Sooo, I've been watching videos from y'all, and I am working on a patch for things I see as minor inconveniences that most of you consistently feel (as seen in how people behave in their videos) It's not done, but look forward to these changes:
1) Wall Kicking will recenter the camera, this should make the camera appear to be less eradicate when wall-kicking.
2) There's a glitch in the first area that the Flarestone is introduced where you can actually jump on the pole inside the brambles before burning them, this will be fixed.
3) Finally fixing the flip-jump. In the current build, if you jump up a small ledge, like a mushroom, and if you hold the jump button, Mayfly seems to fling herself over the shroom. This is fixed in the patch I am working on, She will now just climb up it calmly.
4) Finally a new ability that will be available from the start of the game. Soo, I noticed that not a lot of people actually use the Dive mechanic, it's been there the entire time, and can be used for a bit of course correction as well as small speed boosting. But, a lot of you do mess with the spin ability a lot and it really looks like you want it to do something in the early game. So I am adding Spin Twirl. It's not as fast or far reaching as diving, however it is easier to control, and operationally, it is a casual alternative to diving:
When you use the spin in the air, before you get the 2nd wing power, Mayfly will break her fall in mid-air if you use the spin while falling. I just ran through the game with this feature, and it didn't break any of the puzzles, but did make some of the platforming challenges less brutal. I feel like this will be a change for the better.
Heads up about Episode 3
I have spent the last couple of months making a flexible standard character rig that has the potential to execute much more exaggerated and dynamic poses and animation as well as easily blend in aspects of motion capture data. I have read all of your reviews and watched all of your videos and plan to raise the production value based on your feedback.
I intend to have an update which will see Mayfly have a redone and more polished animations. Add some gestures to Ferace during the monologues to give Ferace more expressive movements. Access to the inside of Mayfly's house so that you have a space to get to see more about who she is. And, my personal favorite addition, a dress-up menu to let you stylize Mayfly to a degree.
Additionally, it is planned that future episodes will try to use a few more store telling methods, including fully animated/voiced cutscenes. Some of which will be semi-playable like Ferace's Monolouge, and others will be non playable videos. I am also intending to continue to introduce new characters that didn't exist in Glass Wing former. And yes, I am not joking when I say that that there will be more Musical Numbers.
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That all said, a lot of these ideas fleshed out bank on the idea that I should have a better grip on my animation ability, as well as an adequate amount of funding. So, I have decided to pause the development of Wings of Glass at the moment in favor of trying to make a small project with the help of Naoya Sakamata as composer, and Ken Higuchi (of Royal Skies) as environmental artist and texture artist. The project will be an HD remake of the very first game I ever published online, the very first 3D bullet hell game ever made, 2010's Bullet Life. It will be a project strapped down with an awareness of time with the constrain being to complete development over the course of only 30 days, starting next month.
The title of the game will be:
Bullet Life 2 : Danmaku 3D. And it will be to Bullet Life, what Wings of Glass is to Glass Wing.
It's going to be using a stylish NPR art style that I designed to somewhat resemble Prisma Color Pencils (seen in the image). And have a complete re-interpretation of story, that includes character dialog and portraits. Also I am going to replace all of the machine boss characters from the original with stylish cute girls with specific powers and design themes, since that is a much more marketable option. Also- I am opting to change the game's setting to take place in the same universe as Wings of Glass so that I can recycle certain world elements, like the Dancing Spiders, Magnedro metal, Glasswings and other demons.
It really will be a small project that I do fully intend on having as small of a development window as stated above.
The idea is that over the course of a project with a solid time constraint, I'll quickly develop an understanding of how to best utilize my new character rig to make the best quality animations. That way, when I return to Wings of Glass, all of the things mentioned at the start of this post will be able to be done at the expected quality.
Thank you for playing, thank you for your support, and thank you for your patience. Wish me luck!
Be creative and have fun~
Ferace's Musical Number
There is only one part of the Ferace's script that never got translated into Japanese. Which is Ferace's musical number that was used in the trailer. Did you know, you can actually play through this trailer yourself if you pause the game, open the exit menu and select the credits option?
There is another song that happens at the end of the package (the end of episode 2). This one isn't in the format of a musical number, but more like a Japanese Anime ED theme (Bonus points that it's written and sung by an actual native Japanese person, Naoya Sakamata).
As you know, I don't like making non-playable segments, sooo even the credits are playable segments in a Sayuri Artsy production. I also just felt like it was a nice space to try to make a completely different kind of gameplay. Their designed to be unfailable technically. But I was hoping that players might try to make it a personal challenge to try and complete the songs without being force warped. There wasn't really any place in the story to have these auto-scrolling types of levels, since this is a puzzle game first. And I intend to have it to such that every single package ends off with a unique credits roll map.
April Patch
Spanish Sub is not ready but I have made a few changes after watching some playthroughs of the game.
1) The black text-box graphic is went from 50% opacity to 75% opacity, this should make it easier to read.
2) Playing the game in Japanese will depict the Japanese title on top, and the English on the bottom.
3) There has been some amount of confusion about one of the characters, so I added 2 messages to the story to make it more likely that players will understand it on their own.
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In other news, I've been playing around with motion capture recently. I am thinking I might try to use it to create some non-playable cut-scenes in the next episode.
P.S. In case you didn't know, I provided Mayfly's voice myself. This works out because in Ep 1-2, she has no lines of dialog and just says TLOZ like grunts. It may or may not surprise you, but I am actually thinking about giving her lines of dialog in later episodes. Now, personally, I thought it'd be funny and efficient if I was the one who did her dialog in both English and Japanese. Obviously the pro would be that Mayfly would definitely sound 100% consistent across both languages. While the con would be, I might not be able to sound close enough to a Native speaker; I am Japanese in race-only.
I'm only pointing this out because- When possible, I prefer to do as much of the work myself, since the fewer people I have to work with, the closer it can be to my vision, and the less back-and-forth communication I need to participate in for directing.
Spanish SUB coming soon!
Hi Y'all, It's me Sayuri! I'm working with a Spanish translator to get a Spanish subbed version of this game!
I just want you to know that I'm working very hard on the animation and writing for the next episode!
March Patch
There were a few glitches reported that have been fixed, these are the patch notes:
1) It is impossible to dive up the slope in the map where you find the first wing.
2) Slip Passages push held items farther away so that you cannot sneak them into places they don't belong.
3) First cylinder in the 3rd boss area was raised so that you cannot reach the spider early.
4) Platforms in boss 3 have been made thicker so that it when a projectile comes up, it should hit the ceiling before connecting too you.
5) After the screen starts to fade from room transition, you are unharmable.
6) Previously file C text would stay up forever, now it goes away like all other texts.
Recent Patch
Been reading reviews and discussions as well as watching YT vids. Fixed all bugs I could recreate and patched up puzzles that used to be skippable. Lowered the difficulty in the boiler room.
