Some Insight Into Our Development Plans

Hello once again, gang.

We’re hoping you guys have been enjoying the latest updates to both Amity Park and Breeding Farm in your spare time. If you’ve got any suggestions for how you’d like to improve either game we’ve been making for you all, please, hop into our Discord. The link will be provided at the end of this message.

Today, we’d like to talk to you about some new measures the team has been taking to improve the speed of our game’s development. Both Amity Park and Breeding Farm take a lot of work, and so you might wonder why exactly we decided to work on two separate games at the same time? Seems like we’d only bog ourselves down a bit, right?

Well, the long and the short answer of it was that we felt stunted, creatively, working solely on AP. Our collective love of Danny Phantom could only last so long before it started to wear us down. Sorta like eating one of your favorite foods every day, for a collective period of 7-8 months. That’s how we felt. So, we thought that it’d be good to break up the routine with an additional IP and genre to look at. We chose a breeding/adventure game to help fill a sort of gap that was left in that market by the departure of Breeding Season.

Now a lot of you already know all this information already, whether you’ve been in the Discord talking or in the online forums talking to Morah. It’s not exactly news. But we thought we’d state it one more time so that we can make sure any newcomers or Patreon stragglers know the situation we decided to put ourselves in. There, now that’s out on the table.

The actual new news that we wanted to share is this: we’ve now adopted a new, faster, safer, more streamlined method of sharing files. Normally, a script file would be handed off from one staff member to another, rather unceremoniously. With this method, we were just begging for errors to arise. Whether it was scripts being shipped ahead of schedule, to members working on old, outdated files, to having to insert the new stuff INTO files that have gone ahead already… just a big headache.

Now, our current system in place uses git and Github. Being able to immediately pull and push files into one another and merging collective scripts. Just, so, so much easier. We plan to pull off a lot more work with this method in place. We actually even have an exact breakdown for how dialogue scripts are now being processed, which we’ll share with you here:

Procedure for Game Update Scripts:

1) Lostraven will write the script out, given instruction from GZone on what the basis for the update should be based around. It's important to jot down any necessary or desired assets in the Google Doc Check List for that update, highlighting important material such as animations/h-scenes.

2) With new scripts that we need to split stuff out for later updates, that decision should be made close to immediately after the script is done and the Check List is added upon. We must then move future material out of the actual script we need to work on, and into its own separate file, likely to be given to Morah as he is the proofreader.

3) That script should then be proofread by Morah. Anything to do with corrections/additional dialogue/major revisions for the update should be made here, at this step. Everyone should have read the script by this stage. This will allow us to move any ideas or things we can't produce in a timely manner elsewhere.

4) From this point, we all should have one complete script that we work on getting ready for release.

5) Then Epadder will format it to run (just for portraiting/checking the portraiting) and to actually portrait it.

6) GZone can then program it to perform with its "sandbox: logic.

7) Then it shall be tested by any testers available, with final proofreading available to release.

One other last thing, rather quickly. We’ve heard a lot of your desires and changes you already have voiced about our games. We’re aware of what the main concern and interest for a lot of you are when you play our content. The story team will be meeting this weekend to determine the scope and figure out the scope of each game. We don’t want to make big plans and fall through with them. We want to create a plan, revise when necessary, and stick to it.

So, with all these things in mind, we hope you are looking forward to all the things we have in store for you. Thanks for reading, taking an interest, and have a Happy Halloween!

-GZone & the Team Bieno Staff

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/34ykkEH