Saturday, September 10, 2016

Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #36



Hey everyone! It's been just about a year since my last development log for the studio, and I wanted to use this Labor Day to make a post to talk about what we've been working on in the past year.

Previously, I've talked about how we made the decision to split Selatria into two parts. Due to the long development of the game, we wanted to show what we've done over the past few years and use this first half to assist us with funding for the second half of the game as we will not be doing any more crowdfunding for the Selatria team.

This brings me to the updated logo for Selatria. We took into account feedback given about the readability of the name of the game, as well as a subtitle for the first half of the game, so we came up the idea of such:


The first half of the game will be officially titled "Selatria: Advent of the Dakk'rian Empire", and we will have more information about beta testing below. Expect a new trailer for this to come about next week or so!

Beta Testing:

Beginning next week, we want to aim to put Selatria: Advent of the Dakk'rian Empire into beta testing. We'll have a limited number of keys available to give out for people to play for the next week or so to ensure everything is set and ready for the release date. Beta version data will not be able to be carried over to the final game. Those who have supported us on Indiegogo will be getting both registration keys for the beta test as well as the both halves of the actual game sent via email on launch day.


Development Team Changes:

Among the biggest change since our last development log is that Selatria is now being developed across California and Nevada. Shortly after the last development log, I relocated for new opportunities and used said opportunities to be able to help fund the projects we are working on in-house. Since then, we've brought on a new sound effects artist, an additional composer, several voice actors, and two new game designers for the studio team.

Here's a recent picture of our team from E3 2016 a few months ago.



Unfortunately, the side effect from all of this is that is time I would use to write about development went to commuting and traveling between California and Nevada instead.


Expanded Social Media Use:


Since last year, we've made lots of strides with social media. Deborah who is one of our leading artists for Selatria is now doubling as social media for the studio. We have now begun using Selatria's Facebook and our whimindie Tumblr to do posts on development of the games. I've also set up an instagram to where I'll post new info about studio and behind the scenes development on our projects. Be sure to like or follow our pages!

Facebook / Twitter / Tumblr / Instagram


Use of Organizational Tools:


Beginning in late-2014 we began having weekly standup meetings for the project and put those notes in a Google Doc to note project progress.

This year, we decided to switch to a new project tool called HackNPlan, which is a management tool similar to Rally and Jira, but meant for game developers. It's currently in beta phase, but I've found it to be essential to keeping track of all the different aspects of the project. The biggest help has been towards keeping track of bugs in the project as well as voice acted files that need review and retake.

Because of the distance and increased team members working from home, we began using Slack to keep communication and files in a good spot.


New Auditions:

We plan on having a new round of auditions for characters in the second half of Selatria later this year. We want to focus on finishing the roles of current talent before we add new voices to the roster, and getting away from having our current talent wait several months for feedback. We want to get a handle on the process first.


That about wraps it up for this development log. Thanks for sticking with us on this long development journey. Our team poured our heart and soul into this game, and we hope that it will be one of the best indie turn based RPGs on the market. Hopefully you enjoy it as much as we did making it! Until next time.