Newest Update on Journey Through Memories
- Juan Rosales
- Feb 23, 2018
- 3 min read
So this week has updates coming from both inside the game as well as inside the team as a whole. First and foremost, there has been a policy change in our budget. More specifically, we no longer have the $500 budget to fund all our artists. While it came as a setback, we are currently discussing the situation with 2 of our extra hired artists to see where we go from here and if there’s still a way to keep them on the team. On the other hand, our sound engineers have been doing an excellent job providing more and more sounds to our game. While admittedly progress felt a little slower this week, our sound engineers have assured us that they will resume a steady work rate once they resolve their scheduling conflicts. As for the development team, we are still dealing with the unity collab issue but we have found some work arounds it. The best temporary solution is having both Niken and myself share 1 account. To avoid any major issues, we try our best to avoid working on the same things at the exact same time and, if for some reason that situation arises, we make share to upload all the updates from one person’s laptop. The most important update however came from how the team reorganized its priorities. In the past, we focused on things players could do and functionality over what best illustrates what the game is and polish. After having a long discussion, we have decided to shift focus on the latter instead. So with that in mind, this weeks updated saw a lot of visual and sound updates. First and most importantly, we implemented the second level and have done several play testing on it. We’ve gotten some good feedback and we now know how to tune it to ensure a better and more polished experience. Secondly, more spells and object interaction have sound effects as well as 2 background songs. Additionally, we added more visual updates (such as the sky) and, more importantly, were finally implementing animations to better accommodate the feedback loop to the player. Aside from those major things, We’ve polished the UI and fixed some longtime bugs. Lastly, we have a functioning crafting system but still needs lots of polish before its ready to be implemented into the game.
Our creative director, Niken, has shifted from the crafting system to working on visuals and level development. She helped put all the levels together and then got playtesters to find bugs. She also improved the hint system to better help players when they’re stuck. Lastly, She has implemented various props and background designs to more polish and life to the level.
Our development director, Inkan, Has continued to implement various sound effects into our game. She has constantly tested and tuned sounds to provide the best possible experience for players. Aside from just sound engineering, Inkan has also implemented various assets for puzzle objects as well as program their functionality. Lastly, she has completed the second spirit puzzle and has worked with Niken to playtest our giant level.
As for me, the art director/producer, I spent most of my time fixing up various bugs. This includes a couple of longtime spell bugs and some UI issues. A big portion of my week was also spent on combining all the puzzles into one whole scene to avoid scene issues. Lastly, I polished up the UI to provide better yet nondisruptive feedback to players.
Our technical director, Eric, took over the crafting system and spent a significant amount of time making it work. He also implemented a lot of the crafted spells and the next step is to polish the scene and then test for playable. With the sudden refocus of priorities however, the crafting system will be put to halt for a while until we finish the other tasks first.
Signing off and wishing the team the best,
Juan Rosales
