Hey there, friend! It's been a while. How have you been? I hope 2018 has started off well for you. It's certainly been much better than 2017 for me. Speaking of which...
Goodbye, 2017!
Oh 2017, how I loved you so. Let us count the ways...
Moving Forward
So bye-bye, 2017! You won't be missed.
I was hoping to finally get Soul Saga to you by the end of 2017, but these obstacles made last year the hardest time of Soul Saga's development (and the hardest time of my life). Thankfully, 2017 is now behind us. Although I'm still technically homeless, I'm focused and determined to deliver Soul Saga to you this year. Which brings us to the good news...
Over the years following Soul Saga's Kickstarter, I have gathered mountains of art assets, written a bazillion story variations, and experimented with gameplay in countless different ways. Each iteration of these elements always had you and your feedback in immediate consideration because the only thing I've ever wanted to do is make a game you and I can both be proud of. Being the world's first solo developer to create a classic 3D JRPG with the production quality of Soul Saga has taken me through immense trials and tribulations. But the light is finally at the end of the tunnel. I believe that...
Soul Saga will be ready by July 2018! July of this year will mark Soul Saga's Kickstarter's 5th anniversary and it's a conveniently appropriate time to finally get you the humble JRPG I've been working on for so long. The desktop version will be released first and polish will be applied based on fan feedback. Information regarding console porting will come after fan feedback has been applied to the Desktop version of Soul Saga.
Stay tuned for further updates regarding Soul Saga in the near future!
What do you think?
You are the reason I wake up in the morning, which is why I'm extremely grateful for us all to have the Disastercake Discord channel. Discord makes connecting an effortless breeze, so feel free to jump in and join us in all of the JRPG discussions.
Soul Saga – Update 36 – Time is like an airship (it flies)
Hello, Friend!
How have you been? This has been a crazy few months for myself, so let's delve into all the great news so I can get back to work!
Beta Playthrough
One of Soul Saga's amazing backers, Roydical, played through the Soul Saga beta. You may remember some of his videos in the past covering some of the features in Soul Saga's beta. Here's a highlight reel from his experience of the latest version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVfMLVVl27M
Settled In
You may remember from the last update that I had to leave my apartment I had been staying in for 6 years and move to a new home. That move went very well and I'm all settled in. Here's a picture of the team hard at work in the new house!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzsZ4G-42aE
Progress!
I have made a LOT more progress on Soul Saga not revealed in the beta above. Mostly I've worked on cutscenes, which are almost completely done at this point. I also recently began overhauling the airship exploration mode of Soul Saga to make it a much more important part of the overall experience. My biggest hurdle I'm recently facing is that many assets for the airship scenes need to be optimized, sometimes even recreated. So I've recently picked up blender to optimize them, and even work with rigging and animating some NPCs.
Game Development, Destroyer of Time
I recently realized that we have just passed the 4 year anniversary of Soul Saga's Kickstarter. Absolutely insane. When I first launched the Kickstarter I had no idea I would become so meticulously obsessed with creating such a polished experience, and as the only full time developer. I know I had always put a TON of time into Soul Saga, but it wasn't until I started testing Soul Saga on Steam that I had something really logging (some of) the hours I spend developing Soul Saga. It was quite jarring to see the numbers add up (over 100 hours a week).
Open World Airship Exploration
The most prominent enhancement to Soul Saga is that the airship exploration will be a seamless open world exploration experience. You will be able to fly around all of Medonia, exploring every nook and cranny of this beautiful and diverse sky world with your airship.
One of the biggest hurdles of moving to a more open-world-like system is that I had to work on the aesthetics quite a bit. I started by identifying the most important aspect of living in a floating island in the sky: the clouds. From there I decided to focus on the clouds until I got them just right, and I really like where we ended up with them:
There's still some polishing I need to do with it before going into more details, so for now here's a video of my early scene loading prototype I made a few months ago (and have since completed). I've made much more exciting progress on airship exploration and am ecstatic to share more with you in the next update!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1abj6krXZA
Kickstarter's Underbelly
Recently I had been approached by some individuals with offers to trade your backer information. I, of course, promptly denied it in my trademarked "emotionally blunt" fashion. However I've always felt the need to be as transparent as possible with you, and I felt you needed to know this type of thing DOES exist, and not every project creator may share my views on privacy. Be careful with who you pledge to on Kickstarter, because inevitably they will have a lot of information about you and Kickstarter cannot control what they do with that information.
What Do You Think?
I couldn't have made Soul Saga without you, and I'd love to hear more of your feedback and thoughts. Please feel free to follow me on Twitter, like on Facebook, and join me with other Soul Saga fans in the Disastercake Discord chat channel! Talk to you soon, friend!
Soul Saga – Update 35 – Beta update and Discord
Hello, Friend!
How have you been? I'm sorry for the delay in an official update, but I had to deal with an unexpected move last month. Thankfully I'm all settled into the new space now and my focus is back on Soul Saga!
New Teammate!
Oh, and please say hello to my new teammate, Senpai the Shiba Inu!
Senpai and Phoebe love to hate each other, but I sometimes glimpse a hint of love inside small moments.
Even though the last few months have been very busy, I still got a ton of work done on Soul Saga! Most of what I do can't be revealed due to them being major spoilers, but here's some of what I've gotten done in the beta...
Beta v11.1
Soul Saga's beta has been updated to version 11.1. Version 11.1 of the Soul Saga beta brings with it several graphical enhancements in different environments and cutscenes as well as all the following changes. If you have purchased the Soul Saga beta, you can now download it from your Humble Bundle library for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Please report any bugs to one of the following locations:
The Disastercake community is a very active, mature, and friendly group of people that I have been honored to be surrounded by since I had my Kickstarter. In an attempt to connect with fans even more I created a Discord server a few weeks ago that has gone very well! Discord can be ran from the browser, desktop installation, or mobile devices.
I also whipped us up some custom emojis for you to play with! You might recognize the adorable Torne, unique Grumplins, the cutest cupcakes you've every seen, and Mithos! I'll try to find time to add some more later on!
When you join the Disastercake Discord server, please message me on Kickstarter or send me an e-mail with your account name and I'll set you up with a backer role to give your name some flair!
In Soul Saga your teammates follow you directly on the map while exploring. This follow the leader type attitude makes exploring feel less lonely and the world more alive. It does come with technical complications, though! One of the issues I ran into was loading the characters in the map. In some previous iterations of Soul Saga there were no teammates following, so I had designed the levels to have only a single spawn point. Rather than go through and add more spawn points for additional team members, I decided that a more versatile way would be to have them load in as the player moves their main character away from the original spawn point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5yeNwqWk-0
NPC Enhancements
In Soul Saga there are many NPCs, including various animals! Here's a glance at how I work with a visual graph tool to create the roaming intelligence of the Squabble NPCs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jwMgVN4Rj4
Behind the Scenes
A question that was asked in Discord was what exactly a "scene" is in terms of working with game development. A scene is a single loaded area. In Soul Saga, dungeons are made up of several smaller (sometimes medium sized) scenes. The reason they are cut into smaller segments is for performance reasons. Here you can see what a scene looks like from the game view and then from the editor view where I work on it. The scene is created in a way that the part gamers see gives them the belief the world is large and seamless, but in actuality it is decoupled and smaller so performance can be tight.
Game View
Scene View
Overworld vs Explorable paths
In Soul Saga, the land of Medonia has been shattered into small islands. Because of this, most major traveling between islands is done via airship. However each major island has several points of interest on it. For a while, I had been using a classic looking overworld map to represent walking around the islands. However after consideration, I recently made a tweet gauging what Soul Saga fans think about possibly replacing the overworld with explorable paths.
Explorable Path Prototype
The results were pretty split, so I went about prototyping the connecting roads to get more accurate feedback. What I came up with was met with overall very positive feedback. Personally I feel these explorable areas are much better at adding personality to the islands. In time I will add more content to them as well, like sidequests, treasures, and secret areas, though their primary purpose is to connect the major points of interest on an island. Here is a video of the comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV6ckKP4-NI
Steam Greenlight to be Cancelled
Important news for the Steam gaming community is that Steam Greenlight will be cancelled in the foreseeable future. Soul Saga already flew through Steam Greenlight thanks to many fans' help, so this news does not affect Soul Saga in any way. However it is interesting to know the reasons behind Valve's decision to do this as it reflects how the market has become so saturated that gamers require new technologies to get relevant games in front of them. I have written up my thoughts based on my experiences as a developer and wrote an article for you here: http://www.disastercake.com/blog/steam-removing-greenlight-indie-developers-interpretation/
What do you think?
Your feedback has shaped Soul Saga into the beautiful game it's becoming, so please keep it coming! Let me know what you think by commenting below or joining us all in the Disastercake Discord. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date on more frequent news.
Soul Saga – Update 34 – Soul Saga will be on GOG!
Happy New Year, Friend!
Hello and happy new year, friend! I hope this first month of 2017 has treated you well. Personally I've just had my head buried deep in my work with Soul Saga to make sure I can finally bring it to you this year!
Development
Development with Soul Saga is going well. Before the end of last year I had a draft of the main story loop implemented, but now I am going back and reworking quite a bit of it. Perfectionism has taken a toll on Soul Saga's timeline, and I am sincerely sorry for that. I really wanted to launch last year, but I knew more polish was necessary to get you the game you deserve. However this will be the last major pass I do on the main storyline implementation, and after that I will work on the side content before shipping Soul Saga off to you. As an estimate I would say later in 2017 is a reasonable time frame for the remaining polish and content I want to add, which is really just a fraction of what I've already put into Soul Saga over these years. However, I always put quality before anything else, so please hold on with me while I finish scaling this mountain called "Game Development" the way it was meant to be climbed.
An Insider Look
A lot of people have asked me to film my work space to see a normal day in the life of a Disastercake, so here's a sneak peek of how Soul Saga's levels are designed.
Since the Kickstarter launched years ago, many Soul Saga fans have eagerly asked me to look into getting Soul Saga on GOG.com. If you don't already know: GOG is a DRM-Free game distributor with a strong reputation. I'm excited to be able to tell you that I sent the beta to GOG for review, and they were equally as excited as I was to be able to add Soul Saga to their impressive library of games!
If you would like to get a GOG key instead of whatever key you currently are signed up for (console, Humble Bundle, Steam, etc), please private message me on Kickstarter (if a backer) or e-mail me at mike@disastercake.com and I can assist in switching your current key to a GOG key.
Soul Saga fans and beta backers have kindly created some more videos for your enjoyment showcasing the current state of Soul Saga's beta. Feedback has been great so far, and I'm eagerly anticipating the moment I can finish up polishing based on all of the great fan feedback.
Airships
lordreo22 (Roy) is back again after last updates Amber Synthesizing video, this time to highlight airship exploration and airship combat in Soul Saga. He does a great job showing off the different features currently in the beta, and even gives you a video of how it can be played with a dual stick controller.
Please note that the way you acquire the airship in the beta is very simple, but there will be a quest line and story involving it in the finished game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWC5hF4IDZg
Full Beta Playthrough
KomaruTheHylian64 is a Soul Saga beta backer and fan that has kindly recorded the entirety of the Soul Saga beta for you.
THIS VIDEO CONTAINS SPOILERS! Though the beta is not 100% polished yet, this video does contain what I would consider minor story spoilers for the first 1-2 hours of Soul Saga. If you'd like to keep your experience as fresh as possible for the full release, then you may not want to watch the video through completion.
This video is of beta v10, and the current version is v10.1 A couple bugs pop up later in the video that I've already addressed and fixed in beta version v10.1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUn2KX-bppQ
What do you think?
Thank you so much for all of your support. Every day I talk with Soul Saga fans, and the encouraging words have kept me motivated on this long journey. I can't wait to finally finish Soul Saga and share my humble JRPG with you. In the meantime, you can hit me up on Twitter at @Disastercake, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/disastercake, or below in the comments here!
How are you doing?! I missed you! Also, if you're an American, then Happy Thanks giving to you! But the Squabbles in Soul Saga disagree with your choice of meat for the holidays...
Development
Soul Saga's development continues to move forward well as I focus on the core content. A lot of experimentation and iteration is being done to achieve the quality I want you to have, which takes a bit longer to achieve. With this year coming to a close, 2017 will have to be the year that Soul Saga releases. I'm sincerely sorry for the delay. When I first began working on Soul Saga I never imagined I would put so much content and polish into my first game, but I've grown to love Soul Saga and my backers with all of my heart. I firmly believe that everyone of them deserves a quality game, and that means the end result is much more important than the time frame. I promise that I am pushing forward as fast as I can to get you the best game I can make.
I'm getting so close to the end, but there's still more content and polish to add. I can't wait to finally be able to share Soul Saga with you. I do have a time frame in mind for myself and will let you know as soon as everything is 100% finished and ready for your enjoyment! I couldn't have pushed Soul Saga this long and far without your support. The best motivation I have to keep going on this long journey is knowing you'll get to enjoy Soul Saga when it's complete. Thank you so much for always being there for me! :)
Roy Explains Amber Synthesizing
A Soul Saga beta backer and streamer, lordreo22 (Roy), has created a video for you covering one of the unique features introduced to Soul Saga in Beta v10: Amber Synthesizing. Amber are man-made magical gems created by an Alchemical process known as Synthesizing. Alchemists are able to take just about any sort of items from the world, break them down to their base elemental equation, and then synthesize them as an amber to contain the primal forces of nature inside of them. Recipes for amber are closely guarded secrets of Alchemists, so getting a hold of recipes requires reverse engineering existing amber, also known as deconstructing an amber. Roy shows you here how it's all done in the Soul Saga synthesizing menu. Please remember to like/share the video and subscribe to Roy for more of his Soul Saga videos in the future!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLtWnS81cwU
Soul Saga Beta v10.1 Live!
I've updated the Soul Saga beta to v10.1 after fixing bugs reported by Soul Saga's amazing beta backers. The feedback I get from them is fantastic and critical to the quality of Soul Saga. Thank you so much for all of your help! I love squashing those bugs. ;)
Music
Ryan Camus has been hard at work on Soul Saga's soundtrack and has really gone above and beyond to bring you one of the most (if not the most) robust soundtracks in an indie JRPG I've ever had the pleasure to listen to. Ryan has already gone through and added different exploration and battle themes for every Airship zone, and is now going through the core game and adding new combat themes to different zones to ensure every area has its own personality. One of the most important aspects of good JRPG's is a great soundtrack, and thanks to Ryan Camus we all have that to enjoy in Soul Saga. Please join me in thanking Ryan for his astounding contribution to Soul Saga's quality. Here's some examples of an exploration zone and combat theme combination:
Thank you very much for your patience as I push Soul Saga forward. Hopefully in a few updates I can solidify a release date and finally share Soul Saga with you. In the meantime, please let me know what's on your mind below or join us on the forum for this update's discussion here: http://forums.disastercake.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=951
Soul Saga -Update 32 - Amber Synthesizing and Beta Update!
Hello, friend!
How are you doing? I've been pushing Soul Saga forward and have made an exciting beta update! I'm going to keep this update quick so I can get back to work wrapping everything up for you!
Beta v10 Live!
The next Soul Saga Beta (v10) is live on Humble Bundle if you're a beta tier backer. This beta brings a lot of changes, and jumps Soul Saga much closer to its final production level. The beta covers approximately the first hour and half of Soul Saga, which is an important character building setting for the world and characters. For the sake of preventing spoilers, I won't go into details here, but here's a general list of changes. Also, you can find the change log on the Disastercake Forums here that also has a list of important testing areas for beta testers.
More Story
The story has been appended to before and after where the previous beta version took place. The beta story line has also been adjusted to accommodate the new playable character. There is also a higher level of production quality on the main story line, with an opening that helps bring you into the world and events that introduce the characters very well.
The main story also always has an entry in the quest log so you never forget what to do next.
Interactivity
There is a lot more flavor text around Dragontree Village to build the world and characters. Both the environment and NPCs can be interacted with now. By the time I'm finished with development, every NPC in Soul Saga will have something unique and interesting to say, and residential zones will have lots of intractable environments.
Amber Synthesizing
Soul Saga's unique crafting system has been added this beta! Amber Synthesizing allows you to craft more potent amber using the items you find around the world as ingredients. The unique thing about this system is you can use any item combination you feel necessary to craft the amber.
Each item in the world has an Elemental Equation, and your goal is to match the equation as close as possible.
Music
The latest Soul Saga beta reveals a few more tunes by the talented Ryan Camus. Contrary to the upbeat songs I've been revealing previously, this music is for the more emotional and heavy scenes in the story.
Flickering Shadows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nQX6x3xUk
Stains of Ink
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op6uhR2ugv8
What do you think?
I'm excited to be getting Soul Saga closer and closer to the finish line! Years of sacrifice have lead to the moment I can finally share my humble JRPG with you, and it feels amazing to be so close to that time. Hopefully in a couple updates I can have the final release date in stone and get you Soul Saga as soon as possible.
Soul Saga - Update 31 - Controller Support and More!
Hello, friend!
How are you? I hope this past month has been treating you well. If it hasn't, let me know and I'll give it a stern talking to! It worked well for me because this has been a great month for Soul Saga!
Development Status
The current state of development is in an excellent spot. I keep spending time adding more bulk and polish to Soul Saga's main and side content, and I really want to squeeze as much in there for you as feasibly possible. As such, this last 10% is really feeling impossible to estimate exactly. It could take a few more months to get it all in the way I intend it to be. My goal for Soul Saga has always been to give you the best game I possibly can, so I'm going to keep pushing forward and keep you posted on where it's all at next month! In the meantime, let's go over some things I accomplished this past month.
Music
Here's some lovely and catchy music by Ryan Camus while you read! This one is called "I Love My Job".
The main story line events and cutscenes are continuing to be implemented. These are taking the vast bulk of my time, as I'm the only person working on their writing, design, implementation, and the programming API for the cutscenes and actors. A general cutscene's development flow goes something like this:
There's also many extra steps related to 3D game development that make it much more difficult and technical than 2D games. Because these are taking so much time to complete I'm always looking into ways to try and improve work flows. New tools get created and added as I find ways to modulate and streamline certain actions. I might also experiment with some different cutscene styles at certain locations in the game to help alleviate more complex scenes while maintaining visual quality.
Cutscene Features
To ensure the user experience is as smooth as possible in Soul Saga, I've added a few extra features to cutscenes.
First, a cutscene skip confirmation has been added. Previously if you just pressed the skip button (escape key on the keyboard, and the menu button on the controller), the cutscene would immediately cancel and progress beyond it. To prevent accidents, I've implemented in a safety feature so that you now need to hold the cancel button for about 1.5 seconds. The text "Skip" with a circular progress bar appears in the top left corner. When the circle completes, the scene will skip. Releasing the cancel button early will prevent the skip from occurring.
Also an Options menu has been added to cutscenes for volume controls and skipping. From this menu you can adjust the music, sound effect, and voice acting volumes, and even toggle the VA on and off.
Interactive Environments
Some of the feedback that Soul Saga fans have given me is how important an interactive environment is to a good JRPG. Many modern games have deviated from this by adding more visual detail to their art styles, but they forget that receiving input for exploring is an important reward for players. So now that Soul Saga is in the polishing stages for many of its scenes, I've begun adding these types of details around the world. These moments are most prevalent in town and residential areas where there's a lot more character personalities to build and culture to be experienced.
Controller Support
As Soul Saga progresses towards the finish line I had a strong urge to play the entire game with a controller. So... I added it in!
I've been told by colleagues in the game industry that one of the hardest parts of porting to a console from Desktop can be adding controller support. So it's a good thing I saw this issue coming from a mile away and made sure to build Soul Saga's design and code from the ground up with both a mouse and controller in mind! Because of this careful planning, adding controller support was a rather painless process. You can even seamlessly switch between a controller and mouse, allowing you to use the mouse for general clicking and then using the keyboard to quickly navigate the menu list options (if you desire).
So far I've tested on Windows with Xbox 360 and a PS4 (DS4Windows plugin) controllers. When the next beta version comes out I will be very interested in getting feedback on the keybindings and controller support.
Vibration has also been added to the game and works on controllers that support direct input (like Xbox and DS4Windows PS4 controller). You may also toggle the vibration off in the options menu.
And more!
A lot more has been done as I squeeze in time between cutscenes to add more functionality to Soul Saga. For example you can toggle the party leader with the controller bumpers to quickly switch between the leads. I've also created and implemented a lot of performance optimizations, which in some cases require I rework a scenes models to be more universally performant.
What do you think?
As always, I'm very interested to know everything on your mind! I'm excited Soul Saga is getting closer to being finished, and I can't wait to finally get it in your hands! I promise to let you know as soon as I'm certain when that can happen. Thank you so much for your patience! I couldn't have made Soul Saga without your generous support!
How are you doing? Is the weather warm where you're at? Summer has brought the heat down upon my back yard, with the temperature getting close to 80°F (27°C), which to me is way too hot! I actually planted some kiwi vines in front of my window in hopes that they'll grow into a "green screen" of sorts to absorb the sun heat. It's a technique Nozomi taught me that they use in Japan to reduce the heat in the buildings during hot summers. Here's to hoping it can cut down on the air conditioning costs!
Cutscenes
Development is going well, and my focus at the moment is the final content of Soul Saga. I'm currently crunching away on the cutscenes. At first they were taking much longer than I was hoping, but as I continued to work with them I created more tools and developed work flows and programming patterns to speed it along. So at the moment they're moving at a more reasonable pace. Because I'm the only person working on the cutscene scripting, dialogue writing, and engine programming it bottlenecks the development process and takes longer than a big studio can do. But with all that aside, seeing the final result of the story in action is just surreal. I often find myself saying "Did I really make this game?!" Here's a little peek of what I've been working on.
Testing
One of the biggest challenges of making a JRPG like Soul Saga is testing. Coming from a video game quality assurance background I have high respect for good testing procedures, and often find myself testing regularly rather than putting it off until later. But testing something like a JRPG isn't normally a one man job, so to assist with testing I've created some tools and "hacks" in Soul Saga just for me to speed up the testing process. Some of the tools include a speed hack, scene jumping, and an overpowered Ring of Debugging used to smite my enemies in a single blow! No Torne or Squabble shall slow a test session ever again!
Music
Ryan Camus has been hard at work on the Soul Saga soundtrack. Seriously... he's cranking out more songs than I know what to do with at this point, but they're just so amazing I'm making spots for all of it! I really appreciate the hard work he's put into Soul Saga. Music is one of the most important elements of a JRPG, and I'm ecstatic Soul Saga's music will be great! Here's just a few that he's made:
My Best Friend
"My Best Friend" is the catchy and adorable theme song played when Mithos interacts with his best friend in the Soul Saga story, a character to be revealed soon!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYGe3iYnyo0
Likurk Living
"Likurk Living" is the relaxing theme song played when you visit the different Likurk inhabited areas of Medonia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6POHgIL5jOo
Life Is Good
"Life Is Good" is the smooth and relaxing theme song played when in various parts of the game for happier moments. Relax a little, you've earned it! =D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYeQy97nf1Q
Moonlighter Cross Over!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tlLMx7uMaU
Moonlighter is a gorgeous and incredibly fun looking 2D action adventure RPG where you play as the owner of an item shop! Your goal as the item shop owner, Will, is to delve into the nearby dungeons to earn treasure and loot to then sell to the traveling adventurers for a profit, one of which will be Mithos from Soul Saga! The mysterious dungeons are constantly changing, so there's a new challenge every time you go spelunking. It was obvious to me as soon as I laid eyes on this project that it was a labor of love by several talented people, including the amazing composer Alec Holowka, who has done great work on the Aquaria and Night in the Woods games. I'm a backer myself and can't wait to see Mithos in Moonlighter!
Will and the Moonlighter shop will also be making an appearance in Soul Saga! Search for the shop hidden away in Medonia's capital and you'll have access to some nice items! Just make sure to bring your Jul.
Each day Soul Saga's last 10% gets whittled away, and I get ever closer to sharing my 3 year labor of love with you. Yeah that's right, this month marks the 3 year anniversary of the Kickstarter! Holy Torne cakes! This has been a long and incredible journey, but every ounce of sacrifice was worth the effort. Thank you for everything you've done for me... I couldn't have made Soul Saga without you!
Soul Saga - Update 29 - User Interface Enhancements
Hello, friend!
How've you been?! I hope your spring has gone well. Did you know summer's right around the corner already?! Time sure does fly when you're spending all of it working on Soul Saga! I've been focusing on Soul Saga's new user interface lately, and I'd love to show you some of that today!
Beta v9.3 Live!
Beta v9.3 is live and has almost all of the new user interface implemented! This includes the Title Menu, main menu and all sub menus, and part of the shop menus. Next I will work on finishing the shop menus and the crafting menus. The user interface implementation should be 99% done by next week. I'm also planning on adding controller support in pretty soon!
User Interface Enhancements
The biggest change over the past month has been a complete overhaul of the Soul Saga user interface design. The previous betas were simply using placeholder UI. I like to tell people that making a good game with a tight budget should be treated like baking a cake. You don't put on the toppings until you've baked the cake first! And now that Soul Saga is being finalized it's time to start piling on that sugary eye candy frosting!
Title Menu
The title menu sports a black and white background of the beautiful Soul Saga character collage created by Akaneko. The UI designer then created some fancier save file frames, and I programmed in a cool animated glow effect behind them. I also implemented in a couple social networking buttons at the bottom so new fans can easily connect with me to chat about Soul Saga and keep up to date on future Disastercake games!
Main Menu
The main menu sports more coloring in the background, but a bit desaturated and blurred so it doesn't overwhelm the foreground. This is the menu you'll be seeing often in game to access all your information. The goal was to give you some nice eye candy on the landing page of the main menu so you can enjoy your time here.
Other Menus
Many of the menus in Soul Saga will sport a notebook type look to it. The goal is to give the user interface some character by making it look like young Mithos has scribbled this information into his notebook.
New Title Theme
Soul Saga's lead composer, Ryan Camus, has created a new title theme for Soul Saga! This epic and inspiring theme is titled "Dream Big", and it captures the mood and moral message of Soul Saga perfectly.
https://youtu.be/OxP1gz3cFOc
What do you think?
One of the many things that makes Soul Saga unique is the obviously strong impact fans have on development. A recent question I brought up for fans to help decide is whether your airship should cost money to repair or not. Feel free to join us in the discussion on Twitter, on the Disastercake forums, or right here on Steam!
Thank You!
I'm going to jump right back into working on Soul Saga now! I'm so excited to share Soul Saga with you this year I can't even explain it! I'll always be eternally grateful for the opportunity you've given me to share Soul Saga with you, so thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!
I'm still aiming to release Soul Saga on the PC, Mac, and Linux by late August, and I'll let you know if that has to be adjusted in the near future. So far everything is coming along well! I'll definitely keep you up to date about console porting soon after the Desktop version has been released.
Hello, my Steamy friends!
Hello, Friend!
My name is Mike Gale and I'm the developer of Soul Saga! I just wanted to let you know that I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity you've given me to share Soul Saga with you. Both the Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns were a huge success thanks to Soul Saga's amazing fans, and I promise to do my best to bring you the best game I can!
