Since November of last year, I have been working with a programmer to take the ABD into a new direction. Originally, I was coding a Single Player experience to reflect the original era of ABD: A Beautiful Day. Some of the programming was entertaining, but I quickly became overwhelmed with some of the more advanced techniques, and I was unable to continue. Luckily, I met an aspiring programmer who helped launch things in a very exciting direction.
As some of you know, ABD: A Beautiful Day was never intended on being a singular era, similar to Empire Earth, you were intended on advancing through the ages.
Here is the art style and visual progress that has transpired, and the new direction under full public disclosure:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vRdW3
Here is a preview of what this art looks like if you don't trust ArtStation for whatever reason:
Here is the current asset list and it's UI (User Interface)(those little icons):
*Edit* Larger Preview:
Everything you see here was farmed, crafted, transported, and placed In-Engine during runtime. The first five(5) screens reflect the current starter server, where players will be able to interact with the NPC system to exchange PFL (Player Found Loot) for goods and services. The screens to follow were development images that were captured during runtime.
ABD: 1851 C.E. follows the original timeline, except much later on, and with the same core gameplay in mind - except this is moving (at present) towards a MMOFPS than a MMORTS. ABD: 1851 C.E. operates a lot like a mix between Rust (www.playrust.com) and the original ABD. You begin with practically nothing but the clothes on your back and a few dollars in your pocket, starting out near the back end of town the first time you spawn in. Your initial goals are to head into town, find the Mayor's Office, and purchase a tent to respawn in. There is a temporary tent area across from the mayors office, which allows the user to place things like storage inside of your tent that will only be accessable to you. Upon placing a tent, further ingame tips are given to help guide you from A to B to C, and your life revolves around prospecting in the frontier as well as PVP in the frontier. From there, the world is your oyster. The town is rather large, and the map is an enormous desert, where you will have the option to build inside or outside of town. Building and operating inside of town has many perks, such as additional security and binding laws of the land.
ABD was always intended on being a franchise, a multi-scope platform to express my artistic interpretation of what I've always wanted to see in games. As of December last year, a new direction took hold, and we moved towards bringing a totally new concept to life. I had done some testing of my own, and the project became very promising; and quickly! Unfortunately, instead of announcing a public Alpha tomorrow, I am announcing a setback. My programmer, who wishes to remain out of this announcement, has decided to find ventures anew just short of the Alpha. Why? I have no idea..
I will continue on this path and it's development, and as of the state of the game, I can't promise it will be a quick turnaround but I can promise that it is an exciting new avenue. If you have questions or comments, please leave a note below and I'll address them.
Creative Producer,
-Robert Bonner
Dev Blog 12/19/2016 - Requesting Testers
Herro' Errbody,
We are going to begin testing within the next couple weeks, likely a week or two after Christmas but we're not sure yet, few things to consider as always. If you're interested in becoming a tester, please add me onto your friendslist and I'll get you the documentation you need as well as instructions. I'll be making a special closed group for testing here on Steam, and you won't have to be online at specific times to test.
Thanks!
-Robert
Launch Hype - www.GagAMaggotEnt.com
Hello everyone!
It's been a pretty long time since we've all been in the same place at the same time, so I'm pretty excited to be back. Over the last couple of months I've been learning to code, and messing around with some concepts that get me excited. I set up a timer on GagAMaggotEnt.com a few weeks ago, and the timer is coming up on like twenty minutes or something before it dries up. So, without further adieu...
I've got some help with the heavy lifting in C#, but the majority of what was created here is mine. The entire world system, animation, props, environment, PBR/PBS day-and-night cycle, everything was hand coded in here. This is intended to be a Single Player version of ABD: A Beautiful Day set in first person, with possible multiplayer in the coming weeks but it is currently written as a single player game right now.
This gave me the idea of not only branching off of the main title to help with learning code and going deeper into development, but to offer multiple variations of a game delivered in the same place. So instead of having multiple projects on Steam, putting a few of them on the back burner while delivering something people can actually play is kind of a fun idea. With that said, the planned upcoming games with their priority ranking are as follows:
1st. ABD: Single Player (40% Finished)
2nd. ABD: 8Bit Sidescroller (0% Finished)
3rd. ABD: 2D Sidescroller (10% Finished)
4th. ABD: 3D Sidescroller (0% Finished)
5th. ABD: MMORTS (80% Finished)
So instead of just a single game, we'll have a whole franchise built right off of this one. Cool, right? Well no, I had a disasterous time the last run around with so many errors its almost as if nothing I say here can be taken as even possible. Which sucks, but with what I've been working on and the skills I have learned in the past few months I'm certainly going to attempt to turn all of that around.
So the single player version of the game is pretty simple stuff, most of the code is finished but the other half is an art section that's going to take me some serious time to complete. If any of you are interested, I will be hosting a group for testing here in the coming weeks.
Also, now is the time to chip in your thoughts on what made you the most excited about ABD, and I can add that into the process and start making those assets right away as a priority.
To further detail what is done, and what needs to be done, here is the list:
Finished
----
Main Menu + Audio + Game Audio + SFX
Day-Night Cycle
FPS Animation System
Crafting System
Inventory System
Movement System
Animal + NPC AI
Harvesting
Picking Up
Dropping
Dragging
Throwing
Hp/St/En/Th system
To-Be-Done
----
Code
----
Eating
Sleeping
Cooking
Construction System
SDVI System: Sickness / Disease / Viral / Infection
----
Art
----
Final Environment
Food / Water / Meat / Plants / Misc Edible Assets
Melee + Ranged damage + Sssets
NPC Assets
Food / Equipment / Tools / Weapons Assets.
My intention with this SP version of ABD is to create a FPS version and learn some coding as well. I'm going to have some assistance with my code so that everything is clean, but at this point I'm just trying to have some fun with it and hopefully get a few of you involved.
I'll be watching the forums and here as always to answer questions! Definitely give me a shout if you would like to talk about things you want to see in the coming weeks.
-Robert
3/19/2016 - Unique Veteran Artist Opportunity, ABD News.
Hello Everyone,
I hope you've all been well! I have a couple pieces of news I wanted to share, one about a Veteran opportunity and another about some news with ABD.
VAP Op.
A contact in the art world who I have been in touch with regularly has notified me of an upcoming art show, and she needs (U.S. DOD) Veteran Artists to contribute to the showing. Its possible I won't be able to attend this time with my work, so I am reaching far and wide to gather some names. Your work will be seen by tens of thousands of people, and all you need to do is have digital copies/scans of your paint/mixed media/photography with a max resolution of about 24x32" or so. So if you're interested, get ahold of me via Steam or drop me a line at our website at www.GagAMaggotEnt.com and I'll relay the information. I've been asked to at least preview what you're going to send, just please don't send me the huge files of scans I just need a general idea of what you're thinking of showing.
This showing is in correlation with the Veteran Artist Program, the County of El Paso Colorado, and the U.S.A.F..
ABD News.
I'm pretty lost at what how to proceed without funding or investment, so I will be constructing a Kickstarter to help finish the game. If that second run fails, I'll have to find investors or publication outside of the community which will take a long time. Stay tuned for information - all I need from current owners is a share/tweet/retweet on social media to help us get the word out. If we don't make it, it'll take me much longer to pull it off - but be rest assured I will.
Happy travels!
-Robert
Dev Blog 2/6/2016 - Moving Forward
Hello Everyone,
I hope you've all been well! ABD: A Beautiful Day is going through some changes, and I feel it will be an exciting change. I'm in negotiations with multiple companies to bring the game to life and even far exceed anything I could have dreamed of before. Also, I'm making the game $4.99 until we get things working properly, marking the game down by 75%. This will change once the game becomes fully operational and people are regularly playing having a good time!
There are also some developments on the side here. I've taken a couple of weeks to recoup from losing the projects funding, went through a mourning phase, and moved onto doing Freelance work to get my mind off of things. Yep, I went out there and made brochures, tweaked peoples facebook photos, some illustration work, and even work for a couple games on Steam as well as multiple F2P modifications. Met some cool people, got to clear my head about the game, and strategize on how to move forward.
So, moving forward!
GAM Ent will be breaking up into three subsidiary groups under the existing parent company:
1.) Veteran Artists Program for Games. V.A.P.F.G.
2.) Mobile & Facebook Games.
3.) Indie Developer Network Integration Courses.
1.) Veteran Artists Program for Games. V.A.P.F.G.
Being a game friendly to Military Veterans, I'll create a section on our website, and in the future a forum, to be a contact for Veterans who wish to get into gaming as a career! Advice, assistance, networking, all in one place for our heroes.
2.) Mobile & Facebook Games.
This process will help us fund further development of ABD: A Beautiful Day, and act as creative exercise. In conjunction with V.A.P.F.G., we'll actually help Veterans link up together, create games, game content etc, and the developers share the royalties! GAM Ent will act as a legal middleman so nobody gets upset, whilst igniting the process for developers of all backgrounds to collaborate on multiple gaming engines, with access to a plethora of advice and experience.
3.) Indie Developer Network Integration Courses. I.D.N.I.C.
Are you an indie dev, or at least would like to be, but you don't have answers to specific workflows or pipeline experience? In conjunction with the above three programs, this will be your one stop shop to get all the answers you need to get you started in the industry.
Long story short for those of you who like to skip to the bottom, she's alive! About to get some paddles to bring her back to life, and I'll be doing my best to turn those negative reviews into positive ones! Of course some players will be negative and terrible no matter what, but that's life here on Steam! At least it's diverse!
Please allow some time for these negotiations, but once they begin it should be a really exciting ride for all of us. Lastly, it appears that Boris has vanished from Earth, and Jack has moved on, so it's just me now. One man steamroller, baby!
-Robert
Dev Blog 1/17/2016 - Hibernation
Hello Everyone,
As many of you know, this latest patch has obvious and unfortunate issues that stem into many different areas with the same quantity of consequences. My funding limit is nearing, and I'm going to have to put us into hibernation until I can do one of the following:
1.) Raise funding for continuation.
2.) Open-source the game, acquiring interns and/or mainly profit sharing.
3.) Find a publisher.
The last two to three weeks, the same reoccurring bugs have been present and no matter how hard I try, they aren't addressed. There are a hundred thousand things to do, and I don't blame Jack for doing what he has been doing, but fundamental gameplay including movement enables the remaining functions of the game; which ultimately was severely broken and has remained broken for this duration. This has sparked a war-of-words with some very nasty people here on Steam, whom are questioning the validity of our dedication to the project. So to show some of the guts, to quash the nay-sayers, I'll give you a glimpse at the payroll.
Jack is signed on a contract requiring him to work no more than 40 hours per week, as to extend budgeting for the project. Jack usually works an excess of 10-12 hours per day, often times going into the very early hours of the morning. So when people get in here and spew verbal diarrhea about how we don't care, I'd like to challenge that with a swift response. Boris, who gets paid a lot less than Jack, often times does the entire weekend and for half of the project went mostly unpaid. I've compensated him for this time, but it doesn't do that quantity of work justice. I've been funding the development of this game with my personal savings, and going back to April I've spent around $55,000 with a loss of $32,000 from former employees who stole/sabotaged project files. So Boris and Jack have been the best performers by far, and I have nothing but good things to say about them and their work.
As far as sales are concerned, we've sold about 160 copies over the span of six months. Give or take with sales and promotions, that's $3,400 gross. Take home, that equals $2,278 before taxes. So technically, one week of the 24 weeks of development have been paid for. My wife and I couldn't get each other Christmas Presents this year so I could pay Boris and Jack, we've also had to forgo repairs to the car and fixes around the house in hopes that it would pick up. To date, I haven't received a single paycheck of any quantity after the cost of business expenses, yet I'm being tiraded by the community for mongering cash and exploiting early access.
If you've seen the Year in Review video, you can see the aesthetic transformation that unfolded over the demonstrated timeframe. We've come a really, really long way, and we are very close to delivering; hence - Early Access. Boris and I persevered in the face of extreme injustice from Launch, picked up the pieces and moved forward with Jack. The absolute lack of sales has done detrimental damage to the project, giving me little to no choice other than to put us into hibernation until I can figure something out. Whether or not Jack and Boris stay on to help me with figuring something out, bug fixes, etc, I have no idea.
Needless to say after reading all of that, it is remarkably impossible for me to continue burning away the last of my savings on something that both isn't selling and cannot get stabilized on a fundamental level for users to enjoy a minimalist gameplay experience. As such, we will be entering a hibernation period while I try to figure out what the next step is. After all of the negativity spewed at us from every corner of the globe, I have no idea if crowd funding will even work again. We have some players who are out to see the world burn, defaming us and doing actual damage to the business by hitting our reputation.
While I figure this out, I'd appreciate suggestions or ideas in the comments section.
Steam Promotion is LIVE
Hello Everyone,
Whether you are a new player, a prospective player, or a veteran - I'll be in the chat room for our Steam Group if you have questions, comments, or concerns. Wish us luck!
-Robert Bonner
Creative Producer - ABD: A Beautiful Day
G.A.M. Entertainment, LLC.
www.GagAMaggotEnt.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/gam_ent
Facebook: www.facebook.com/gagamaggotentertainment
Major Update - UI Overhaul
Hello Everyone,
In addition to the UI Overhaul, you'll also notice another video on the store page. The video pertains to our, "Year in Review" where we present the progress that has been made for the better half of 2015. This should tell you where we've been, where we're going, and much more!
We are also going to run a Steam Promotion, and hopefully get some more reviews. The majority of our reviews are almost six months old, heavily negative, and wildly outdated. If you are a new player, feel free to hop on our forums and we will be there to answer your questions as always. Also, if our server gets bogged down due to a high player count, please note that we will be upgrading our license very soon but it has not been done yet due to a lack of sales. Which is great, because we fluctuate our license based on player count so its a rapid turnaround.
If you aren't a new player, you'll also notice some big changes have been made. We're testing out a much better, more interconnected method for the interface that allows us more control and a much easier way to connect users to eachother as well as several services! For instance:
-Social Media Integration.
-Ingame Wiki.
-Menu & Information Presentation.
-Five(5) new resources, including Animals, Rocks, Flowers & More!
-Robert Bonner
Creative Producer - ABD: A Beautiful Day
G.A.M. Entertainment, LLC.
www.GagAMaggotEnt.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/gam_ent
Facebook: www.facebook.com/gagamaggotentertainment
[EDIT] We have noticed a few of our players are running into a strange issue where they can't move, and it may not get addressed before Monday. I'll keep everyone up to date with this issue, as always.]
I hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday, being the Monday of return to work and school for most of you, this is probably a deeply disgusting time.
There is a major fix for UI in the works, amongst other fixes and tweaks for things that are a bit long overdue. It has been a really wild year, Boris and I have been working together since April, Jack is coming up on his five month mark and there has been a huge amount of work done for the game since we restructured staff for the third time. It is safe to say we have fully recovered, and are blazing through development.
On Friday we will be doing a promotion on Steam, both a 15% Sale and a Gameplay Trailer. Upon the completion of the promotion, we will be focusing on the following features over the month of January:
If you like the game, or at least where we're going, share us on social media and get your friends in on it!
-Robert Bonner
Creative Producer - ABD: A Beautiful Day
G.A.M. Entertainment, LLC.
www.GagAMaggotEnt.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/gam_ent
Facebook: www.facebook.com/gagamaggotentertainment
Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays!
I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas, and may the New Year be a good one for all of us! I would have posted an update on Christmas Eve but Steam was experiencing issues in the community hub.
Jack stayed up until the wee early hours on Christmas Eve (against my wishes) to finalize an update for ABD, and it is really quite something. Coupled with Boris's work this week and last, the following items have been updated:
-Structures. (Storage, Misc.)
-Minions. (New Models; will cooperate with Reproduction/Aging process soon.)
-Items. (Equipment, Tools, Weapons - Plus stats, costs, and purchasables.)
The upcoming week we will be focusing on gathering footage for a gameplay trailer, and doing final tweaks to accomidate said trailer. Also, we'll be doing some fine tuning of stats/items/values as well. Once stability on public (non Alpha-Beta tests) is nailed down, we will have met all of our objectives for the core of the game. Whats left is a few module/functions and fine tuning. The core is really solid, and it should be pretty exciting to see what happens after we accomplish these last couple months of development. Of course we'll continue to develop, you know what I mean.
Lastly, when we get the trailer out I was going to do a Free Weekend promotion, but our license to run such large numbers of players well exceeds our total sales ammount. Once we generate enough sales to cover that additional hefty license, we will be doing a free weekend. Long story short, Q1 of 2016 will be very interesting for ABD: A Beautiful Day.
