Blogs - Strayfox

I felt I should write a quick update here for those interested in Shadowdawn Genesis. The game is still deep in production at the moment. Unfortunately I am but one person, and getting any significant progress out in the wild of the internet takes a bit more time than average, but I feel I should explain that I am pretty much working alone with the exception of a few tracks in audio and a couple of non-RPG playing friends editing my script. This, coupled with an overly demanding full-time job (which has outlived its usefulness and I am working to drop with funding and other options) I have very little time to make an impact each week and I don't want to release every frame of animation I finish coloring as I complete it, because that would be overkill.

But it IS coming along, fear not. The engine was done in June, with the rough draft of the script in place, and all systems ready. What is going on right now is purely art. Hand-drawn animations are not the norm in this day and age, so it was hard to get an idea how long this phase would take - ideally I would have found someone to help me do animations while I did other art like environments, concepts and level design, but no such luck for now. Being the sole developer on a game of this magnitude is daunting at times, especially when comparing to teams (even of 2 people) getting games out in a fairly quick manner ... granted they are much smaller in scope. Not to say Shadowdawn Genesis is out of my grasp - I could just cheap out and use old-school 3 frame animations, but I wanted to make something special here. Still, seeing the new, finalized spritework for just Arashi alone has been motivating, and I can't wait to see the other characters fully brought to life soon.

I'm hoping to have another update soon to the main project entry here, so please look forward to it!

My developer page is kind of empty so I figured I'd at least type something.

Hopefully I'll get some time to just upload some scans of art as I practice. One of my main motivations while I'm developing my first to-be-published RPG is that I really want to hone my drawing skills. I guess I really want people to like the art of the game (well, assuming they aren't anime haters), and it's rare for indie devs to nail the Japanese manga style. I've finally gotten to the point where I can see my mistakes as I make them, which mostly lie in anatomy. It's kind of frustrating though because I have to show progress in my character designs and the game to keep people interested, but my line art is still interim so the astute eye will catch my various anatomy errors as I try to improve (not to mention I have to fight getting demoralized with my own failings). I guess in the end I just have to suck it up and hope for the best, and keep updating with new art until those mistakes are a thing of the past :)

I am planning to enter a demo of Shadowdawn Genesis into Microsoft's DreamBuildPlay 2011 competition since it is being developed with XNA 4.0 (at this time), so I've been focusing on finishing up the engine before really diving into final content generation. I hope to release a PC demo soon after the entry (assuming the goal of an entirely playable introduction area is done), along with an XNA forum playtest, to really get a feel for what people like/don't like before I get too far into making the areas. The deadline for the entry is June 14, so at least that's something of a milestone to aim for!