For December I had two full weeks of vacation from my work and was able to reach the goal of completing the smaller side-side project as well as start working on a newer smaller scale Steam game. With the mobile game project completed, as I mentioned in the previous posts, I'm going to spend my free time working on a new Steam game and get back to working on Bright Red Skies!
So with the mobile game, I can finally put it on my portfolio as a project that I started and actually saw to completion. In the gamedev community, there's a common trend where developers will start projects, get bored when the going gets tough, and will eventually abandon the project. To be honest, after working on Bright Red Skies for so long, I was starting to feel like I would just end up being like one of these gamedevs that would eventually abandon their projects. No matter how small the game, knowing that I can see a game to completion and release it, is really reassuring. Bright Red Skies is definitely a much larger scoped game, but I'll take all the small wins I can haha.
I've mentioned a couple of times about starting a smaller-scoped Steam game and I've taken some of my vacation time to begin doing research and prototyping. What I've decided to make is a first-person shooter RPG with anime aesthetics. FPS RPGs already exist and there are some pretty popular ones out there, but there is only a handful that have an anime-inspired look. Also thinking about making this new game a prequel to BRS that happens before the Bright Red Skies, so I can explain some parts of the lore like the technology and power system. But still debating on whether or not to just make it a standalone game without any relation to BRS. It's still in a prototype stage right now, but here's a look at an early concept of it.
Going to be trying to divide my spare development time between this new FPS game and Bright Red Skies. Since I want to try and release the new project within 12-18 months I'm going to go with a 70/30 time split (70% on the new project). The time that I do spend on Bright Red Skies will first be in setting the layout and framework of the start of the story and fleshing out some characters so that it'll be a lot smoother when I implement it and it'll prevent having to redo sections of the game. In terms of the gameplay, a lot of the systems have already been implemented, so a lot of the work is in the content (story & game balancing).
As a final note, if any of you are following me on social media, I pretty much fell off the face of the planet. I really wanted to finish making the mobile game before the end of the year, so focused a lot of time to make it actually happen. I'm going to try and start posting progress updates regularly on Twitter again so be on the lookout for those!
I'm really excited to see where Bright Red Skies and this new FPS project will go in 2021! After spending my childhood playing FPS games like Call of Duty/Halo, and JRPGs like Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy, I believe creating a merge of the two genres will make for a really interesting game. But anyway, for anyone reading this, thanks a lot for following this gamedev journey, I really do appreciate it! :D
On Break (November 2020 Update)
Hey there!
Back to give some more updates on what I've been up to. So if you haven't read any of the recent devlogs, I've put the development of Bright Red Skies on hold as I develop better skills so I can make sure BRS is the best quality game I can possibly make. It's my dream game and I'd love to be able to see my vision come to life instead of creating a mediocre game.
To actually develop these skills I've been creating a new side project which is a bullet hell. The game isn't supposed to be a masterpiece, but it serves as a way that I can learn more features in Unity and learn some communications with backend services. So for November, I was able to do a lot near the beginning of the month but in the second half of this month, I had some crunch at work. But the combat system and the levels are mostly complete. There's also the ability to login and have your data saved in the backend, using PlayFab. I want to try and finish and release this game before the end of this year to add to my portfolio, so it means that for December I'm going to need to implement a weapon shop, Unity ECS, and implement some special flags that trigger dialogue events. It's definitely doable and my work is giving us all 2 weeks of vacation for Christmas and the New Year so there should be plenty of free time!
In the previous devlog I mentioned that after this bullet hell game is complete, I'll work on another smaller project with a 1-year completion cycle. I'll start working on Bright Red Skies again too, but it'll be more of a 30/70 split where only 30% of my free time will be spent on Bright Red Skies. That's still a good amount of time, and honestly, I really miss working on it. With this new 1-year project, the purpose of it is to be profitable. I've been developing BRS because it's the game I always wish existed, but I want to know if it's possible for me to actually create games and have people actually buy it. I'll be trying my best to track my time and I'll consider it a huge success if it's able to make enough profit to cover an hourly rate of the minimum wage (so my hours work * minimum wage).
I want to say thanks for taking the time to read through this update devlog! I'm just some random guy on the internet so it's amazing to think that anyone out there is reading this. But anyways, I'll be back next month with some more updates and hopefully a completed project. Cya next time :)
On Break (October 2020 Update)
Hey there!
So just to reiterate what I've been saying for a couple of devlogs, the development of Bright Red Skies is going to be halted for a while so that I can improve on other game development skills I feel are lacking. I like to just keep you guys updated since Bright Red Skies is my dream game, and I just want you to know that at some point it'll get completed, but it's probably going to be a long while from now.
I've been trying to plan out how I want to approach my personal growth as a game developer and the development of my side projects (including BRS). So currently, my goal is to release my mobile game project sometime before the end of this year and begin working on a new project that I plan on being more of a commercial game that I would play.
The main objective of this new mobile game, was mainly to bolster my game portfolio, learn a bit of backend, and learn better optimization techniques in Unity (such as DOTS) so that I can make better-performing games going forward in my career. For October, I managed to get player login to work using a guest account or Google Play account, built the title screen with a hub world, and created the main loop where you go into gameplay combat and gain rewards. It may not look pretty but I'm more focused on function for this game.
After this mobile game gets completed, I'm currently planning on making a new commercial game to be released on Steam. In general, I'd say making PC and console games is what I want to do most, so creating and releasing a game on Steam would be a huge step! Because of the scope of Bright Red Skies, it's clear that its release will be years away since I can only work on my side projects part-time. So the best solution I see is to create a much smaller scope game and spend 70% of my free time on this new game and 30% of BRS. There's still a lot in terms of story structure and characters that need to be fleshed out in BRS and spending 30% of my time on that should be plenty. I still need to think about what new game I'd like to make but I'm targetting a 1-year start-to-end completion cycle.
Thanks for taking the time to read this devlog about all that's going on! There's a long road ahead until Bright Red Skies gets released, but I'm optimistic that it will have its time where it can be playable! I'll be back with some more updates next month, appreciate you guys :)
On Break (September 2020 Update)
Hey there!
Here for another update of stuff I've been up to. Since work on Bright Red Skies is going to be halted for a while, I feel like this is going to delve into more of a diary situation. There most likely won't be much news about BRS but if anyone has been reading these devlogs for a long while, I feel like I should just keep it up so that they know what's going on and that I'm still alive. ;)
So I ended up reading another book to help me with my knowledge of writing interesting characters. The book I read is called "Characters & Viewpoints" by Orson Scott Card which was a pretty interesting read. It's making me think about not taking the most obvious route when trying to make a character. Like the examples given when trying to craft a story or character are so much more exciting when thinking unconventionally. It should be helpful when I create some new characters or try to make some cool NPCs.
In terms of general gamedeving on my smaller project, I want to be honest and say progress has been slow. It's a lot different than working on Bright Red Skies since I get so exciting working on my dream game, versus working on a game to get more technical experience. September was by far my greatest side project slump, since the beginning, when I started learning game development. But I'm going to try my best to get back on track!
I feel like people reading this might not care, but as a side note, I've kind of been taking my fitness more seriously and have bolstered the gym-related equipment in my home. I've been working out regularly for a while but haven't really done anything structured, so now I'm trying to actually have a routine. I also just recently discovered creatine, for any of the gym rats out there haha.
Anyways, thanks again for everyone that's been following along for such a long time! See you guys next month with some more updates! :)
On Break (August 2020 Update)
Hey there!
Just going to give a quick update on the stuff I've been up to this past month. So, I think this break from working on Bright Red Skies is going to be fairly long. There are just a bunch of gamedev related things I personally want to improve on, and really just want to take time to build a stronger base so building games will be easier. Like I said in the previous devlog, I wanted to improve on my knowledge of story-telling and build a good narrative, so I added two more books to the list of books read:
Creating Character Arcs - K.M Weiland
The Last Fifty Pages - James Scott Bell
As someone with mostly a technical background, I really feel like, "Creating Character Arcs", opened my mind on structuring character arcs. "The Last Fifty Pages" introduced me to some good concepts on creating compelling endings, which is important for a game with multiple endings.
Other than that I did venture off onto Youtube where I started to create video devlogs where I'm creating a much smaller game so that I can release my first solo project. So the project is a bullet hell game to be released on mobile. The game itself isn't necessarily my main goal, but instead learning different aspects of Unity that I can learn or improve on such as ECS, performance optimization, and communicating with the backend that contains user data.
Over the month, I decided to give it a bit of a facelift and change the theme of the game from police officer cleaning up the streets, into something much weirder. So now the premise is that you're a redneck that gets transported into a video game world, so an isekai for the anime watchers out there. Using it to try and stand out more and allows it to make more sense when using a brighter color palette.
The last thing I did was to start learning how to implement multiplayer. I feel like this is a good general skill to learn, so tried my hand at it and made a prototype of a multiplayer game. You're separated into two teams, with the goal of getting to the other side. You can fire a bullet once every second and getting hit will respawn you back to your side of the screen. It's a simple game, where I'm just trying to test client to server communication.
Anyways, as I said before, this break from Bright Red Skies is most likely going to be a lengthy one. I feel like I really need to take this time to level up my game development skills. Hope you guys can understand. :)
I'll catch up with you next month with some more updates. Thanks to everyone joining in on this journey, I really appreciate it!
Taking a Vacation
Hey everyone,
I'm going to be taking a bit of time off from developing Bright Red Skies. In case you don't know, Bright Red Skies is a personal project I work on in my spare time since I have a full-time job as a developer. This game is my dream project and I can't see a scenario where I completely stop working on it, so rest assured that at some point in my life this game will be released.
To be completely transparent, I see that there are gaps in my ability to create this game and I'm looking to improve on these skills such as:
Writing (character development, story structure, dialogue)
Cinematography (cutscenes and general camera positioning in scenes)
Video Editing (trailer, promotional material)
The first two points I feel are going to make or break how good the game is going to be, so for the past couple of months, I've been reading books and watching videos on these topics. I still don't think my abilities are at a point that I'm happy with, so my goal is to take a step back from development and try to improve on writing and cinematography.
With video editing, this is something I previously had no experience with but something I need to learn at some point. I'm not developing this game with the intention of making tons of money, this is a passion project after all. But I do want people to know that this game exists and for them to play it, so I feel that being able to properly showcase Bright Red Skies is another necessary task.
And just in general, working 40hrs a week developing at my day job, and then spending some more time outside of work developing Bright Red Skies can be exhausting sometimes and there are other things I want to try. Even last December when I said I would take a break, I still ended up doing some work on the game haha. I'd say a majority of the time I spent making this game has been really enjoyable and it's amazing to me when I see how far the game has come since its inception. But I think having some breathing room to explore other ventures and improve on my skills would be good for my self-development and the quality of Bright Red Skies.
To anyone reading, I hope you can understand. :)
I'm not sure exactly when I'll start getting back to work on Bright Red Skies, but I'll try to keep you guys updated every month about what I've been up to and my current state of mind regarding this game. I really appreciate everyone who has been keeping up with the progress, thanks for coming along the ride!
Monthly Devlog (June 2020)
For June, work was done on getting game data loading to work correctly (as well as the associated UI), creating a combat defeat screen where you can make party updates/retry, and updating the dialogue tool to work with the new dialogue system.
Loading Game Data
As mentioned, there's now functionality in order to save & load a game file. When you save the game, it will take a screenshot of your current screen so that it's a little easier to remember which save file is which. When the data is loaded it takes you back to the exact position where you saved, along with your party data/inventory.
Let's Go Again
Now there's a proper end screen if you end up losing a fight that lets you either retry straight away, update your party equipment and formation, then retry, or load up a save file. The reason for allowing you retry, as opposed to only being allowed to load a save file that some games do, is to try and reduce the number of frustrating parts of the game. Many games allow you to do this, so it's not something revolutionary, but I think it's something to be noted since Bright Red Skies isn't supposed to be a hardcore game, so it should be OK to make mistakes.
To reduce frustrations, even more, you're now allowed to update your party's equipment and formation. I don't want every combat to be a for sure win, so I don't want to include being able to use healing items. But, something I feel can be frustrating in JRPGs is meeting a new enemy and getting absolutely destroyed since they have a hidden mechanic like exploding on defeat or an instakill move. Being forced to load a save file after a defeat like that can be a feels-bad moment. But now since you can change your equipment/formation and retry, you can gear yourself better after understanding what the enemy can do.
Tool to Tell a Tale
In the previous devlog I spoke about how the dialogue system was changed so that it uses the bubbles dialogue boxes instead of having multiple large character portraits cover the entire screen. Because the dialogue system was changed, that means the dialogue tool needed to be updated in order to handle the new data structures. It just so happen that I realized this month, that Unity has GraphView API which makes creating node-based tools easier and more visually appealing. So, I figured why not give the entire dialogue tool a facelift and create it using the GraphView API.
Behind the Scenes
This is a section of the devlog where I like to talk about the parts of the game that were improved but aren't necessarily big enough to have their own section. For June some of the extra things completed were:
Created a generic vertical scroll view with control support that allows movement passed the window bounds.
Fixed issue with the world map to combat scene transition.
Fixed issue with bullets not shooting straight.
Fixed issue with combat UI notifiers not updating correctly.
Fixed issue with detecting full hex cover when the enemy is in front of cover.
Updated generic confirmation popup to use proper controller supported classes.
Going Forward
For June, a bunch was done in terms of implementing primary RPG functionality and a good amount of the bugs related to combat were resolved. For July, I want to focus a lot more on the narrative, so the stuff I want to be done includes:
Continuation of the intro cutscene.
Layout story structure for demo.
Learn some more about video editing.
If you have any suggestions or want to give your opinion on the game, follow me on social media, I listen and respond to all comments :D
For May, work was done in improving the way that characters talk and express themselves, as well as optimizing game loading. Specifically, the dialogue box style was updated so that they cover less of the screen, easier to understand character expressions were added, and some tricks were used in order to better hide the transitioning between scenes.
New Dialogue Boxes
So I've recently played through the first Trails in the Sky arc and something I noticed, was that it was able to create a lot of dynamic cutscenes despite not having current-generation graphics. This made me think more about all of the JRPGs I've played when I was a kid and how they were able to tell stories using small dialogue boxes, so I started to convert my previous dialogue box style to the dialogue bubble style.
The major benefits you get with using the smaller dialogue boxes is that more of the screen is visible to you so you can easily see how characters react to what others are saying, movement can occur while people are talking, and as many people can talk at the same time as you want. The previous dialogue box would use big character portraits on either side of the screen, but this felt clunky since the entire scene would essentially be paused because you wouldn't be able to see anything other than the dialogue interaction.
Improved Loading
I wanted to do some optimization with the loading between scenes since it affects the game as a whole to make the experience feel much smoother. Previously it would load the next scene asynchronously up to 90%, then when the scene was ready to load the next scene, it would finish the next 10% and show a loading screen to transition. The issue with this is that there is a noticeable amount of time that comes from loading that last 10%.
To try and make the loading experience smoother, I've converted scenes to have all game objects inside of one container and initially set to inactive. So now instead of only loading 90% of the scene, it will load 100% of the scene so there's essentially two entire scenes active at the same time, except all of the components of the next scene are inactive (I tested it out and I don't see any performance issues, no matter how many inactive objects I have in the next scene). When the next scene is ready to be loaded, it will show some selected transition animation, where it will make the previous scene objects set to inactive, and the next scene objects to active. It unloads the previous scene asynchronously, then waits for the scene manager to give its completion callback where it will then show the visual transition into the next scene.
Here's a comparison of the performance of loading from the main menu to a cutscene, to a town scene where you can move around. (going at 2x speed and gif size too big so couldn't show the beginning).
Character Expressions
So a limitation of using low poly 3D assets is having expressive characters. So again, taking tips from old school RPGs, it becomes clear that there need to be emotion icons above the character's head when they feel certain emotions. Right now, the expressions that can be shown are: confused, excited, annoyed, angry, love, anxious. These can also be triggered in the middle of dialogue interactions and cutscene.
Behind the Scenes
This is a section of the devlog where I like to talk about the parts of the game that were improved but aren't necessarily big enough to have their own section. For May some of the extra things completed were:
Cleaned up a lot of unused code from systems that have been improved at some point.
Removed related Unity prefabs that used the removed code.
Going Forward
For May, there was a strong focus on improving gameplay elements that allow for a better environment to tell the story. For June, I want to do some more work on combat, improve my development QoL, and solidify the outline of the demo, so the stuff I want to be done include:
Combat defeat screen.
Use Unity graph node API to update the dialogue tool.
Complete layout of scenes and sequence of the demo.
If you have any suggestions or want to give your opinion on the game, follow me on social media, I listen and respond to all comments :D
Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/vD8XYkn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mark_viola
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/brightredskies
Monthly Devlog (April 2020)
For April, work was done to improve the combat in terms of gameplay and workflow. Specifically, a new combat map was created, the map size was increased, and two new workflow tools were created to increase the efficiency of map creation.
Simulation Map
I wanted to create another combat map for the game, so now there's a simulation map. This was created because this allows people to duel one another in a controlled environment that makes some sense in a semi-futuristic apocalyptic world. There are plans to include a tournament arch in the story so something like this needs to be introduced.
The Bigger The Better
Over the course of Bright Red Skies' development, the map size was something that has been changed multiple times. It's a tactical RPG so positioning needs to be something that's important, but with a smaller map, the amount of opportunities you can give yourself isn't very high. Since flanking is a mechanic that gives you an actual stats boost, by having a bigger map, flanking and positioning becomes a more strategic action to consider. With this said, the map has now been doubled from 10x10 to 20x10!
The Mapmaker
With a bigger map comes the tedium of custom map creation, for specific event encounters and bosses. The previous workflow was for me to take a piece of paper with the map printed on, and draw out where I wanted each piece of cover to be placed. Then I would need to convert that drawing to a string representation of where each piece of cover should appear on the map. After doing it for one 20x10 map, it became clear that this wasn't scalable, so I created a Unity tool that is making life a lot easier.
This map tool makes prototyping map layouts significantly easier and faster. I can now make changes using the tool and have it automatically apply changes into the scene so I visually see how it looks like and figure out if it's something I want or not. It scales with however many cover objects the game will have, so I see this paying dividends in the future.
Combat Visuals Tool
After making the map editor tool, I started to think about what other things I could do to increase my workflow. Then I thought about my process in creating and editing how a map visually looks. Previously, I would create the base map scene and look at how it looks like in the inspector window, hit play, and then play through the turns to see how it looks like at different angles. The problem here is that it takes 3-5 mins to check how all of the angles look like, I'd also need to keep track of any changes to the props or lighting I made since Unity doesn't save changes made during runtime.
To improve this workflow of checking the angles and editing how the scene looks like, I created functionality in the inspector where it allows me to toggle between different angle presets and the different map layouts. Now I can easily toggle through every combination of angle and map layout to see if the lighting is off or if there's a bunch of dead space that needs to be filled. Also, since this is all done without running the game, all of the changes actually stick.
Behind the Scenes
This is a section of the devlog where I like to talk about the parts of the game that were improved but aren't necessarily big enough to have their own section. For April some of the extra things completed were:
Improved performance in the combat scene.
Refactored code related to scene data loading.
Going Forward
For April, I didn't expect to be creating tools for combat map creation and helping the visuals but I can see it paying off a lot in the future, so no regrets there. But for May, there are a bunch of things related to transitions and cutscenes that I want to get done:
Refactor scene transitions.
Improve how the small-scale cutscenes are handled.
Transition from intro cutscene, to small-scale town cutscene, to controlling character.
If you have any suggestions or want to give your opinion on the game, follow me on social media, I listen and respond to all comments :D
For March work was done on the intro cutscene. For most of the game, the cutscenes will be like the old-school Final Fantasy games where characters move statically and dialogue text appears. But I want the important stuff like the intro cutscene to be more cinematic.
The Intro Cutscene
What's happening in the intro cutscene, is it's a retelling of the story of what lead to the post-apocalyptic world of Claraeth. No one really knows exactly what happens on that day, except that a large group of people rebelled against a powerful ruler.
They come storming closer:
Sending in the big guns:
Trying to fight off the rebellion:
The last resort:
Behind the Scenes
This is a section of the devlog where I like to talk about the parts of the game that were improved but aren't necessarily big enough to have their own section. For March some of the extra things completed were:
Created a cutscene script used for replaying, to test things out that can only be seen at runtime (like particles).
Compressed images to reduce build size considerably.
Going Forward
With the intro cinematic completed, I'll begin working on getting the transition from cutscene to in-game movement in the starter town. I was also thinking that increasing the combat map size might be a good idea so that flanking has more of an effect, so I want to try playing around with that. So, for April, the list of things I want to get done are:
Better regular cutscene to gameplay transitions.
Experiment with a larger combat map size.
Add training/simulation combat map.
If you have any suggestions or want to give your opinion on the game, follow me on social media, I listen and respond to all comments :D
