, maybe minor code changes  and the creation of a game exe(which will take a week or so). It do came to my knowledge Blender Game Engine folks do not pay much attention to the mac version of it(or so I was told), which resulted in more thirdie software bugs, I wonder if I should drop the mac OS version due to this limitation. Burster web plugin is out of cogitation also due to security issues.

Another things I did were:

• I decided to create my own version of the gui module with my improvements, using the original bgui module as base, which I called lgui(lunarts gui) to avoid confusions with the original bgui
• I created a word processor for subtitle .srt and txt files for my game
• Changed the game site
• Added special thanks
• Created a window constructor which use only 8 small .pngs
• Now testing the game with the external blenderplayer instead of blender built-in player
• Started to use a software for some 2D animations
• Showed the work in progress intro video
• Changed the game minimum resolution to 1280x720(it works stretched with 1024x768 too)
• Fitted my game to the new BGE async libload
• Stopped using .ogv(too many issues) for videos and started using .webm instead
• Now I am using the most current blender and blenderplayer version from svn(the version which works that is) from blender foundation(bleeding edge updates)
• And much more.

The game now have a manual, which is too in progress, which can be obtained by downloading the game or at: Lunarts-studio.com.br.

About the executable, please let me know of issues, tips, hardware data and the like(also read carefully the game docs folder). Also note which the addition of cryptography in the game doesn't mean I will not gradually and selectively share the game assets and make tutorials about it in the future.

Regarding the campaign end at December, indiegogo taxes plus brazilian government taxes(D=) ate a considerable sum of the campaign amount; so, I recommend to you to choose a minimum value which is still a great amount discounting taxes, at the mode "funded or give the money back" instead of "Receive all funding" when campaigning.

This month special thanks go to EdDaenar from OpenGl forums for some helpful hints in the past, Elfy admin from the Ubuntuforums, indiedb Pabo for some spelling corrections and a minor thanks to blenderartists user leonnn for mentioning transition speed issues at the intro video.

That is it for now, thanks and until the next news article friends!