Orkastle Update 02 - New Patreon Tiers, Battle Animations, YT Plans, etc.

The last 3 months have genuinely felt like years passed.

The main is reason is that I both crammed a shocking amount of knowledge about animation (something I effectively had no real experience in until now) in my head and that tasks are getting faster and easier to complete.

Being able to make signifcant progress on character designing as nearly an after-thought here and there in between working on other tasks feels like a miracle compared to when I was slamming my head against the wall for weeks on end trying to get a design for Kannyo I was happy with.

This update won't be very comprehensive because there's too much to report on everything, so I'll just get you up to speed with the major strokes. I made little chapter headers for organization.

Promise I'm going to start making updates a lot more frequently so this doesn't happen again

(;´∀｀)

NEW PATREON TIERS

First thing to mention is not a new tier but rather an addition to an existing one.

10 dollar Bespoke tier now gets access to my technical blog.

Unlike the Clinics which are for conveying knowledge I have down cold(ies), the technical blog is essentially a journal of what I'm currently learning and how I'm going about learning it.

The main things to expect are annotated gesture practure breakdowns, both studies of other artists' work and original stuff, annotated illustration process stages, miscellaneous drawing notes, and practical (ie. striving to improve my writing skill) reflections/brief analysis on stories I'm reading/watching.

.clip files will be posted for anything finished also.

I just posted the first one annotating my progress stages for this Koshian anime-nuri drawing I did.

Uploads with this will be irregular because it will just be a natural biproduct of my own studying/learning, but you can expect a few things a month.

20 dollar Prince tier:

Access to the Secret Stream.

It'll just be me streaming stuff I wouldn't normally stream (coding, some writing, maybe even VN reading, anki, character designing, music/sound, video editing if it doesn't blue screen my laptop, etc.) and not really worrying about being entertaining or not (I will interact with chat though, so it's not a bad opportunity to have longer discussions).

These will be irregular, but I will try to roughly schedule them ahead of time so people can show up if they want. Anyone in the tier can vote on certain times, and I'll try to fill them.

50 dollar King tier:

I've been playing around with the idea of "personal training" for a while, in the sense of 1 on 1 involving myself in someone's creative goals.

I've always felt a mix of "I'm still too much of a learner myself" and "I have too much on my plate" to go through with this.

I don't feel either of those things anymore, so I'd be more than happy now to hands on steer people (for 50 dollars )

(*´ω｀)

Once a month we can have a strategy meeting in whatever form is best. If you have any materials to go over, I can spend up to an hour reviewing them, including things like drawovers.

Also if you just want to introduce me to something, influence my thoughts, etc. that's fair game too.

Once a day you can report small things to me and get quick strongly thought out and personal responses where I am 100% direct about what I think is the best move for you to make.

Basically, it's like Khatz's old training program if it wasn't a scam and cost like 2% the price and wasn't just for learning Japanese.

Things I can help with:

-Japanese learning

-Writing fiction (in English or Japanese (don't expect native-tier feedback on technical language-related things, although I have endless creative advice, and have a strong technical grasp regardless))

-Art (no promises with graphic design topics such as font design, although I am gradually learning that)

-General life mindset strats and routines

For additional support there is the (drum roll)....

100 dollar Non-Binary Monarch tier:

Basically, it's like if you had 2 copies of the 50 dollar tier.

Additionally, instead of simply checking in more, I'll be willing to look at actual materials and stuff in more detail outside of strategy meetings. For example, a chapter from a novel or a drawing I'll spend more time on feedback with if requested.

I am limiting slots for these 2 tiers so I don't accidentally job change from gamedev to personal trainer.

I don't think there's enough Howard Blast beliebers where these will get filled quickly, but you never know, and a single viral video could change that at a moment's notice.

200 dollar Otaking tier:

You will also get the same personal training treatment of the 100 dollar tier, along with one other reward.....

I honestly don't expect someone to sub to this, I kind of just wanted an excuse to make a 200 dollar tier

(*´з`)

I tried to think of something I wouldn't want to part with for less than 200 dollars and came to the idea of putting up Orkastle spoilers.

I'll gradually fill it with detailed chapter summaries, in-progress scenes, lore stuff, CG sketches for dramatic scenes, even unused designs, plot prototypes, etc.

I'll even gradually upload content from my cancelled 2019 project, which has a LOT of cool stuff to show (I hope to rebuild that project from scratch after Orkastle is finished).

I already uploaded the story summary for Orkastle. It's from a while back when I was organizing my thoughts on the story, so little things might be outdated, but it should be a generally accurate summary. It's terse in areas so some nuances might be a tad confusing if you read it quickly.

(note: story summary stuff will usually be in English, and scenes/dialogues will always be in Japanese, but if anyone does in fact sub to this tier I'd be happy to convert anything into English if need be (‘ω‘ ))

This tier will be limited to 1 person (the one true Otaking).

Also, I'm unlocking 3 clinics to use as samples.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSRj47VlR2zPrINTQbopz8efzPSql57G1&si=EVz3-5FmGI5hYB-y

GAME PROGRESS

My current focus is coding spells into the game and finishing up core gameplay systems.

The first battle sim release will happen when Reiya and Necromancer both have all their moves implemented. You will be able to select one as playable and fight against the other.

Necromancer is not going to be a character in the actual story mode, I just designed her to be a good reflection of the types of (strong) enemies you could encounter.

If it gets requested enough I could find some minor places for her in the story mode...

Pretty much all the attacks I want to add for this first battle simulator release are done art-wise, but there are a few minor things like pixelating this familiar (as in 使い魔) guy you summon (similar to a substitute in Pokemon) as Necromancer.

Reiya's sprite for battling against her in versus mode needs to be pixelated. This doubles as an additional tachie for ADV scenes.

It occurred to me at the end of this 3 month update drought of updates that I'm actually not that far from having everything needed for battling in story mode ready to go, which is an actually incredible relief because from a certain perspective, that's 1/3rd of the entire game, not in terms of literal volume, but if you think of the thirds of the game being:

-Battling

-Dungeon exploration

-ADV story scenes

Naturally, I will need to make a lot of monsters, but adding monsters is a relatively trivial process.

When an enemy attacks, (in most cases) a simple animation symbolic of the type of attack they performed will appear on screen (kind of like the wound effect in a game like House of the Dead when the player takes damage) rather than a unique, higher effort animation done for the player's attacks.

This means once Reiya, Yuriel, and Kannyo are implemented with all their attacks animated, the amount of work on battles is utterly downhill.

For spell animations, I'm trying to utilize reuse wherever possible.

There's 3 major types of reuse.

The first is very similar to Pokemon Red and Blue where animations will simply stack on each other.

For example, this flash animation could be its own attack.

Or it could play right before this striking attack to convey some kind of 2 step process.

The second type of reuse is when I edit an animation to make a new one or I combine animations into one.

For example the dust effect at this end of this denpa attack will be combined with lots of different animations.

The third type of reuse is simply pallete swapping attacks to make new attacks.

I'll get a lot of milage out of this especially when dealing with the particles for support spells.

When a character uses a support move, typically their wind effect animation will play.

(the gif output compresses the color on these sometimes, I also haven't put gradients on the Necromancer sprites yet)

This will usually be paired with particles

(here only a single particle is being shown, but in code, multiple particles will be triggered)

The wind blow animation can be used for other purposes too, like Reiya summoning her shield to create a feeling like the shield emits an aura upong appearing.

Not even as a cope for saving time, I genuinely think reuse provides a superior experience because it narratively relates attacks to other attacks and gets the player thinking in such a way that encourages noticing things. It also helps keep the aesthetic focused.

Furthermore, it allows me to pick and choose where I do in fact want an animation to be unique and never appear anywhere else, for example Reiya's signature Gigabolt/ギガライ and Gigaice/ギガヒョウ attacks.

I might need to clean up Gigabolt a bit.

I intentionally chose to have Reiya have a lightning spell and an ice spell as an homage to a certain famous JRPG protagonist's starting spells (Cloud in FF7).

I need to do some testing before I'm positive about the exact effects every move will have, but I have a very clear vision of what I want Orkastle to feel like and a current plan for every attack effect.

The 4 distinct types of battling scenarios I need to carefully design are:

-Dungeons

-1 vs 1

-Team vs team

-Team vs 1

I've put a solid chunk of time at this point refining my understanding of turn-based mechanics (mostly focused on competitive Pokemon) and am strongly opinionated about game design on every level now.

More on all that in the next update and:

NEXT DEVLOG

So with the new devlog coming up, I'm changing plans slightly.

I almost made the same mistake as the last one with simply loading more into a single update than a Youtube vid can well-present, so I lowered the scope of what is to be covered in this next vid.

The new devlog will be done within several days. I'm going to edit this one minimalistically as much as possible.

The main thing that will determine when it gets done is how many more attacks I want to implement into code to show off.

It's almost exclusively focused on my design philosophy behind Reiya and showing off her main way of being played.

It will show a little bit of Necromancer to serve as an opponent/foil as well, but won't dig into many of her attacks and such.

The title will be the lightly baiting "What I Learned From Pokemon's Best Designed Game," and I'll be jumping between talking about my perspective on Pokemon Red and Blue and how I'm trying to evolve the best aspects along with my own ideas about how a game should feel good to play.

YOUTUBE PLANS

Honestly, I've come to realize a lot of existing indie devs have had a bad influence me in terms of my understanding of the best way to go about communicating with your audience. I learned a lot of good things from existing people, like what makes an engaging devlog and the like, but I've come to find myself on a very different kind of vcctor otherwise.

I find a lot of people updating too infrequently or being too concerned with keeping a distance from the viewers/players reminiscent of what a larger professional brand would have to maintain.

I want this project to be an opportunity for everyone to learn and grow and break into new ground.

Orkastle as a campaign is not about making something that makes me feel like I did something special no one else can possibly do and indulging in an overgrown ego.

It's supposed to be about proving that the world outside Japan is capable of so much more than what we've limited ourselves to up to this point.

I'd rather update more frequently while using updates as an opportunity to teach things than worry about being impressive every time.

I spent some time deciding if I really wanted to or not, but it's become inevitable at this point that I do a little conventional Poketubing (smiles like Wolfey).

I've spent so much time with this series as a kid, and it just sort of fell into place as my launching pad for the gameplay of Orkastle.

I've also been doing a little modding on Pokemon Red and Blue using the disassembly on my rest days, both for fun and to get a better grasp of the game as a system.

There's no end of interesting and shockingly insightful (both in terms of coding and game design) videos I can make off even simple mods like adding a dragon type attack into the game or increasing Night Shade's damage output by 1.75 times.

My immediate goal with the Patreon is to pass 400 USD asap, because I would be able to work with a bit more peace of mind and worry less about how urgent it is that I make some quick money from commissions or paywalled ero art or the like.

I'm fine with working on this project on a financial deficit within reason, because I'm nearly certain when the big public demo drops (the whole of Chapter 1), fundraising the game should be a clean sweep.

Furthermore, adding content gets easier and easier the more the project progresses, and more content means more things to grab people's attention with.

Right after the next devlog drops, I'll be working on building up my Xitter account more as well.

In the meantime,

Stay based and otaku.