Solo dev

Astraverse coming to Steam Next Fest!

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Feb. 21 – 28

First thing’s first…

If you don’t already know, lately I’ve been hard at work on crowdfunding to make an enhanced re-release of my previous title, Tales of the Elements. This new Tales of the Elements (we’re calling it T.O.T.E.) is supposed to stand on it’s own without the need of listening to the albums that its original game was based off of. I decided to do this enhanced re-release it to port the game to mobile and give the project a second chance at reaching a larger audience so that it could help boost the community following for Astraverse. As much as I would like to not think of T.O.T.E. as a “stepping stone” for Astraverse, the ultimate goal here is to give Astraverse a much-needed boost. It’ll need the funding and without a community behind it–I’m afraid it’ll struggle.

Now, the Kickstarter for T.O.T.E. is finally coming to an end–just a couple days left so I HIGHLY recommend that anyone who’s interested in supporting Astraverse support the T.O.T.E. Kickstarter as well! T.O.T.E. is a dope JRPG that’s heavily based on Hip Hop and it’s culture. It’s a bit different but it does have a banging soundtrack just like Astraverse does!

Supporting T.O.T.E. is also supporting Astraverse as there is even development software that I’m using for T.O.T.E. that I’m also using for Astraverse. You can click on the image above or the gameplay image below to check out the Kickstarter!

Short clip from the new T.O.T.E.

So, what’s going on with Astraverse???

Honestly, development is taking a short break. But, I’ll be resuming development again in about a month or so to finally finish off the playable quest demo and the official reveal trailer that I have planned. The ques demo will be for 1-4 players and it will include the character creator from the character creator demo as well as one playable quest including some narrative events with a boss at the end of it. I want people who play the demo to get a good feel for the vision of the game. So, I’m trying to include every important feature to the game’s main gameplay loop.

4-player inventory management!

Steam Fest February 21-28

Valve reached out to me and invited me to showcase Astraverse for the Steam Fest that will be held in February! During this event, players on Steam will be able to try out the quest demo for Astraverse so you can count on this being a solid timeline for development on the quest demo for Astraverse. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s characters and experiences with the demo!

– LB

Astraverse Kickstarter Pre-launch Announcement (& Update 7/5/2021)!!!

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Follow Astraverse on Kickstarter!

Astraverse, my Phantasy Star-inspired beat’em up RPG, is coming to Kickstarter!

The Kickstarter Pre-launch page is here!

As a matter of fact, that’s the reason why I’m late with my update. Ha ha!

I meant to post a development update a week or so ago but I was extremely busy with working on the Kickstarter page and getting it ready for the pre-launch campaign.

As I was working on the Kickstarter page, my wife got started on illustrating the characters for the cover/key art for the game, too. She did the first 2 characters and I helped to provide a background and some polishing in order for us to put together an early cover/key art to represent the game until we have the full cover finished!

If you ask me, we could probably get away with this being the final cover art but we wanted the cover art to give representation for all of the races and classes in the game. So, you can expect to see more characters in the final artwork!

Also, as I was working on the Kickstarter, I decided to write out and schedule the full-time game development plan. Then, I used that to create a visual roadmap for the rest of the game’s development.

As I make development progress over time, that space ship there will move down the roadmap. (Not on this post but in later updates).

Over the last 3 years, I’ve made slow and steady progress which has led up to me being almost finished with the framework containing all of the game’s core systems. Learning from past mistakes, I’ve decided to build the game this way so that I could avoid feature-creeping and an excessive amount of bugs towards the last half of the development.

However, I wouldn’t say that I’m halfway there yet (or if I am, I would say that the second half is going to take the most work). Even though, I’m just going to be adding content into the game like enemies, areas, and loot as well as tweaking values like stats and AI here and there from here on out, there’s quite a bit to do in those areas. Still, I’m looking forward to it as this is more of the “designing and implementation” phase of the development that I’ve been working towards for the past few years.

Another thing I thought I’d share are some of the backer rewards that are planned for the Kickstarter!

You can’t tell me that none of this stuff is cool!

The Kickstarter will allow for Astraverse to come out in the best possible way! For example, some of the later backer tiers include rewards for backers to be added into the game, to be able to help write quests, to be able to design outfits and even weapons for characters!

So, the next challenge will be for me to finish the 4-player playable game demo before the launch date or at least DURING the beginning of the campaign. Please root for me as I’ve burnt up a considerable amount of time fixing and planning the Kickstarter.

Please check out the Kickstarter prelaunch page and support it if you can! Every little bit counts–even if it’s just $1 and that’s reflected in the Kickstarer as well as there is even $1 backer tier with a reward for it!

I look forward to working with you all on Kickstarter!

– LB

I probably shouldn’t write this but…

/ Last BeNeVoLeNcE / 2 Comments

…I will anyway. Lol

It’s time to get personal.

As those who are following this dev log may know, I’ve been working a full-time job outside of development of Astraverse (which I mentioned has contributed to it’s progress slowing down). Today, some recent events has led me to feeling the urge to get something off my chest about that.

Before I start, I wanted to make the point of mentioning that I absolutely HATE talking about personal issues in any sort of public way but it’s definitely related to the progress of the game and at the same time I feel like I need to express this in the best way that I can. So, here goes!

From the very beginning of me working my current job back in 2019, I’ve had issues at work in which I felt I was being micromanaged, disrespected, treated unfairly and grossly unappreciated. Even my coworkers and supervisor have observed this.

Maybe it’s because of my personality? Maybe it’s my skin color? Maybe my religion? Heck if I know. Lol

All I can say is that this has been considerably hard to deal with as I had very little experience in the field to begin with and I have a habit of first looking at myself to examine if I’m the problem before anything else. It’s been a really tough couple of years and it feels like it’s finally coming to some sort of climax. You see, my boss seems to be trying to get rid of me and while I’ve only recently began to seriously suspect this it’s been pretty obvious to me and others from the beginning that she has had some sort of personal issue with me.

Now, you might be wondering, “If she’s never liked you, why’d she hire you in the first place?” That’s because she didn’t actually hire me. I have a good friend who is the boss of her boss (still following? Lol). It wasn’t up to her whether I’d have the job or not. And I don’t want to go to him for help because I feel like that would just be unfairly taking advantage of the fact that he’s my friend.

Anyway, without going into details, I could lose my job very soon.

In my current situation, I could just go look for another job which will be difficult in itself OR……well, this is where Astraverse comes in.

I’ve done so much work on Astraverse so far and not only that–I’ve also finalized my concepts and ideas as well as the GDD on it–so I’ve decided that I’m going to finally seek funding for it and get it finished! And from there, I have plans to launch my own indie game studio so that my wife and I can make a living from making games!

But, we can’t do that alone, though. We’re gonna need help. A LOT of help. So, I’m writing this not only to express myself and to shine some light on the situation but I’m also writing this in hopes that I can reach someone out there that might be able to help and of course reach out to those who are already helping by following the development of this passion project.

I want you to know that it’s okay to help–even if it’s to reach out and show support. It doesn’t have to be some kind of monetary thing. You can spread the word–tell a friend about this awesome game being made. You can reach out to me at lastbenevolence@outlook.com and let me know that I have your support. You can even just simply leave a comment at the end of this post. There are many ways that you can support us.

Maybe we’ll find a publisher to fund us, maybe we’ll obtain a grant for the project or maybe we’ll even run a Kickstarter.

Regardless of what happens, expect more updates, more info, more visuals and more gameplay of Astraverse from here on out!

That’s a promise.

  • LB

Dev Progress Update 3/24/21

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As some are probably aware, I have full-time work that eats up enough time to choke out potential progress to Astraverse’s development.

However, thanks to some help that I’m getting from my supervisor, I’ve been able to work more on Astraverse-related stuff during downtime–that’s how I was able to rebuild the site and go back to providing updates as well as reestablish the Discord channel.

Anyway, today I continued to work on the narrative event system that will play a big role in the gameplay structure and flow as well as the story. I haven’t explained this yet but that’s because the last update was about 3 years ago and, well, things have changed a bit since then. Not TOO much. Astraverse is largely the same game but it’s overall concept and narrative approach has grown since then.

Behold! Astraverse’s Narrative System

Back in 2019, during E3, they announced that Phantasy Star Online 2 was coming to the US. Now, this made me think about the future of Astraverse. Astraverse was originally supposed to “fill” the void that Phantasy Star behind in the past decade but in it’s own way. So I thought to myself–“If PSO2 is coming out, should I continue working on Astraverse? And if I do, is it just going to forever be in the shadow of PSO2?”

Well, the answer is that it doesn’t have to be. Astraverse can be it’s own game even if it’s heavily inspired by Phantasy Star. So, I brainstormed on ways to make it stand out. Honestly, I think I was overthinking it–there are many games out there that are heavily inspired by the devs’ favorites and that doesn’t usually take way from those games but in some ways it adds to them.

But, I still wanted to explore ideas that would add to the experience and at the same time create an entirely new experience.

That’s when I came up with the narrative adventure system. Basically, it works like a choose-your-own-adventure game but with the real-time side-scrolling beat ’em up gameplay in-between narrative events.

Basically, a player will read flavor text and dialogue that will include descriptive scenarios that the player can imagine–like in a tabletop RPG. Then there will be dialogue options or choices that the player will choose from to progress through these events which may or may not alter the path the player takes while adventuring on a planet.

In between areas of a planet’s “stage,” players will encounter these events. And they will work for up to 4 players, with each player taking turns to interact with scenarios.

Another example of the narrative system

This not only allows for the game to become much more immersive with it’s storytelling but it also lifts a bit of the burden that would come with other styles of storytelling such as fully-voiced or non-voiced cutscenes. It also helps the game to stand out. On top of that, it makes it far more reasonable to implement “user-generated” experiences such as a party’s ship crash-landing on a planet or a quest popping up out of nowhere due to certain conditions being fulfilled through previous quests. This also allows for me to explore more options such as unique decisions/options in quests that depend on certain stats.

Anyway, I’ve been working on that lately as I’ve completed most of the other in-game systems and I’m getting closer to being able to build a playable demo. Once I’m done with the narrative system this week, I’ll be trying to test it out and then I’ll be moving into working on building out the gameplay loop of a typical session in Astraverse. Stay tuned for more of the finalized info on the game and more updates as I’ll be pumping out more soon.

LB

Not Necessarily a “Return”

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I didn’t want to write a misleading title because if I said something like “I’m back” it would imply that I took a break which is simply not true. I’ve been working quite a bit on Astraverse.

Regardless, I’m FULLY aware of not having updated this dev log in a long time. I need no reminders and I honestly realize how sloppy it looks. Ha Ha

My break from writing regular updates didn’t stem from a lack of work or progress on the game. Slowly but surely, I’ve made quite a bit more progress on Astraverse since the last time I’ve updated this. And to be honest, I think I’ve made so much progress, that it’s hard to really tell exactly where I was in the development process in my last update here compared to now.

This is actually a good thing and should be taken as good news to anyone who has been looking forward to any news on the progress of Astraverse! This means there’s A LOT to share! And if you can tell by any of the footage here on the site, the game is looking like it’s reaching a point of even being playable. Yes, this is also becoming a reality!

So, how much progress have I made? Let’s leave it at that cliffhanger as I’ll be updating this dev log later today with some much needed visuals to give anyone interested a better idea of where we’re at and even what has changed.

LB

Challenges and Opportunity

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So, now that the move is over, I’m dealing with a serious case of jet lag. Over the course of the past week, I haven’t had much time to devote to developing Astraverse. This is all understandable but the real downside is that I’ve burned up my only free week before working a new, full-time job by just sleeping and waking up at odd times.

The good news is that I have a little help on the programming side of things now. The coder that helped me with some things on my last project is in on the project now so there should be some decent progress made even if I’m working full-time.

Originally, I honestly wanted to have things ready to showcase the demo and push it out to seek funding for the project so that we could work on it full-time. However, I underestimated the time that would be needed to complete the character creator and I honestly don’t think I have what it takes to run a successful crowdfunding campaign or “profitable-looking” project pitch.

Usually, I’d be pretty upset about such a huge and disappointing change in my plans but I don’t really see it as much more than a simple setback that may set up the foundation for a beneficial opportunity.

Instead of seeking some sort of funding for the development of the game from a publisher or some sort of crowdfunding platform, I can put my own money into the project where it’s practical and without worrying about having food on the table. This way, if I need to crowdfund at all, it will be to pay for stuff like paying the extra programmer(s) or paying a professional artist to redo the game’s artwork.

Of course, work will take away from the time I can devote to development but that’s where Astraverse’s game development method comes into play:

At some point, the development will shift from system and feature programming to just pure content creation. A simple way to put this is that the basic framework for the game will be done first–parent assets for weapon types, class types, enemy types, equipment types, area types, item types, etc. being programmed first–and then new stuff will be simply added as modified versions of the parent assets (but presented with different art, stats, layouts etc.). This means that once that initial part of development is cleared, a good 50% (or more) of the development will require much less time and effort to cover.

I heard somewhere that this type of development was called “sandboxing.” I think it’s a great way to handle development for games that focus less on “evolving gameplay” and more on equipment and level grinding (like in a lot of rpgs)–especially when a large amount of content is needed.

Anyway, I’m currently lacking reliable internet at the moment but hopefully in the next week or so, I’ll have something fixed up at the house so that I can post up some more music or videos.

– LB

Quick update: Moving

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First off, I have to apologize for not having a regular update here posted on-time.

 

My wife and I are moving this week so I haven’t been able to work on Astraverse in a couple of days. We’re almost ready to fly out on Friday so I’ll have some time to work on it before we move.

 

I did, however, work on some animations that needed adjustment and made some new animations for the male characters–hand-to-hand combat ones. I don’t have the time to post them just yet but they’ll definitely be in the demo for the game!

 

The goal this week is to finish up the character creator and then post up an update on it before we leave on Friday.

 

– LB

 

 

 

I Finished the GDD for Astraverse!

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I’m pretty proud of getting the GDD (game design document) finished.
It’s only about 88 pages long but the way I would describe the document is like it being an entire “blueprint” for the game. Put simply, I could literally give the GDD to another developer and they’d know exactly how to design the game in the way that I envisioned it (on a technical and gameplay level at least). Of course, they probably wouldn’t have the passion for the project like I do and they probably wouldn’t be able to nail the same exact “vibe” or “feel” that I would when designing BUT everything’s practically in that GDD.

 

So for this post, I decided to include a section of the GDD which talks about the basic game design concepts of the game:

 

Game Design Concepts

 

A Non-MMO, MMO Experience –

The main concept of Astraverse is to have a highly replayable multiplayer loot and level grind Role-Playing Game in a similar style and setting to Phantasy Star Online that can be fully experienced without an online or MMO server. A popular example of this would be most games in the Monster Hunter series. Almost all of the Monster Hunter games do not rely on MMO servers at all but they feel and play like MMO’s with highly replayable gameplay and a heavy emphasis on multiplayer co-op.

 

Character Creation –

The character creation should have enough depth to feel like a player’s character is a reflection of themselves or at least feel like their own unique and personal character. Just like in PSO, PSU, PSO2 and the spin-offs of said games, the character creation should be an immersive feature, not an afterthought.

 

Stages –

The stages in the game should be randomly generated enough to artificially expand the size of the game world and simulate the experience of exploring entire planets without the use of open-world gameplay. Phantasy Star Online’s randomly generated areas and the original Phantasy Star games’ planetary traveling systems and overworld are both excellent artificial world expanding features that can be easily combined to make a new system that’s simple but effective enough to gain this result.

 

Player-Generated Experiences –

The gameplay should make possible unique “player-generated” experiences/stories through harmonized gameplay systems. For example, a player losing all of his or her health shouldn’t be the end of a game experience. That user experience can be made more unique by giving players a more difficult and higher-stakes situation to deal with as a result of a player’s loss. Games like Dark Souls and Shovel Knight actually handles this quite well.  Other examples of user-generated experiences is the moogle letter delivery system from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and the open-ended quest system of Divinity Original Sin 2.

 

Single Player –

The single player campaign should have a uniquely captivating story that compliments the gameplay without taking away the focus from it. Also, single player mode should also be at least “hinted” at being connected with the multiplayer experience–for example, the story shouldn’t give the player a unique/exclusive position in the game world (like being the “hero” of the galaxy) but should instead make reference to the player’s traits that make him/her unique. A story character, for example, may even say things like “I know some other rookie Seekers like you” — in effect, making reference to the existence of other players playing Astraverse.

 

Immersive Game Setting –

The setting should be a science-fiction fantasy world without the existence of magic. Most of everything, including basic systems, should have some sort of explanation through the game world’s presentation and lore. An outstanding example of this can be found in Phantasy Star 2 in which a player’s saved data file is directly referenced within the game world as the player’s “memories” and are stored in a “data center” whenever a player saves his or her game.

 

Multiplayer Graphical User Interface –

Menus, shops and anything else that is displayed with the GUI should not hinder the experience of other players but should enhance it. Shops should be accessible by all players at once without the need of splitting the screen or forcing players to shop separately. Player hub information and menus should be restricted to parts of the screen that do not take away from the experience of other players during same-screen co-op.

 

Artstyle and Music –

The art style should feel like a mixture of the look and feel of Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star 4 with references to retro Science-fiction artwork and the hand painted or hand drawn nature of Vanillaware’s art style.

The music should sound a lot like Phantasy Star Online’s music but also blended with my own style of trip-hop music.

Link to one of my instrumental albums (as an example): https://lastbenevolence.bandcamp.com/album/pinakamaganda

 

 

I decided to throw that example link there at the end for those who were not familiar with the kind of music I created.

 

– LB

 

 

Development Progress 12/30/18

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Okay, so this time I decided to take some footage from a couple of weeks ago to showcase some things that I’ve gotten done for the month of December:

I enjoyed putting this video together more than I thought I would and it took a lot less time than I anticipated as well so I’m thinking it would be a good idea to make more videos for future dev progress updates.

There was a lot of progress made this month even though the project’s not exactly where I’d like it to be right now.

Besides what’s shown in the video, here’s a quick breakdown of what all I’ve gotten done this month:

  1. All male and female custom player character hairstyles, skins, attachments, outfits, and faces ready for the demo.
  2. The design for the gameplay Hud UI.
  3. A few buldings for environments.
  4. The design for the character creation GUI.
  5. At least one digitally painted weapon type for each class.
  6. The GDD 90% completed (almost 80 pages)!
  7. The new title logo.
  8. The calm and battle tracks for the final stage in the game.
  9. The cannon attack animation for female characters.
  10. The female ADOL idle animation.
  11. Documentated abilities (for a new “trait” system) and Section ID names.

Some of these things took more than just this month alone to work on like the GDD and the composite character stuff for custom player characters.

It was pretty awesome how PSO included the afro as a hairstyle for custom characters despite it not being my personal preference. It felt iconic at the time to have an MMORPG include something like that so Astraverse is bringing it back!
It was pretty cool how PSO had the afro in it despite it being a hairstyle I personally didn’t prefer.  It felt iconic to have an MMORPG include something like that.

As for the game’s character creator, I didn’t finish it as soon as I hoped. A storm hit my area causing a power outage for several hours yesterday, so I wasn’t able to work on the game, unfortunately.

But, that’s okay. Game development is usually a very long and involved process so unexpected setbacks and delays shouldn’t come as a surprise. Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a “perfect” development process for any game up until now.

In my honest opinion, the closest one to being “perfect” in recent memory would’ve been the development of Divinity Original Sin 2 but even Larian Studios experienced a power outage on the game’s launch day.

Any delays here right now are minor compared to that. But, as long as I’m getting at least one thing done (whether big or small) once a day, I’m making progress and I think that’s really the important thing.

– LB