We hope everyone is enjoying spring! Here’s what we’ve been up to over the past two months.
Ziacia
We finished adding all of the NPCs to Ziacia! Not only does this complete the city itself, but it also wraps up adding NPCs to all of the cities, towns, and other structures around the game! We will likely have more NPCs to add as we add side quests and other fun goodies, but for now it’s done! Here’s a few of them:
Kershuffle
As a quick recap – we made a mini-game for Gataela during Pirate Jam 16 named Kershuffle! In April Gamemaker posted a feature of the games made during Pirate Jam and we were included! We added some words about the development so please check it out!
Other Misc Things
We don’t really have anything visual to show yet but some other work done include:
Began creating and adding SFX for the remaining TTBattle Skills
Finished designing all of the in-game Kickstarter backer custom NPCs
Created some cutscene-specific sprites
Working on creating custom boss sprites
Began working on Kershuffle sprites to port into Gataela
What’s Next?
We’ll be a bit all over the place for the next few months as we try to get a variety of things complete. Roughly speaking we’ll be focusing on:
Finish adding all Kickstarter custom rewards
Continue & hopefully finish SFX for TTBattle Skills
Creating Kershuffle sprites for Gataela
Redoing the water shader and updating all of the maps with water on it
Other general polish & visual improvements
Have a great spring and start to summer! See you in July!
March 2025 Progress Update
Happy March! Before the time turns back let’s go over what we did last month!
Myranova
We wrapped up adding NPCs to Myranova – one of the last huge cities. Here’s a few of the NPCs and areas.
Monthly BiMonthly Updates?
Now if you’ve been reading these for a while you have noticed that updates are getting shorter and shorter- and this is a good thing. Honestly.
We’re reaching the point in development where a lot of stuff is just… gluing everything together. There’s not a whole lot visually going on, and on the other side of the spectrum it’s stuff like “wrote a debate which we cannot share because spoilers”.
So what does that mean for the updates? Well… we’ve decided to have less of them.
These updates are a way for us to communicate the status of development, but we also want them to be meaningful and not just a report of things we’ve done. However at the same time we want to share the things we’re doing and why some decisions are made and also to sort of be like “hey guys yes development is still ongoing”. So for now we think the best thing to do is to move to BiMonthly Updates.
In terms of months and updates this means:
May: Update
July: Update
September: Update
etc.
What’s Next?
March’s main focus will be to finish adding Ziacia’s NPCs. This will be a big task since the city is by far the largest. We’re also going to be starting on additional SFX and VFX work and hopefully working towards wrapping up the turn-based battle upgrades!
As we move into April we hope to wrap up the remaining custom in-game Kickstarter backer rewards, and begin work on updating the water shader to make it look closer to how it was before.
As for other things – we’ll be working on rebalancing in the background. We’ve got a lot of battle, economy and debates to work on.
We hope everyone stays healthy as we move into the final months of winter!
February 2025 Progress Update
Wow January just flew right on by! Let’s go over what we were up to and where we’re going!
Minigame Prototype
This past month we focused on adding NPCs and animals to Myranova, and although we aren’t just ready to show that off just yet – in the process of that work we talked about adding a minigame.
See Myranova is a big tourist area and in big tourist areas there’s always people looking to scam play some games with visitors. One thing we wanted to add was little carnival games you could play to get scammed make some money. Originally we wanted to add a custom minigame, but that requires a lot of work and- oh. It seems a game jam is right around the corner. Well let’s see what the theme is maybe it’ll give us ideas- Oh. Well. We have a minigame now.
Oops.
We’ll be working on polishing up the mechanics for the game over the next year here and there, but we welcome everyone to try it out and provide feedback. We’ve also been asked before what our Game Design Documents for Gataela look like. Great news! This one has one. And for even more bonus behind the scenes – we streamed about half the development! (VODs will be uploaded during this week)
So enjoy playing! We’ll be adding this to the game closer to completion as it’s technically scope creep. At least it’s in the same engine so porting should be straight forward.
Kickstarter Rewards
We’ve been talking about it for a while and it’s finally here – the shop is now live with leftover Kickstarter Rewards! We’ll be keeping the shop up until April or so after which we will temporarily close it until the Fall. We’ll remind you all before the closure but keep the dates in mind in case there’s something you’re interested in!
What’s Next?
Next month is some work, some prep and some upgrades. We’ll be:
Finishing Myranova NPCs
Starting on Ziacia NPCs
Upgrading Gamemaker Version
Preparing for additional SFX and VFX work
Kickstarter Rewards Now Available!
Hello everyone! As we've been mentioning for the past few updates, we've now launched a shop with leftover Kickstarter rewards, and others - including some keychains we only sold at Otakuthon in 2019. If there's anything you're interested in, please note we have a special discount from Jan 18 to 24. Use code LAUNCH at checkout to get 10% off orders $10CAD or more. Thanks for your support! 🙇
January 2025 Progress Update
Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a good holiday season! Let’s talk about what we were up to in December, go over 2024 and talk about our plans for 2025!
December 2024
December was a very busy month! To give a brief idea, we added a good chunk of Kickstarter backer rewards, added a lot of NPCs and passive animals, and fixed a bug here and there. Here’s some of the NPCs we added:
2024 in Review
Well, this year was quite a strange one. If you remember the plan – we were going to focus on adding content and putting everything together and- to some degree- we did succeed! BUT we were heavily impacted by layoffs. Other than just personally being out of a job – we could not pay other members of the team for remaining work – putting a standstill on certain parts of the project (ex. SFX). Another impact was that we could not spend more than a set number of hours per week on the project or we might lose employment insurance. So the project itself was also pretty heavily affected. That being said, we were able to get a few things done so let’s take a quick look!
We finished:
Adding all of the MSQ
Adding all of the city interiors
Adding puzzles & mechanics for a certain dungeon
Creating all of the new TTBattle VFX and then adding them to the game
We also:
Made a number of performance improvements and bug fixes
Released a couple demo updates in February, August and November
Added some SFX for some Battle VFX
Added passive animals & behaviour
Added NPCs and Passive Animals to many of the cities
You can pet the animals
Implemented battle images change depending on what weapon you’re holding
Added most Kickstarter rewards
2025 Plans
2025 is going to be our year! Maybe. Probably. Hopefully. And why? That’s right! We’re employed!
Not to get too much into the details, but the job search this time around was by far the worst experience. To everyone else still busy looking we wish you the best.
As for what this means for the project, to put it broadly, we’ll be unchained from money and time restrictions and be able to get back into it. It should be expected though that this first quarter is going to be very, very rough as we get back into the swing of things. That being said, because of 2024 we want to put a lot of effort into 2025. This means:
Finish adding all the Kickstarter rewards
Finish adding NPCs, animals, treasure, etc. to the maps
Finish the TTBattle SFXs
Rebalancing Debate battles & related facts/evidence/side quests etc.
Add debate battles & side quests
Map visual upgrades (ex. the water shader)
Performance and bug fixes as needed
Demo updates as needed
We will also be launching the shop with the old Kickstarter physical rewards mid-late January (keep an eye out).
Thank you for all the support and we wish you all a great start to the new year!
December 2024 Progress Update
Happy December! The snow is starting and so has the holiday season so let’s go over what we’ve been up to over the past two months!
Demo Update
In case you missed it, we put out a small demo patch last month fixing a crash and providing a small performance update. A number of other non-critical bugs were logged (thank you!) and those have since been fixed on our end.
NPCs & Animals
We’ve been working on adding NPCs and Animals to some of the newer maps. Let’s look at a couple locations!
Storefront Shenanigans
We mentioned before that we were working on setting up a shop for older merch we’ve made… and it’s here! Except… well… have you heard of Canada Post strikes? They started when we were hoping to launch the shop. So the shop is ready but we can’t ship anything yet and we’re certain no one is interested in paying 50CAD for shipping. So instead please take some time to peruse the photos and if there’s anything of interest take note – we’ll be launching officially sometime in the new year once the strike is over.
What’s Next?
As we are entering into the holiday season and things are slowing down, we’ll be trying to get as much as we can get done before the end of the year. It’s been a roller coaster and we’ll be trying to cross off at least a few goals from earlier this year:
Kickstarter Rewards – We’ll be trying to add all of the interiors and NPCs this month
NPCs & Animals – Focusing on the remaining towns and cities before revisiting older maps
Balancing Planning – Now that most of the battle upgrades are in we need to rebalance them. This means research!
We hope everyone has a relaxing holiday season and we’ll see you in the new year!
0.7.3 Demo Update
Summary
This is a small update to fix a crash some users have reported.
Ignore transparent tiles while perform tile-checking for VFX/SFX
Fixed
Fixed a crash during cutscenes when a character moves backwards
October 2024 Progress Update
Hello Chilly October! Here’s what we were up to in the last month!
Making Olvia Come Alive
Our main focus for the month was adding NPCs to the world and we decided to start with Olvia!
Olvia is the first city with the new animals added to them – so there was a little bit of trial and error to get them working for the first time and well integrated – but we think it worked out! Let’s go over some highlights of some of the NPCs you can meet here!
Wow look at all those birds! It sure would be a shame if someone ran through them!
Huh… that’s strange… Oh look! Birds!
Nothing suspicious here at all. Not at all. Huh? Did you hear something?
Yes, You Can Pet Them
A small little feature we added was for- you guessed it- to pet the dog! And the cat. And the horse. And the cow. And the sheep. And the chicken. And the- You get the point. You can show the animals love. Just don’t pet the snake.
Old Merch New Merch
While we were tidying up we stumbled upon a box filled with Gataela merch we made for the Kickstarter. The photo above is from when they were originally produced (we’ll take better ones). There’s some buttons/pins, some art books, and even some wood charms we made for Otakuthon pre-lockdown. If you’re interested we’ll be putting them up for sale sometime within the next month or so.
What’s Next?
Next month we’ll actually be taking a little bit of a break from Gataela. As a reminder, layoffs hit us in May and we haven’t gotten employed yet. It’s quite difficult as you can imagine. On top of that the seasonal sickness has hit (which is why this post was late). All in all – it seems like some rest is in order. So next month’s post will likely either be very short or non-existent. Thank you for your understanding.
September 2024 Progress Update
Happy September! Here’s what we were up to in the last month!
We wrapped up the rest of the VFX work this past month. There might be some adjustments that need to be made, but this means that most of the visual effects for the turn-based battles are complete! The next steps for the turn-based battles will be creating the skills, adding the SFX, hooking things up, and (eventually) balancing! For now, here’s some of the last ones we put in:
Our favourite “absolutely not a Turkey” is showing off their feathers and Fluffing them Up to Raise their Critical charm points.
Our friendly Lynx is just giving you a small Body Slam out of love and affection. Probably.
Did you know Badgers will Stock Up on food? We’ve heard it’s to Raise all variety of things.
Finally we have a pot of gold showing off our Alchemy skills. This little fellow will now appear on Crafting screens and for the future Crafting skill in battles.
Tile Troubles
One of our focuses for the last month was adding a “walking through water” effect to all of the swamp maps. We have a cave map that already has this effect, but it was specific to the map. It was a little bit of work to make it work on all the swamp maps, but not too hard. No. The difficulty came up when dealing with the tile detection system and the cursed transparent tiles.
Now this is a rather common problem when it comes to the tile system for Gamemaker. Tilemaps are formed off of images, and if there are any spots in the image which are transparent they become transparent tiles. However they are not considered “empty” because there’s an associated image section assigned to it.
Now for Gataela we have a large image – particularly for the background tiles – which has empty spaces to fill in over time. We would rather have a single large image with empty spaces to fill in rather than recreating tilesets and redoing maps as development went on, or having a lot of different small tilesets and many tile layers.
Our tile checking – which is used for the water effect, VFX, and SFX – goes from top to bottom through the layers, finds a valid tile (i.e. a tile that is non-empty and has image data) and then determines the type. Although these transparent tiles are considered a valid tile by the engine – they aren’t valid for the tile checking algorithm.
Sometimes what happens while creating maps is that these transparent tiles will be accidentally be added. We could go through every single map and clean up every tile layer so there are no transparent tiles but… there are hundreds of maps. There must be a way to do it without that, right?
Transparent Tiles Not Visible
Transparent Tiles Colored Pink
Most of the advice for this situation revolves around checking every single pixel for the tile. With the size of our image, we would be checking essentially every pixel in the tileset image worst case. That’s 2048×2048 checks. Even if we store the result that’s still a pretty expensive check. BUT! There’s a way to do that easier: using bounding boxes.
Gamemaker allows you to create image assets at run time, and these assets can be created from tiles. When we first run our tile checking algorithm, we will check all the tiles in the Background tileset once by turning them into temporary images and generating an automatic bounding box. If the bounding box’s LS >= RS then this tile is fully transparent so we’ll add it to the list of tiles to ignore. This means that instead of 4,194,304 checks we have 1,024.
What’s Next?
A bit of a switch up for next month – we’ll be working on adding NPCs (including dialogue) to the world over the next little while. If you’re interested in getting in a line or two, we’ll be streaming it every Tuesday & Sunday at 9pm EST.
Have a good start to Fall and a relaxing last bit of Summer!
0.7.2 Demo Update
Summary
This is a small update to fix a couple issues some users have reported. Of particular interest is the new performance toggle for the "Walking through long grass" effect. If you happen to have a laptop with an integrated graphics card we recommend turning the effect off if you are noticing frame rates dropping.
