Ross, our resident scripter has written an excellent blog post about the challenges in designing combat for Unrest.
Streaming Game Footage, 11/10/13
We’re streaming footage of the game’s slums [right now/a variable amount of time in the past], so hop on in to watch the footage and [ask us questions/wish you’d been there to ask us questions]! Stream is here.
-Rutskarn
Progress on all fronts
We’re going to do the usual update stuff in another paragraph or so – talk about what we’re doing, show you pretty screenshots, give the date and url of the next scheduled developer stream. But in case you’re busy, your computer has another ten second of battery life, or you just heard local crime lords setting fire to your car, let me give you the summary: We’re on schedule. We’re on budget. No development problems. Everything is fine.
Work in progress Level near the grand temple
Now, for those of you with no business, computers with nuclear batteries, and crime lords trying to get their new Swedish firesteel working, here’s the haiku blow-by-blow:
Chapters three and four
Are written up and ready
Scripter’s work begins
(Game has seven parts,
Plus prologue and epilogue,
So we’re that much done)
To SDL2
Our engine is upgraded
We sigh in relief
“Controller support”
Is hard to fit in haiku
But it’s in the game
Sprites for chapter two
Are all drawn up and ready
As are the levels
In fact, lots of art
Is ready for the big time
Screenshots are the proof:
New sprites in the slums
Arvind has a talk
At NGDC ‘13
About Kickstarter
Stream is coming up
This Sunday at 4PM
GMT, of course
Stream location is:
http://www.livestream.com/chocolatehammer
Ouch, them syllables
That is all the news
Now back to, uh, making games
Rutskarn out…for now
Arvind’s Note: The stream takes place this Sunday (10 November 2013) at 4 PM GMT. I reposted this here just in case haikus are not your thing. Join us if you can!
Unrest livestream is on!
We’ll be streaming live, in-game footage of Unrest in just a minute. Feel free to drop in, ask us questions, and take an exclusive first look at Bhimra’s slums!
As always, if you can’t make today’s stream, Livestream should save a log you can view at a later date. Just check the scrolling bar underneath the stream window.
Join us on http://livestream.com/chocolatehammer !
The Budget / Some Questions
Rutskarn here, blowing up your collective inboxes with a fistful of fresh game updates. In a few paragraphs we’re going to start begging your feedback on a few points, but first, let’s come out with something that’s a bit overdue: our game budget. For the first time, take a gander at grinder that turns money-meat into game-sausage.
We project the following costs:
- Art: $10,000 US.
- Everyone Else’s Salaries (taken together): $10,000 US.
- Music: $1,000 US.
- Taxes/Kickstarter’s Cut/Paypal’s Cut/Amazon’s Cut/The Bank’s Cut/Buffer In Case Everything Goes Terribly Wrong: Everything Else.
We’ve somewhat conservatively predicted, based on how we’re keeping to schedule, that the beta will arrive around May 2014. So far nothing’s come up that would make that seem naïve or optimistic. Still, that estimate’s tentative at best; if held to it, we’ll cough and kick up dust and mumble meaningfully about the economy.
Consider this the Reader Participation Hour, because we’ve got a question for all of you . How many of you, if any, have an interest in playing at resolutions LOWER than 1280×720? Don’t be bashful if you want to play the game on your Cold War era radar screen or calculator wristwatch or whatnot, just let us know so we can tweak the game accordingly.
And speaking of tweaking the game for you, a handful of people still haven’t sent in their surveys naming in-game NPCs, cities, or jazz-funk bands (warning: game may not contain jazz-funk bands) after themselves. If you paid for custom in-game content, and you want to make good on that, you have to get that back to us as soon as possible. In fact, I’d recommend getting on that, like, right now.
Speaking of “right now,” I’ve got a quicktime jazz-funk dance duel sequence to design, write, and wistfully delete from my hard drive.
Rutskarn out.
Arvind’s EDIT: We’ll be streaming Unrest (this time with the new Slum levels to show) at 5 PM GMT on Sunday, 13th October 2013. Do join us then!
We are looking to hire a Scripter
We’re looking for a Scripter to work on Unrest for a part-time, work-from-home job that needs around 2 hours of work per day for 6-7 months.
Tasks
- Script quests and dialogue in XML
- Attend team meetings twice a week (hangouts/steam/mumble/others)
Requirements
- Must know how to use a text editor (eg. Notepad++)
- Knowledge of basic XML syntax is a plus
- Knowledge of mercurial (version control system) is a plus
The pay is in the range of Rs. 10k per month, which is about 160 USD per month (negotiable).
You can email us or use contact form link at the top.
Thanks,
Arvind
P.S. If you are a fan and you’d like to apply, we’d also like to tell you that this job will teach you everything you need in order to create custom mods and campaigns in Unrest!
Developer livestreams now on YouTube!
Just a small heads up to all our lovely followers, friends, sworn enemies and Kickstarter/Paypal backers:
We do around an hour of streaming each month, where we answer backer questions and showcase the game. If you want to catch up to our previous streams (or just want to stare at my face for around 1 hour straight), we’ve now uploaded them to Youtube. Check them out here!
I’ve also embedded them to this post in case you want to do less clicking (and more scrolling).
Love,
Arvind
The Games Train Just Keeps Tootin’ Along
I literally have no idea when Arvind sleeps.
That’s not comedy, that’s a true fact that I find genuinely unnerving. At some long-forgotten point in this project there would be the hours that Arvind was awake, and always working, and the hours where Arvind was asleep, and, I somewhat hesitantly assume, not working. I want to make it clear that we have moved past that transitional stage of Arvind’s biological operation. As best as I’ve observed there is never not a time where Arvind is working on this game. His overseer’s gaze is hot and unblinking. I don’t know how much longer I can continue acting like this is normal and that I’m not in one of those crappy horror movies nobody ever rents from the video store.
But being led by an organic(?) games-making factory has its advantages. For one thing, we’re pretty well on schedule, having completed virtually all of the necessary art, coding, and programming necessary to put our first chapter together. This is more impressive than it sounds, because when you’re making the first part of your game work, that’s really the same as saying you’re making your game work. In our case it meant fixing movement, sprites, enterable houses, the ability to change screen resolutions without throwing a screw, and a laundry list of other minor things without which our game would look like a 2D Bethesda game being played on a Commodore PC on the night of the Bugmoon Prophecy.
We’re also quite far along into the next chapter of the game. Again, that’s more impressive than it sounds, because for this chapter we’re creating assets (primarily NPC sprites and slum art sheets) that will be relevant for the entire rest of the game. All the story and dialogue script is written, as well as most of the journals and popups, so there’s not much remaining besides finishing up the art and putting it all together. Our artist, Mikk, has provided this lovely and relevant screenshot of Bhimra’s slums.
Lovely, as far as treacherous crime-ridden cesspits of human misery go. The sort of place you’d love to call your own if you had literally nothing else to call your own.
Here’s a work-in-progress to show you what a slightly less-lovely crime-ridden etc, etc might look like.
One important note: we’ve received most of the backer “design-an-[x]”submissions, but not all of them. Assuming you belong to one of the relevant tiers, the deadline to fill out your survey is October 7th. Let us know if you have questions.
By the by: we’re going to showing off our build, live and totally raw, on September 15th, 3PM GMT. Swing by livestream.com/chocolatehammer to call us names, peep our fresh hot videogame goodness, and tell Arvind he needs to get some rest before his SLP ratchets up too high. Thank goodness he’s not playing JSawyer.
Rutskarn out.
Claiming your digital Unrest rewards
Hello Backers,
You can now reclaim your rewards by clicking on this link:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/keyresender
If you submitted your survey before August 14th, the email will be the one you entered in the survey – otherwise, use the email you used for your Kickstarter account (you can change it in account settings for the humble store). Paypal backers should use the email they used to back the game.
And a reminder: The Pyrodactyl developer stream where we answer your questions and show off a bit of Unrest will happen at Sunday, 18th August, 5 PM GMT at http://www.livestream.com/chocolatehammer. See you there!
Cheers and love,
Arvind