Unrest Update #2 – Sweet Sounding Surprise

August 13, 2013 · Arvind

Hello Backers,
We’re almost done with the first chapter of the game (four left now). Let’s go over what we’ve done:

We can load and show small interior areas directly from the level, which should mean less time spent in loading screens and more time spent playing the game.

A normal hut when the player is away from it

Hut cross section when the player comes near it

We also dim the background a little when you open up a UI screen such as the inventory, map etc – a minor tweak, but helps a lot in making sure the player’s attention is on the screen they opened and in differentiating between the interactive and inactive areas.

The world map

Rutskarn has already started work on the second chapter after finishing Chapter one. We’ve already settled on the outline bar a few side-quests, and we look set to finish Chapter two on schedule. Mikk has a few minor items left for chapter one, after which he will start sketching out the city of Bhimra. You know what that means – I won’t have to reuse the same countryside screenshots over and over again! I don’t know about you, but I’m excited.

Some sprites from the game

Now for the big news: The Unrest Soundtrack, titled “Voices of Bhimra” is done and ready to be distributed to all backers who pledged at $15 or more. It contains twelve tracks inspired by classical Indian music, and will be available in MP3, FLAC and OGG file formats. You can listen to the album here, and tell your friends to buy it!

HOWEVER, to give the soundtrack to you lovely backers, we must ask you to complete the Kickstarter rewards survey. Around 123 of you have not filled it at the time of writing, and I would really like it if you take the time to answer it and help us deliver the rewards to you correctly.

Our monthly development livestream featuring me, Rutskarn, Ian and Mikk will be live on Sunday, 18th August, 2013 at 5 PM GMT. Join us to see Unrest in motion, and ask us a bunch of questions about the game!

Love,
Arvind

Unrest Status Update, July 2013

July 24, 2013 · Arvind

Hello backers!
It has now been approximately one month since your generosity meant Rutskarn suddenly had a lot of money in his Del Taco budget. I have a lot of news to share with you, so let us start:

Programming
I have programmed collisions between n-sided polygons in the game. That was a key blocking feature – in fact, we had hired a programmer for this during the second week of Kickstarter itself, but that person bailed after three weeks of failure. Luckily, I had a breakthrough and able to rewrite collisions to add that feature in two days (yay!). Here are some screenshots that show the debug polygons and some collision stuff (click on them for larger versions):

Writing
Rutskarn and I have successfully finalized the main quest draft of Chapter 1, and we are halfway through writing the sidequests. Hopefully, we will have Chapter 1 playable in near-final form (pending final art, writing, coding passes, of course) in less than three weeks, with Ian and Mac hard at work doing their scripting magic. Here’s an excerpt from Rutskarn’s dialogue for Chapter 1:

Radha: I like your wedding dress, Tanya.
Tanya: I don’t know. Does it have to come with a cap of weird blue tentacles for my head?
Radha: Well, you are wearing a sari.
(NOTE: That is not actual dialogue from Chapter 1. Rutskarn claims no responsibility for this dialogue. His actual dialogue has at least three, usually five puns per sentence.)

Art
Mikk has finished drawing all of the Chapter 1 sprites and locations, pending a final art pass and minor corrections, which means he is ready to get cracking drawing the city and its locations for use in further chapters.

On top of that, we’re happy to announce that the Humble Store will handle digital backer reward fulfillment and purchasing of new copies for Unrest! This includes both Kickstarter and Paypal backers. This also makes it easier to add keys for places like GoG or Steam down the line, and we don’t have to host servers for digital downloads. You can check out the humble store widgets on our main page at https://pyrodactyl.com/unrest.

And on top of that, we will be hosting our first Pyrodactyl Developer Streamaganza this Sunday, at 3:30 PM GMT on 27 July 2013. We’ll be hanging out, answering questions and maybe playing games if we run out of ideas. Visit http://www.livestream.com/chocolatehammer at appointed date and time, and we will also send out a backer update when the stream is live. See you there!

Thanks,
Arvind

We’re switching hosts, strange behavior might occur

July 19, 2013 · Arvind

Emailing arvind@pyrodactyl.com might also not work for a day or two. If you need to get in touch, use arvindrajayadav@gmail.com instead.

We’ll resume normal service in a day or two.

P.S. Our latest kickstarter update is here.

Farm Preview; Paypal Total Update

June 23, 2013 · Arvind

While I’m experiencing Kickstarter withdrawal symptoms, the team is working hard and we have almost finished the first art pass on the Bhimra countryside. This means that most of the levels in the countryside area have taken shape, and we can now fine tune things like scripts, NPC placement, quests and ambient dialogue (and start drawing new sprites).

And now, time for the boring financial update:

We’re pretty happy to report that almost all the pledges have gone through, but a small number of them (about $1026) that are hung in the limbo between collected and pledged. There are about 12 more days until the gremlins inside Amazon Payments give up, so please make sure the issues are sorted before that. You can always message me if I can help in any way.

Our Paypal totals have also been updated, and we’re sitting at around $815 total in pledges via Paypal. We’ll be counting pledges made until July 6 towards the stretch goals, so share this link with your friends if you want them to pledge!

If you want to follow our updates but are not on Kickstarter, you can always subscribe to pyrodactyl.com!

The Road to Come (i.e. the last update for a bit)

June 22, 2013 · Arvind

You ever notice how every Kickstarter, no matter how deliriously successful or dismally botched, ends with the responsible parties calling it a “hell of a ride”? Well, that’s not just cliché for its own sake. It turns out running one of these is, in fact, a hell of a ride. It’s all the fun of making numbers go up mixed with all the chaos and drama and unexpected turnarounds only the magical world of the internet can furnish.

Our particular ride coasted into the station with $36, 251 more than it left with. I don’t mind telling you, that’s a good $36,000 more than half our team expected to get. Some of us are just baffled, some of us are actively having trouble believing it, and some of us are so exhausted they can no longer form internally consistent models of reality—but none of us are displeased. As a matter of fact, we’re over the moon, and we’d like to take this opportunity to extend a full-throated thank you towards everyone reading this message. You’ve made the most exciting project of our lives a reality, and that’s a gift we’re going to try our hardest to repay.

Now, a word on the sorts of updates you’ll be seeing in the future:

1.) Monthly Livestream Extravaganzas: Each month, we’ll announce and broadcast a one-hour stream where we’ll talk about how far we’ve come with the game and open the floor to questions, comments, and suggestions. Following these events, we’ll collate and publish notes, so no worries if you can’t make them all.
2.) The Money Talk: It will take a few months for all the finances to settle, but once they have, we’ll bring out some charts and give you all an idea of what the money is going towards.
3.) The Further Adventures of the Kickstarter: PayPal is still accepting donations for another two weeks, so it’s more than possible we’ll hit another stretch goal or two before all’s said and done. If so, you’ll find out about it here.
4.) Extemporaneous Limerick Odysseys: Whenever Arvind’s asleep. Note: Arvind never sleeps, and consequently, these will not happen.

Another round of hearty thanks from all of us. I’m bearhugging each of you in my soul of souls.

Sincerely,
Adam “Rutskarn” DeCamp
/ Lead Writer / Scenario Designer / Update Author / Spy Hunter /

P.S. Here is the paypal link, in case you want to share it with your rich, philanthropic friends.

Final 24 hours of Kickstarter & Krautfunding

June 20, 2013 · Arvind

First: there are only 42 hours left in our Kickstarter. Back us now if you haven’t already!

We’ll be doing a bunch of fun stuff for the last 24 hours. There will be live Q&A with the developers, streaming video, a virtual tour of Arvind’s room and a lot more things at the official 100 percent legit™ Chocolate Hammer livestream channel: http://www.livestream.com/chocolatehammer (NOTE: Legally, we are not allowed to show the cloning facility.)

When the countdown timer on our Kickstarter hits the 24 hours mark, Arvind will show up for a couple of hours, and then the powers of Rutskarn and Arvind will combine for the final six hours. Also, Arvind will appear on a show called Krautfunding on 20th June, 19:00 GMT to answer a bunch of questions about our campaign and Pyrodactyl in general. You can visit the link here when it goes live!

So, our Kickstarter happened.

May 26, 2013 · Arvind

It’s been a pretty crazy four days, and the amount of support Unrest has received has absolutely floored me. We hit 4x the goal after about 4.5 days – which is absolutely incredible. We’re already heavy at work on the game, and we’ve announced a whole bunch of stuff over at Kickstarter.

Things like Rutskarn’s spy novella entries, my ArvTech updates, a lot of stretch goals, and an upcoming art update – you should really click on one of those hyperlinks, you know. (Here’s this one if you don’t want to move your mouse too much). The next few weeks will be hectic, we’d love it if you were with us for the ride!

Thanks a lot for your support,Arvind

Unrest is on Kickstarter!

May 23, 2013 · Arvind

I repeat, Unrest is live on Kickstarter!

Here’s what you need to know about it:

Unrest in a narrative driven RPG set in ancient India.
It is a story divided into 4 chapters, with the focus on ordinary people struggling through their lives.
It has a detailed conversation system that measures how much people like, fear and respect you.
Combat is an option, but is always avoidable. There are no obligatory fights against faceless mooks, every battle has a reason.
It has damn awesome art and music based on ancient India.

It has been around 12 hours since we launched Unrest on Kickstarter, and we are at about 17 percent of the goal already – a little more and we’ll reach our goal! Thanks for the great show of support, we absolutely love you! For more information, visit the Kickstarter page for the game and please consider pledging your support! There are some great bonuses, such as adding yourself as a character in the game, a copy of the soundtrack, the Unrest novella and much more.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/698883673/unrest-an-unconventional-rpg-set-in-ancient-india

Tales of Unrest, Part 3

May 13, 2013 · Arvind

Bhimra’s poor were vast and insatiable. The slums teemed with farmers whose lands had turned to dust, tradesmen whose work was no longer enough to feed their families, and the veterans of a trade conflict that lasted far beyond anyone’s expectations. Once Bhimra had been a citadel of affluent merchant and nobles castes and the honest workers who supported them; now the slums swallowed half the city.

It was Ranveer, as he set firm hand on the first rungs of the temple hierarchy, who ventured out into the mazes of human misery bearing bread and medicine. It was he who walked among the lower castes as an equal, unafraid and unaloof. Bali has not forsaken you, he said; I will not either.

Even weeks after it became clear that the newly-appointed priest Ranveer was venturing into the slums to speak, none of the priests or rulers of Bhimra gave the matter much thought. What happened in the slums wasn’t important. Beyond the line of shacks and rotten markets was another city altogether.

Perhaps, if they could have seen the streets, packed from end to end, standing in wonder and admiration as Ranveer unfolded his Vision, they would have understood. The slums weren’t another city; by now, they were the city.

Ranveer taught them to hate the Naga as demons, adversaries of Bali, invaders at the heart of Bhimra’s misfortunes. As for the King and Queen who allowed their immigration, Ranveer said nothing. He didn’t need to.

Continued, and progress report, next week.

Bhimra’s countryside as it will appear in the upcoming demo.

Diary of a Bhimra Spy, Part 3

It’s never a good day when the landlord comes in, and if he doesn’t bother knocking first, you’ve got real problems.

Did I know, by any chance, that I was four days late on my payments? And that this was past his landlordly grace period by four days minus thirty seconds? And that he had three dogs on a chain downstairs he kept half-starved for exactly this sort of situation?

As a matter of fact, I did know all of that. I politely explained to him that I was in the middle of some protracted, highly illegal, fantastically dangerous operations on the east side of town that should bear fruit before too long. Demonstrating a failure of critical listening on his part, he asked me to clarify that I did not currently have the money. I clarified that I did not.

The upshot is that I’m out on the street. I’d be more indignant if I actually did have a job on the east side of town. In fact, the reason I can’t pay him is that I’m neck deep in the worst drought of my life.

It’s been a week since I had any work besides Ranveer’s fact-finding missions, which means it’s been about a week since I left the apartment. I am getting dangerously poor for the first time in almost a decade. It hasn’t done much good for my nerves, and if anything, it’s been worse for my mental acuity. A man can only lay sprawled out on his rug for so long, conjuring up so many stories of mean Nagas terrorizing semi-innocent slumfolk, before he starts to go loopy from guilt and boredom. And between me and this page, I’ve had more wine than is in anyone’s best interests.

But those days are behind me. Worst-case scenario is I’ll be doing my drinking and scribbling in the gutter now. Best-case is that I find some work, and maybe a kinder landlord, before I end up as rat food. In my heart of hearts I know which is more likely.

The problem is that this city’s getting too bad for spies to matter much one way or the other. People are starving. Nagas and humans are killing each other all over the slums. Every gang is declaring total war on all the other gangs, on their own neighborhoods, on themselves. Farmers everywhere are revolting or being put down or just plain dropping dead. So what, exactly, remains for a spy to discover?

No-one needs new information. Everyone can pretty much just expect the worst, because that’s what’s happening everywhere.

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