Hey Folks, It’s time for another update. So what’s been going on the last few months?
Well, things have been busy. I’ve been working like crazy (what's new right?), but it's a good kind of crazy. Just working hard to make sure everything is in order. Which makes big updates a bit of a challenge. For those of you who want more frequent updates / and interactions with me and Ira in general please feel free to follow @IraGame on Twitter. I will also be putting a discord together in the near future. So stay tuned for that. If you have any social media requests feel free to let me know in the comment section below, and I will do my best to accommodate your preferred platforms.
In other news the MegaGrant has made a huge difference in Ira’s overall level of quality, and in general the richness of the experience. It’s incredible having the proper resources to define environments now. They feel so much better than they did before. I’ve been updating all the core game play systems to be release ready. They are not quite there yet, but I’m getting close. I’d say they are around 80% complete! There is a lot of detail work that goes into that last 20% to make everything feels just right.
Storytelling and game play are other big areas of progress. Currently I’m working on finding the right balance between various storytelling elements, and mechanics. It’s rewarding, but also a challenging endeavor that I’m continuing to finesse.
Lastly I have some new teasers planned which will be part of the main trailer for Ira! We have not had a real trailer as of yet so it's something that is really exciting to start putting together.
That's it for now but I look forward to sharing more with your folks soon, and don't forget to join us on Twitter!
Ira has been awarded a MegaGrant! (No exclusivity)
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Ira has been awarded a MegaGrant!
My apologies for the lack of updates over the last few months. We’ve been waiting on some big news and it’s finally here! I’m happy to announce that after a long time and a lot of hard work, Ira Act 1: Pilgrimage is now the recipient of an Epic Games MegaGrant.
What is the MegaGrant?
The MegaGrant is a grant awarded by Epic games to UE4 game developers of all sizes with funds to make their projects a success.
What the MegaGrant is not.
The MegaGrant is not an exclusivity deal with Epic Games and comes with no strings attached. That means as of this moment, we will be releasing on the same platforms as before. Steam is still our first release platform. Nothing has changed in that department.
What are we using the MegaGrant for?
This grant covers the remainder of Ira’s development costs. That means we have funding for better assets, more help, and our most important resource - time. Time to increase the overall quality of the story, game play, and in-game assets.
As most of you know, our goal was to wrap Ira up by the end of the year and then release. In order to make that deadline we had to cut content that would have really added to the overall experience. Basically we had the best parts version of Ira we were looking to release. Would it have been the best Ira possible? It would not, but it still would have been enjoyable.
Now that we have the MegaGrant, we will be able to release the version of Ira that is the best that we can possibly make it. One with all the intended scenes, story elements, quality, and nuance it deserves. This is really a dream come and could not have come at a better time.
Ira’s Release date?
Instead of releasing January of 2020 we will be looking to finish Ira up sometime in mid 2020. We are sorry about the delay but at this point we can’t pass up the opportunity to make Ira the game it was always meant to be.
Where to now?
Looking forward to 2020, we will be sharing a lot more content and our team will be hard at work making Ira the best it can possibly be!
I look forward to sharing more with you folks soon. - Zachary
Falling Into Place
Falling into place
It's been a couple months and things have been very busy on our end. The biggest thing to highlight since our last update is how everything is falling into place. The closer we get to finishing the faster things are moving. It’s great to see all of our work taking shape and we thank you for your continued patience.
Our future plans
We are on track to finish by the end of the year and we will also be reaching out to 3rd party publishers within the next 2 months. Ideally we want to partner with someone who can help us with advertising so we don’t disappear into the background noise of the gaming scene upon launch. We have a few leads to go on and will keep everyone in the loop with whats planned.
Backers in game
I’ve been working hard to translate kickstarter backers into characters and it’s not always easy. That being said I’ve gotten the time down to a handful of days per character which isn't bad. We made a promise to our backers and I’m going to keep it! It’s exciting to see our backers take shape in the world of Ira, and be part of the story. I'm not sure any other game has taken this concept as fare as we have.
Refinements
We’ve finished the core scenes and we are tightening everything up. In the past we’ve had to rework many scenes due to our team learning and then realizing that things are just not up to snuff or from converting scenes over to our new lighting system. At this point we’ve reached a plateau we are happy with. No more reworks. No more rebuilds. Our scenes, visual stylings, mechanics, storytelling, and game play are locked into place.
Here's something to tease. Remember the train in scene from our original demo. Well lets just say its going to be making a return in the final game. We are looking forward to sharing more with you in the next update.
Characters based on Kickstarter backers
It’s about time we started sharing some of our backer based characters! It’s been a really fun and challenging experience writing different people into the story of Ira while staying as true to the Kickstarter as possible. Some of you sent us some detailed descriptions of your life and we found them to be inspiring in or work. Ira's story and characters are literally defined by the people who helped make it a reality. We might be the first Kickstarter to do such a thing in such an in depth way! So thank you all.
Anyway, without further ado we want to introduce you to Johannes West. One of the original scientists, idealists, and founders of the Azimuth trading company. Before his mysterious disappearance he was working on a classified project named, The Black Iris. What happened to Johannes, and where did he go? Well, you’ll have to play to find out.
Some of the characters have minor changes to fit the story or aesthetic of the game. That being said your likeness are definitely there, but stylized in the Ira universe as expected. In this case Johannes will have round glasses, and a slightly different position in the Ira-verse.
So how did we do this? Well, we used a machine learning algorithm that extracts peoples faces from photos and generates a 3D mesh that’s then used to model the rest of your head. It’s wild. What this means is that the underlying structure of every character is using your actual face...Kind of cool right?
Alright, that's it for this update! We are trucking along doing our best to get things wrapped up, and we look forward to sharing more of the game really soon.
Until next time folks!
Look at these beautiful scenes!
Here are some updated scenes.
Our updated lighting system is working great. I had to convert a lot of scenes over but it wasn't too bad and they look way better than they did before. To top it off they run great on the Nintendo Switch too! I wasn't sure how the new system would ultimately preform, but, its doing exactly what its supposed to.
Our locomotion system has been updated. The charters look more natural when navigating environments.
Overall we are doing great and continuing to finalize various scenes.
Let us know what you think in the comments!
A New Year
We can’t believe It’s 2019 and at this point our project launched on Kickstarter about 3 years ago. That time frame doesn't even include our initial Kickstarter. It’s more like 4 years all together (for us). At this point we are way over on time, but, you already know that. Regardless of that fact everyone has been really supportive and understanding. Seriously, not a single bad thing has been sent our way. We know we've been fortunate in regards to that. Where are the torches and pitchforks? Anyway, labors of love can take a lot of time and energy to bring into existence, and we appreciate your continued support and understanding.
In full candor we had taken a mental health break around the holidays. Between all the bug issues at the end of last year and burning the candle at both ends our little team was wearing out. We needed a little down time and now that we've had it we are feeling good, and excited to get back to Ira. We don’t have an exact release date but we are doing our best to get things wrapped up in a timely manner. When everything is working and feeling right we will lay down an official release timeline.
With all that being said we are looking forward to a strong finish this year, and more frequent updates every month! We can't wait to share the adventure with you.
Until next time folks!
Update: Black Iris, Bugs, and Post Process
It’s been a minute since our last update, and a lot has happened.
Time has gone by exceedingly fast as well. By the time we finish Ira you’ll be able to play Ira on the new Nintendo Neural link by Elon Musk while flying around with your jet pack… Moving on. As always I’m going to give it to you straight. We’ve gained an incredible amount of ground in a lot of fronts, and got tripped up in a few others. Thus is the life of a game developer!
First off, Here's an image from a long abandoned project of Intel Co’s dubbed "The Black Iris". What's its purpose? How does this tie into our haunting retro future narrative of Ira? Well, you'll have to play game to find out.
Where did we get tripped up?
BUGS, BUGS, and more BUGS. We ended up updating to a (supposedly) commercially viable/stable version of Unreal and you guessed it. It wasn't quite as advertised. We spent 2 weeks logging and submitting bugs for features that Ira requires. Specifically in the Sequencer department (sequencer is the tool we use to create interactive cutscenes and animations).
One of the many bugs we ran into lead to entire sequences being destroyed. Literally hours, days, weeks worth of work rendered useless. Nick and I were a little bit upset to say the least, but, Epic games has accepted our bug reports and will be fixing most of our issues by the next hotfix.
I got rid of our custom toon build of Unreal 4 that allowed for our unique style of toon shading to exist. Why? Because It was losing support, and I had no way to guarantee future supported versions.
That left me with the daunting task of taking the art style I’ve created, and recreating it in an unmodified version Unreal 4 (which was no easy task). I’m not going to sugarcoat it...Things could have gone very badly. However they didn't. After countless hours of research, experimentation, crying in the fetal position, and some helpful insight from others I ended up creating a specialized post process system the likes of which have yet to be equaled in Unreal 4. To top it all off Ira looks even better than before because I built exactly what we needed!
Overall we are pushing forward
feeling good, and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel! After all this time there have been so many hurdles that could have taken us down (knock on wood) but we keep persevering. If you’re still reading this then thank you for sticking with us thus far. Stay tuned as there is more to come.
Until next time folks - The Ira Team
Big update: New characters, new improvements, and lot of progress!
Hey folks,
It’s been a minute since our last update, and it’s time to share some of things we’ve been working on. Before we get into that I’d like to apologize for the extended silence, and fill you in on what’s been going on. I had someone who was very close to me pass away recently, and I left the good old state of Illinois to spend time with them, and take care of things before and after their passing. This person was my grandfather, and he lived to the ripe old age of 93. He’s actually the inspiration for Ira’s family, and some of the locations in game (the Homestead, Pilgrimage). So, In honor of him we are making Ira’s family's last name Morningstar after his. It seems only too fitting. All that being said I’m back at it, and our team appreciates everyone sticking with us. So, without further ado we have some wonderful things to share.
Character updates
So I’ve spent a serious amount of time updating characters, and making them more polished for the final game. On the right we have old Ira which was created a long time ago when my sensitivity for charter design was not as good as it is today. Ira looks a lot more like, well, a human now. When you tubers originally played our demo they would literally pause the game, zoom in on his abnormally long face, and comment on how creepy he looked. I think we are passed that point now.
Expressions
I created a material based system that makes character expressions and eye movement a breeze. Characters can even track objects around them and have a new level of awareness! No more dead eye stares and slack faces! Check out the clip of Ira acting slightly surprised but mostly disinterested in your existence.
A lot of characters had place holder bodies for awhile, but, now we have a lot more of them fully modeled textured and ready to go.
Meet Old Lue. He owns the public works building that used to provide all sorts of services for the town of Pilgrimage, but, the future is unknown as Intele Co owns most the town, and most of his business. What will happen to the Pilgrimage Public Works? Only time will tell.
Meet Jo. She's a scrappy young jack of all trades that works with Lue down at the public works. You need something taken care of then Jo's your person. She's also a certified Intele Co paper clerk, repair specialist, and a friend to the Morningstar family.
Meet the new Ira. Of course you all know Ira but here he is up to date. Whats that strange device on his desk? Whats strapped to the telescope? Well, you'll find out soon enough. Moving on!
IK systems for dynamic interactions
One area that needed some serious improvement was how a character interacts with the environment. Our goal was to make it so characters don't interact in a way that breaks immersion. When a character tries to push through a door, and their capsule just shoves it open. That makes it so the character has no physical connection grounding them to the action at hand. It always made things feel very strange, and unnatural. So, Nick has developed an Ik system that allows characters to interact with their environment naturally, and in real time without direct prompting from the player. No more ghost doors, and item pickups. Every character is now hands on with the environment.
Overall things are going well, and falling into place. Mostly just polishing everything to be game ready, starting to play test scenes with more people in order to get more feedback. There are always unforeseen bumps along the way, but, everyday we are a little closer to completion.
Anyway, hope everyone enjoyed the update. Until next time folks
- The Ira Team
Tiny Update
Hello from 2018!
Where have we been? Well, we’ve been holding off on any major updates until we get our marketing campaign completed.
Basically we are going to overhaul our web page, social media accounts, cut a full trailer (general things of that nature). It’s going to be the biggest single update that Ira has ever had! It just takes a lot of hard work, and finesse to get everything where it needs to be. So, once our updated setup is in place It won’t be too long until you can actually sit down, and play Act 1!
Anyway, that's all for now! We’ll leave you with a sneak peak of the Intele Co public works building.
Turkey Time Update
[H1] Hey, it’s that time again. What have we been up to? Well, here’s a brief run-down.[/H1]
Working on the core game. At this point we’re still on track to have the base done and ready for initial testing by the year’s end, and we’re pretty excited about that. That is of course excluding final polish, but our target for final release is still falling in the Q1-Q2 of 2018 range.
We’ve made some major upgrades to our post process effects, lighting setups, and dialogue systems. Not only are we getting better results with these, but the new systems lend themselves better to faster development. Sometimes it’s a better idea to invest some time into building automated or more dynamic systems that make content creation easier down the road, and that’s definitely been that case here.
We’ve recently changed the way Ira loads levels so now Ira runs through one continuous level, preloading the levels as needed through streams. What does this mean? No more loading screens! We’ve had this in our minds for awhile, but with Nintendo Switch testing we determined that seamless loading stopped immersion breaking (transitional) moments. It was finally time to implement that kind of system, and we’ve wrapped that up successfully. Goodbye, waiting around for levels to load!
Speaking of the Nintendo Switch, our testing with our dev kit has given us some excellent results. Even without final optimization and refinement we’ve still been getting some solid frame rates. Getting good performance without even fully optimizing is great news, and gives us confidence that performance won't be an issue in the future console releases.
Music development has been coming along wonderfully, thanks to the latest addition to our team, Davide Chiarella. He’s been doing some great work and really nailing down and defining the music within the world of Ira.
[H1] Some miscellaneous questions that were asked: [/H1]
What's the status of a possible GOG release?
We have talked with them and they have requested a test build which we will provide in the next few months.
Any idea, how long Act I will end up being?
Good question but we don't have a solid answer just yet.
Any chance that we might get another glimpse at the lore? When we finish the core game play we plan on revamping our website and social media in general to reflect the current game state. At that point a lot of new lore will be released. At this point a lot more will be clear.
Have you looked into advertising the game through foreign YouTubers as well? Anyone you can confirm already?
We have aLexBY11 with 7 million + subscribers. That's our largest (non American) YouTuber.
For those of you celebrating, have a very happy Thanksgiving, and as always, stay tuned for more updates!
We can’t believe It’s 2019 and at this point our project launched on Kickstarter about 3 years ago. That time frame doesn't even include our initial Kickstarter. It’s more like 4 years all together (for us). At this point we are way over on time, but, you already know that. Regardless of that fact everyone has been really supportive and understanding. Seriously, not a single bad thing has been sent our way. We know we've been fortunate in regards to that. Where are the torches and pitchforks? Anyway, labors of love can take a lot of time and energy to bring into existence, and we appreciate your continued support and understanding.
[H1] Hey, it’s that time again. What have we been up to? Well, here’s a brief run-down.[/H1]