Hello, dear readers, and welcome to our status update for August.
Once again, the summer turned to not be everlasting, but that’s good, for the end of one thing always signifies the start of another.
In today’s update, we’d like to open the curtains of the development a bit more and give you, our supporters, some more concrete info. For whatever reason, many people thought that the game was getting delayed because we were constantly implementing some new features, wasting time on unclear, vain improvements, porting LMRnR to NES and Game Boy. The truth is much simpler: as we’ve said before, we met several unfortunate hurdles along the way, and, to be honest, our team is rather small. We still refuse to cut anything from the game and strive to make it as good as possible. So we are systematically moving forward, encountering and overcoming difficulties.
So, the progress of various parts of the game right now is as follows:
We would like to stress that these numbers do NOT represent the full picture of the development status and are meant only to give you, our audience, the rough idea of the situation. For example, the last music tracks are being worked on and the sketches for many sprites are already done. As such, we also can’t give a release date (also because we do not want to move it back if something goes wrong again).
In any case, we’re continuing the work, paying attention to details and the bigger picture, aren’t forgetting about the QA, and mostly aim to make the game better over releasing it earlier.
We also have an important announcement: In the near future, we’re going to send our backers (those who supported the Kickstarter or IGG campaigns for $200+) a greatly extended version of the demo to gather more feedback and understand if we’re moving in the right direction while the trajectory can still be corrected.
Do stay in touch and don’t forget us! We certainly won’t forget about our fans — after all, without you, there would be no Soviet Games!
sovietgames(dot)su/en/green-and-orange/
Cold Summer
Hello and welcome to Soviet Games' status update for July!
Mother nature is trying its hardest to undermine the development process by refusing to bring Summer to Moscow and upsetting us with gloom, cold, and rains. But we're having none of it!
Since the last update, we have finished the transition to a new major version of Live2D. It demanded some work but has brought great improvements in terms of the sprite animations' stability and workflow. Even though there were some [unfortunate incidents] https://twitter.com/SovietGamesVNS/status/879728476714131456 along the way, they couldn't hinder our resolve!
Speaking of sprites, did you know that Kagome is only 162 cm tall, while Nikolai is 187? [Puts things into perspective, doesn't it?] https://twitter.com/SovietGamesVNS/status/881889724004257792
Jokes aside, we've also made several improvements to the interface. For example, the current song will now be displayed in the game's pause menu; the much-requested ability to turn off sprite animations has been added; there is now a dedicated ingame screenshot button.
To clarify, these changes are NOT in the demo. They are completed internally and will be released later with a new version (more info on that later).
If you have any more requests for adding ingame functions, or if you would like just propose more changes, please do not hesitate to write them down in the comments! We want to bring you the best experience possible and would really appreciate it!
Additionally, we have started the translation process for the script, and so far it's coming along nicely.
But that is not all! Today we would like to tease you with not just a new track or a background, but both! Please feast your eyes at Himitsu's house and your ears at "I'm So Glad We've Met" by Direct Sunlight!
https://youtu.be/mwZnjQB1X5w
Cheers!
100 Days Of Summer
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our June status update!
We hope the summer’s been gentle with you so far. It certainly fared well for our VK community, as it has recently reached 100 000 subscribers! This is a big and significant milestone, and we’d like to thank everyone who helped us achieve it! In the future, we hope to reach even greater heights together with you!
Meanwhile, the LMRnR development is forging ahead. We have almost finished animating the backgrounds for the game and should complete the last few in the near future. Today we’re happy to give you a glimpse of one of them:
Please welcome the glory that is the Kobayashi Mansion!
https://youtu.be/34y_oMPPRzo
Besides that, all other aspects of development are moving smoothly, albeit not as quickly as we’d like, and we’re getting ready start translating the script into English.
We wish you all a great summer!
Roadmap
Hello, everyone! Today’s the day we give you yet another regular status update, this time for the month of May. Although, judging by the weather here in Moscow, you would think it’s November.
To be blunt, there isn’t a lot of news we can tell you. The project has now entered the phase where the essential features have already been implemented or described in the development plan, all that’s left is to finish all the tasks on the roadmap. And while this phase is absolutely crucial to any project’s development, it’s not particularly exciting to talk about with the fans. We’re testing a new way of task allocation for the artists that should hopefully speed up the CG creation process. Our lead programmer has taken several advanced Unity courses, which should help him greatly with the game’s optimization, performance, and bug evasion first and foremost. Our composers have created several new vocal tracks for the later stages of the game. In short, the artists are drawing, the animators are animating, the programmers are programming, and the composers are composing.
We’re all hard at work on bringing you a genuinely beautiful and exciting game, one that we would have liked to read and play ourselves!
It's alive!
Hello, dear friends and supporters. The time is high for a new post, and today we have some important news to tell and discuss with you.
First and foremost, an announcement.
Love, Money, Rock'n'Roll will not be released this spring. There are several reasons for that, but the two main ones are:
1. Due to legal difficulties and bank account complications, the arrival of Kickstarter funds to us has been greatly delayed. In fact, we were only finally able to receive them in February 2017, and the process itself was quite daunting and more stressful than we ever imagined. This has been a significant setback for the development in more ways than one.
2. The second reason is far simpler and more complicated at the same time — we underestimated the scope and difficulty of the task we took upon ourselves. It is in part due to, frankly, inexperience with commercial projects, and partly due to the many, many bumps on the development's road. To add, the sheer amount of coding and art required to complete the game is nothing to joke about. The addition of background and sprite animations further complicates the issue and requires even more work to be done. In short, at this point, the game is simply not ready and we don't think that releasing it in its current state would be fair to our supporters.
We want to properly finish Love, Money, Rock'n'Roll, polish it, and then show it to you in all of its glory. And that, unfortunately, requires more time than we expected. We believe firmly that this is the best course of action in the situation we found ourselves in. It is best to take time and make a great game than to rush it and throw a half-baked abomination into the world. We apologize deeply to those whom we disappointed or inconvenienced with this decision, especially to everyone who supported us financially, through Kickstarter or otherwise. All we can do is ask for your patience and understanding and hope that when the game does come out, you will truly enjoy it.
We are very wary of naming a new release date, because we don't want to move it back again later. All we can say is that we will try our best to finish the work as soon as possible and that the game will be out in 2017.
Now, that is not to say we haven't been working hard on the game since the end of Kickstarter. We have, and today we're happy to show you some of this work's results. Please welcome the new, updated version of the demo! It should give you a better idea of what the game will look like when we finish it and why it's taking us so long.
You can download the demo right now here!
Some of the changes include:
1. The sprites for Ellie, Himitsu, and Kagome are now fully animated. Animations for background characters and Catherine are to be added;
2. Most backgrounds are now also animated;
3. Improved quality of all backgrounds. The game should generally look even prettier now;
3. Several updated CGs with improved quality;
4. Slightly updated and polished GUI;
5. Added languages: Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese;
6. Adjusted some of the sprite heights;
7. A lot of small bug fixes.
Please do note that the animations, first and foremost, are still WIP and this is our first ever experience with creating them. Any opinions and feedback you can give us about how the game looks and feels now, as well as any new bugs you might find, would be invaluable.
Additionally, the trailer for LMRnR has also been updated to fit with game's new look.
We would like to once again thank you for the continued support and understanding.
