This week at Lightstep Chronicles - January 16, 2019 [NEW TRAILER]
Hello everyone,
Do we find you delightfully more portly than the last time we spoke? The holidays will make a bon vivant for anyone!
This post will shine a light on four important Lightstep Chronicles updates:
Why we made a new trailer
What we'll work on in the upcoming week
Why we pushed the game from February 15 to Q2
Join us on Discord
Yay, a new trailer!
The old one put too much emphasis on animations and cut-scenes, and didn't show a lot of gameplay. The new trailer keeps it real, with text-based sequences at the forefront. You like?
https://youtu.be/q9oNu7fi4kU
Devlog
As promised, this is what we did in the past two weeks:
added a UI to the galaxy map and ship map
playtested internally to make sure all choices lead where we want them to
edited the text
completed a build with no blockers (bugs that impede with the game's playability)
animated characters in one of the more malevolent simulations
optimized the prison scene
framed and directed the conversation between Cpt. Cain and the Priest
added Blade Ships
We also changed the light schemes in some scenes. The yellow was not bringing us joy.
Next week, we will work on:
the Medic Centre scene
scene lighting and post-processing
programming the Save Game system
implementing a Ship Log
additional dialogue choices
detailing some game endings
adding new planets and their descriptions in the Star Map
Why Q2?
We should be entering our 1 month until the release, but are we though? No, we're not. We really overestimated the amount of work left to be done. Lightstep Chronicles will not be released on February 15, but sometime in Q2.
There are many reasons for this, but the main one is: this game is visual-heavy, but we don't want to make it too graphically demanding, and streamlining the code takes a lot of work. We sincerely apologize for postponing the release, but it'll go a long way in making the game more accessible. We'll make it worthwhile. <3
We're on Discord
Updates are good, but direct communication is better. We created a Discord channel where you can ask away whatever you'd like to know about Lightstep Chronicles. On our end, we'll use it as a moodboard for our major inspirations and to do fun stuff like set up playtests and key giveaways. Click here to enter!
Take care!
This week at Lightstep Chronicles - December 24, 2018
Hello everyone,
We are stoked that, between all the End of the Year newsletters you received this week, you took the time to read ours!
There's a lot to do before the holidays kick in. We like to think that the game is nearing a release candidate, but new bugs pop up every time we let out a sigh of relief.
As always, we'll keep the update brief.
As promised in our last update, this is what we did in the past two weeks:
added all the game locations (complete)
edited the final cut-scenes (in progress)
sent the text to an editor (in progress)
- we still have to complete some Medic Bay dialogue and dialogues for a several end game scenarios
added most of the UI
Next week, we will work on:
adding UI to the galaxy map and ship map
internal playtesting to make sure all choices lead where we want them to
text editing
- English is not our native language, so we need a bit of help with syntactic structures
completing a build with no blockers (bugs that impede with the game's playability)
our goal is to have a clean vertical slice which we can submit to competitions, stores, curators, streamers, and other cool kids
animating characters in one of the more malevolent simulations
optimizing the prison scene
- framing and directing the conversation between Cpt. Cain and the Priest (fun fact/absolute plug: Lightstep Priests are central in Lightstep #3, which is coming out on January 23, 2019 through Dark Horse Comics. We recommend the series if you like space opera)
adding Blade Ships (another fixture from the Lightstep comic book. Issue #2, if I'm not mistaken. Think space melee at cutthroat speeds / That One Scene, You Know Which One from Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
We'll be back with an update in early January, and then you'll be seeing much more of us! The Lightstep Chronicles team wishes you the happiest of holidays!
Take care, guys!
Free Lightstep Chronicles Wallpaper Available
Hello everyone,
We've been thinking 'bout you, so we made you a neat little wallpaper.
You're free to download it and use it as you like.
The wallpaper features Lightstep Chronicles key art - there's ALEPH, the emotionally unstable AI who you'll be chatting up throughout the game, hovering in the Amarok spaceship interior. The game art is futuristic sci-fi art deco, hope it shows here.
Happy to have you on board!
This week at Lightstep Chronicles - November 30, 2018
Hello everyone,
We'd like to thank you all for being here for our first ever Steam release, we're very excited about the whole thing and want to make a good impression.
Since Lightstep Chronicles is still in its pre-release phase and you can't really compare it to anything else that we've done, we'd like to honor your faith in us with regular development updates. Like, short updates, and you can ask us to further elaborate on anything you'd like to know more about. :)
It's good to start with a proper presentation of the game, and we'll let our FIRST TEASER do the talking:
https://youtu.be/q2Edwgs4wIA
Lightstep Chronicles is a text-based adventure set in a very interactive environment (it plays out a bit like a point'n'click because of this). You're Captain Cain, hijacked by an alien spaceship, facing off with its AI host which is apparently going through some emotional baggage. The text that you did see was ALEPH on a bad day.
With a release coming up in less than three months, we have a lot to finishing to do. This week, we have been working on:
-completing in-game dialogue
-replacing the placeholder UI with the final UI
-polish (the first two-thirds of the game are pretty much complete and we're focusing on getting the last few chapters to this point)
Next week, we will work on:
-adding all the game locations
-editing the final cut-scenes
-text editing
We'll be back with an update in two weeks, see you then!
