Astralojia: Episode 1
2020 Astralojia Update - I quit promotion, and the pandemic...
To make the level of quality product I'm doing my best to develop, I can't focus on numbers or promotion. I need to do what I do best, stick to my strengths.
Episode 1 is completely finished, Episode 2 is completely finished, and Episode 3's cutscenes are all finished, I'm making great progress and finding my process, the series is coming out better than I had dreamed, I've got this thing completely funded for a good 3-4 years ahead of me, I'm single, live cheaply, have few friends, and I'm going to keep it that way until I can get to about Episode 12 or so.
For promotion, I'm just going to polish up a presentation and start e-mailing and messaging publishers.
...you know, when the pandemic started, it really shook my entire world. I hadn't worked on it for 4 months, I could barely even touch it from the depression of what was going on in the world, the people that are suffering and everything...
...and then something magical happened. I quit Youtube, I quit Twitter, I quit Facebook, I stopped watching the news, but mostly I quit anything that had a 'what do you think box' (the irony is that's what I'm writing into right now).
Well, shortly after quitting these services I felt eons better, more alive, freer. I've been completely consistent on a diet since, I've gotten tons more work finished and been exercising every day.
Maybe it doesn't effect others so much, but social media really does have a big effect on me mentally, especially in these times.
This has turned me into focusing on my tiny little world as a human being in this vast society again. When you're online watching the news on Youtube, or you're on Twitter all the time trying to post about your sh&%, well at least for me, it has this effect where I'm not as present in my local life.
This is probably due to a couple of reasons. One, I live in the city. Two, with everything closed and no public events or group meetups, there's no way to meet new people locally. Three, I was new to my area before the pandemic hit, I've actually had to make more of an effort to get outside, take walks, bicycle and exercise, just be out in the sunshine, etc...
In short, I'll just say it's been really hard, knowing that people are out there suffering right now, but turning to my own personal life, getting off the computers, the phones and the internet, getting away from the mainstream news and just enjoying what I've got in my tiny little corner of the universe for the time that I have it on this planet. For me, I've had to draw the land in the sand for myself and state clearly to myself that the computer is either just a tool for making art or playing games with friends, that's about it, and boycotting social media has really helped me out mentally in my life, the effects were really immediate, mainly pertaining to this project, I've been very very consistent now, having fun actually making cutscenes and enjoying it much more fully.
When I started to realize that a publisher would handle all of the promotional aspects of a project, if you can make it polished and fun enough, or just the idea that someone else that's really talented at social media, promotion etc... would handle that part of the shipping of these products, I really just questioned to myself why I was ever using social media to begin with, other than to sending a few messages to people.
So, what am I saying in short.
Well, I'm not going to promote this series anymore. At all. I'm just not. I'm not good at it, my track record speaks wonders, but I feel the more I focus on just making the product as good as it can be, the more I learn and the better I get at it.
When promotion is a job that takes a ton of talent, and a precise keen focus, and the art of manufacturing these products takes the same level of precise keen focus, they'll inevitably interfere with each other if the goal of either is to become exceptional.
The only goal I have is this, focus on more and more solidly getting the consistency of daily work down. If this is going to really pan out, if I'm going to live my dream of creating a series that's not just 3 or 4 episodes, but 10, 20, or even 30, 40+ episodes, then what it's going to take is consistency every day over a very very long period of time, not just a single year, but even a decade or longer of work every day.
This is the case with learning a new language, and so is the case with trying to achieve a feat like this.
Astralojia: Episode 1 is Updated and It's Now FREE
So, I took out free roaming and made the game into just cutscenes with battles. All of the sudden it makes waaaay more sense. It's just the direction that the series needed, it's not only much more engaging, but now I don't have to deal with random NPCs and pointless walking simulator moments.
This does, though, mean that the gameplay is now much shorter, so I'm making Episodes 1 and 2 free of charge to play. There are no catches, there will be no DLC. Future episodes after that depending on demand will cost money.
Other improvements include:
- No more 'controller only'! Now you can use just a mouse or a mouse and keyboard to play.
- Graphics Updates, more brush, more polished scenes.
- Created DVD Menu for when compilations of Episodes will be released.
- Re-polished each scene.
- Re-polished a lot of the music, and added in the ending song 'Day of Fate'.
- Made the text boxes black.
- Everything now is animated graphically, from the sky moving to the bushes and trees swaying in the wind.
These were all HUGE updates taken with all of the feedback that everyone has been providing me.
Please enjoy the series and share it with people you know if you can.
Thanks,
Astrah Cat
A Semi-New Direction
jeffrey williams
Cat Daddy
Timster
Rika
Far2close
You guys are the best.
If you'd like to keep up to date with the game here are my twitter accounts:
https://twitter.com/AstralojiaAvon (Older one)
https://twitter.com/astralojia (Newer one I'll be using more frequently)
Well, what do I have to say about Steam...It's definitely not what it used to be! On one end, the lack of curation and over-saturated content has me falling beneath a handful of very good products. On the other end, it's gotten me to re-plan on how I can make the series of games much better.
My thought at first for this project was to release every episode as a completely separate and new game on Steam. Recently, though, I've found myself looking at isolating each part of the workflow from another. Most of the first 20-25 episodes of Astralojia all take place in a single village, a school, and the areas surrounding it. I started to draw and re-design all of the scenes that need to be completed and I've ended up with about 36 exteriors and about 64 interriors.
Not impossible considering the levels aren't overly detailed in any case...
So what I'm aiming at doing now is finishing up all of the levels for the full series of games all at once, first and foremost, then hiring a character designer and a pixel-artist to handle those aspects for the rest of these episodes. This would be estimated to take 2 months.
Then, I've already started improving my SDK by having the games managed by a sort of DVD menu in where you select your episodes from a title screen. This will be best, as episodes can be as short as an hour in the length and will depend more on the skill of the battle system than anything else to proceed.
Right now I've created a rough estimate of the amount of hours this will take on my own:
- 10 hours - Get the game to start using new episode system, implement save/load
- 40 hours - Implementing Episode Menu, Episode Select, Play, Quit (button now goes back to menu and should exist on PC AND ALL PLATFORMS NOW)
- 200 hours - Creating all scenes for the entire project
- 70 hours - Implementing ultimates, in battle cutscenes, combos, guardians and astral synchronization into battles
- 60 hours - Re-writing episodes 2-26
This gives me 380 hours. Simultaneously while I handle this aspect, I'm going to be hiring a pixel-artist, a character designer, and pay to have the game translated into Japanese.
Of course with this new plan, it does mean episode 2 will be delayed, but when episodes do start coming out all of the pixel-art, character designs, all of the scenes, the entirety of the script and 90% of the music (which is already finished) will be completed and ready to be pieced together.
If I do 30 hours a week starting tomorrow on this, and I have as of right now been pulling 40 hour weeks, this should mean I can get to the point I want to be at by January 1st, 2020. So long as I don't lapse in going outside in my off time and hanging out with friends and family, keeping mental and physical health number one, I'm confident development will be swift and sure.
The game is privately funded by my own savings over the years, so I should be set as of right now. I will do the absolute best I can to make as good as a series of games, especially to honor the few who bought or gave the game a try.
Thanks,
Astrah
Good Progress on Episode 2
Steam Community Announcement
I wanted to talk today about the game's difficulty level just a little bit. I know I've mentioned this before, but I feel it needs to be driven home.
When playtesting one of the main changes I had to make to the game was to put in a 'White Belt Mode' that made the game much easier. The problem with this is that because then you just simply win every battle, you end up breezing by the first episode and then it not only lowers the length of the game, but lowers the enjoyment you get from losing, adjusting your strategy and re-trying. In other words, on easy, there's no strategy now, and since there's no strategy, all that I've worked for it looks like doesn't even matter and gets put to the side!
This is evident in a game like Kingdom Hearts 3 more recently, in where the Critical Mode has you thinking on your feet. The irony of this is that I myself never cared to play Kingdom Hearts 3 in a harder mode, so I barely even knew how to parry by the end of it.
This isn't really.....good when it comes to the whole point of the game. It NEEDS to be a challenge. For Episode 1 I'll be keeping in the white belt mode, but even in Episode 2 I'd like to take that mode out, have just blue belt, and then by about Episode 4 or 5 I'd like to have JUST a black belt mode or harder.
For now the first episode is staying at $4.99, but I'll be putting it on sale once I get Episode 2 out as a means of promoting it. I may even have a short as a free WebGL online demo in where you can't save as a means of getting a farther reach.
Here's a simple progress report on how Episode 2 is going, I may change this model in future announcements:
Script: 90%
Levels: 30%
Battles: 0%
Cutscenes: 0%
Music: 85%
I literally just finished the entire soundtrack in about 3 days, I almost went into a trance recently. You can find a demo song here:
https://soundcloud.com/astra-cat/town-v2
As far as the script is concerned, a new character is introduced, she'll be attending the entrance exams to the school as well, and the versions of the music right now change according to the character's personality. For this new girl, she's got acoustic versions of the battle and town songs.
Episode 2's release date right now is set for November 1st and will be $1.99. Hope you enjoy and thanks for sticking around,
- Astrah
The Series New Direction
I'm going to be investing another three or more years into this at the very least, so I'm looking at what improvements I can make to the series to get the attention of mainstream press. Mostly everyone that's played the game has enjoyed the gameplay, and while it could always use improvements, I'm going to focus on improving other aspects:
- Length: The game is too short, there needs to simply be more episodes. Instead of releasing episode 2, I'm considering releasing episodes in digital 'DVDs' so to speak, or just call them seasons. The first season would be episode 1-4 or episodes 1-5, about that. You would have like a DVD select menu in where you select episodes that you want to play. It's designed in where you wouldn't have to play from beginning to end, but rather you can start on the episode you'd like to start on.
- Graphics: The graphic design needs work. I need to hire a dedicated character designers/cg artist that can create far better cover graphics, and graphics that would fit within a Japanese marketplace. I started to really envision and think, if this game was on store shelves with other mainstream JRPGs, what would it look like? Right now, the graphic design doesn't fit in with that marketplace.
- Target Demographics: It's not translated into Japanese, and yet it's trying to appeal to JRPG enthusiasts. I do think that the game would do far better in a Japanese marketplace than an American one, as the name of the game is to grab interest from mainstream press, and the western mainstream press seems little interested in turn-based RPGs.
Moving forward, Steam will not get me to where I've wanted this series to be, and this is due I believe to the marketplace being overly crowded, and the series not being a good fit. In essence, the mainstream press of the west as I see it likes two kinds of games, and those are darker more gritty games, and building or free-roaming type games, especially on the PC, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Astralojia is not a dark enough series, it's very warm and bright and cute, and the people I've been getting the game to so far in the west haven't had turn-based RPGs in their lives like the Japanese have.
I've also been studying, what does my target audience use to play games, what games are they playing. They're not just playing Octopath Traveler. What they're really playing right now, is the Nintendo Switch and the Playstation 4, and they're probably playing brighter, warmer, cuter anime themed games like the Tales or Persona series. This is a level I feel that this series can get to, but as of right now there needs to be a long tough look at what it needs to get there.
It's a tough pill to swallow right now for me, because I did feel after all these years I would be much farther, but if I want to get to the place that I've worked all these years for, even decades for, I'm going to have to direct my boat and line this up so that it can properly gain the interest I feel it deserves. All in all, it all just comes down to the daily hours you spend on it, and I have enough now saved to last a good three years of full time work on this.
So I'm hoping that you'll enjoy the series as it moves into the future, if mainstream press in the west were to take up the game at this point, I really might continue with this, but the direction it's going right now won't lead it to the success I'm looking for, and success for me more so than money means getting to a very large audience that will enjoy the story, characters, and music.
The game is finally released...
Thanks to all of the reviewers, playtesters and let's players that participated in the release of this game. Thanks to Steam for having me as well and all of the friends and family who gave me support.
I hope to make more episodes more rapidly in the future, but September will be a time of focusing on family as we're moving. October will be my big month for returning to the project, and I'm trying to set myself up for a year so that I can crank these episodes out one after another starting then.
Again, the price tag of $4.99 helps support me in making future episodes and improve more and more.
Thank you so damn much, seriously!
- Astrah
About the game being short!
The idea that I had, though, was to create a game like a Super Mario Maker level, in where yes it's short, but you have to play through it again and again until you succeed. The problem with THAT ended up being that many more casual players wanted me to create an easier mode, as they argued that a story based game shouldn't be as hard, or that they are more casual players and just want to relax more while they play it.
So, White Belt mode and Blue Belt mode were born....
The thing is, once I get past season 1, episodes 1 through 4, as these episodes get shorter (and their prices much cheaper by the way), I want to start to make each episode more and more difficult to get through.
I imagine it this way...If there's an episode which is 40 minutes long (which I would never price at $4.99, I'd probably charge $0.99 for that by the way!), you go through it, you have the choice to level up and upgrade your abilities or not, right? Well, when you hit that final boss, and every episode will always have a final boss, you lose again and again. You then realize that you can play through the game in a way in where you can change your abilities around, level up another level, and then you JUST are able to beat that boss.
THAT'S the sense of accomplishment I'm looking for in future episodes. This also makes it so that there become these iconic moments, these iconic bosses that you have a hard time getting through. You chat with your friends, come up with new ways of playing the game, and you finally succeed and make it through.
You see, if a game is overly easy, if a game is going to hold your hand too much and be too kind to you, it's going to be more boring in general. Yes, it's a very story focused game, but at the same time you need a challenge, sorry to be so bold...but you need the game to be unkind.
The idea is that you go in there, you improve your technique, you have to actually THINK to get through an episode like it's a mix of a puzzle game and an action RPG. You need to lose and re-try a lot before you finally get it.
I might not have accomplished this in episode 1, but THIS is what I am going for now in future episodes.
I'm going to keep, then, the levels in there for Episode 1 through 4, but once I get to season 2 with Episode 5 through 8, I'm more than likely going to have only Black Belt and Third Degree, maybe even higher degrees of black belt!
Fixed white screen of death, game ready for launch...
I've fixed the white screen of death recently and the game is now ready for launching in.....now 1 day and 11 hours about!
The game has now worked flawlessly on almost any computer I've tested it on, with two exceptions:
An older laptop with integrated Radeon R5 graphics has the game freeze on it, but it works at first. My thought is that it has old Direct Input drivers, I'm looking over the crash report to figure it out. I haven't updated it's drivers so I'll have to post back about this one when I get the chance.
The game will NOT work on 32-bit systems, so I've made sure to put '64-bit required' under minimum specs.
If anyone buys the game and has any trouble running it please contact me right away at astraloja [@ ] gmail.com no brackets or spaces and I'll see what I can come up with.
Happy gaming,
Astrah
White Screen of Death Problems...
To counter this, I've patched the newest version with a launcher that you can see here:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EC9dnW7WsAA6gFL?format=jpg&name=medium
The game has been running fine for most people, but this one is a very bad bug because it's completely game breaking. With this launcher you can select between three graphics modes:
- High End
- Low End < - disables anti-aliasing and motion blur
- Windows 95 < - disables all screen effects.
If it is a shader problem that's occuring, if you try running with the different graphics APIs, and you try running in Windows 95 mode, it may or may not fix the problem.
This also means that the game will be able to run on lower end systems. Without anti-aliasing and motion blur, on the Low End setting, the game doesn't look that much worse, and you could probably run it off of a UHD 620 integrated chip, giving that I have spent earlier this year optimizing the game.
If you get the white screen of death, the only other thing I can recommend, and I know it sounds dumb, is for now to run it off of another computer. It definitely seems like a graphics card driver problem, but if it isn't I couldn't imagine what could be happening, because for most people the game is working just fine.
I'm now looking at releasing in 3 days time, so I hope as I start this journey into game development you find something to like in the series. I'm really just looking to improve as much as I can, but some bugs are so incredibly bad (like display adapter ones) that it's just impossible to manage as a single person working on all of this...
Thanks for your time!
- Astrah
Critical Pre-Release Bug Fixes!
Please report any graphical issues and other bugs and glitches you're having and I'll get to it asap!
There have been some critical bug fixes including:
- White screen of death should now be fixed for those who couldn't play it before. This was I believe due to DirectX 11 having some problems with newer Nvidia drivers and Unity's screen effects. I switched the game to OpenGL.
- The 'Some Kid' cutscene in the beginning where he jumps out of the bushes was glitched for some players (thanks to the Youtubers/Streamers: The Francom Brothers for the playthrough!). The cutscene should now be fixed.
- The Ice Kid in Raynwood village has now been nerfed. He was at full damage, he was supposed to be at 60%. I accidentally had put the heroes party at 60% so it was making him feel like he was on hard mode.
Thanks for playing and thank you guys SOOOOOO d*mn much for all of the feedback it's been insanely helpeful!!
- Astrah