SWORD OF SYMPHONY - Dev Summary - May 2023

Hello, hello everyone!!

I hope you've all been doing splendidly!

I'm happy to say that I'm now working on the final part of the intro cutscene - and also technically working on the first level too (I've been juggling multiple tasks at the same time - I'll explain in a moment xD). May has been a *VERY* productive month which will see the rest of game's development move along quite expeditiously from now! For that, I'm very happy to have accomplished the tasks I did for the month!

Animating the FINAL part of the intro cutscene...

You heard that right guys, I'm nearly about to move on from the intro cutscene; however there'll of course be things I'll have to go back and polish much later on. I'll also need to include a small part of the scene which I had to temporarily skip, due to a minor logistical incongruency (that has now been rectified) which tbh is perfectly normal at this stage.

The final part of the intro cutscene I'm now working on will lead seamlessly into the tutorial section of the game; which I am very excited to start, as it will be the first piece of actual gameplay development (i.e. coding in the game engine) that I'll be doing since January, after a BUNCH of animating, environment modelling + designing, texturing, concept work, writing, etc.

(You can watch my progress on this part of the intro cutscene in the behind-the-scenes channel of my community discord as a mid tier patron or above).

Blocking out the mission route for the first level...

So this is where I explain how I've been working on 2 things at the same time xD...

And that is due to the fact that the beginning section of the final part of the intro cutscene is shot in the same area as the environment for the first level. This allowed me to use the necessity to model its environment for the cutscene as an opportunity to also model a block-out for the entire mission route for the first level in detail.

As for the actual environment modelling for the first level's mission route, that will not be done by me, but by a few WONDERFUL additional 3D modellers I've just recruited a few days ago to do the base 3D models of the environments together with me (which I'll get onto next)...

(You can see my progress updates on the first level in the behind-the-scenes channel of my community discord as a mid tier patron or above).

Opened applications for additional 3D environment modellers...

Yes guys, you heard that right (again xD); I have now finally begun delegating tasks in the game's development to others aside from myself!

Even though I am capable of doing all these tasks in the development (and have been doing so up until this point, due to training myself for 5-6 years now), I think we all know that making a game of this size completely on my own would take a little longer than we'd all like.

However, there are a still a lot of tasks that I'm capable of doing very quickly (like animation, game-dev, VFX, character modelling and the music composition) and others which I strongly want to retain my precise artistic vision (like texturing the art-style of the environments, music composition, the writing and *some* of the environment modelling), so for all the tasks that usually take me the longest to do, that can be done in the background (which is mainly just environment modelling & NPCs at the moment), I've decided that I'll be delegating those tasks, which will greatly expedite (quicken) a huge chunk of the game development process.

I may delegate more tasks if I feel the circumstances uniquely necessitate it, but as of now, that's not the plan.

(If you're reading this and you're also interested in assisting me with the 3D environment modelling for the Sword Of Symphony, you can find details on how to apply in the information document in this Drive Folder).

Conclusion & Goals for June 2023...

All in all, I personally consider this month a very large leap in the game's development, particularly for the creation of the game's environments, as I've now made enough of them to show those I recruit as reference material for them to stay true to the vision.

For June, I'll be hosting yet another voice acting audition on Twitter for a particular character, so I can finish this intro cutscene once and for all (before I go back and polish it much later on). I'll also be working to establish a smooth and optimised workflow for me to efficiently direct the additional 3D modellers I've recruited (and those who I shall recruit in the very near future), which I'm doing right now. But mainly, I'm aiming to finally be able to return to the in-engine development of the game and start working on the tutorial level by the end of this month (or a little after the start of next month maximum).

So let's make it happen!

Also, before I close, I want to give a big thank you to one of my best friends ACE (creator of AIKODE); he shared with me some very valuable game-dev production tips that I'll most definitely be using to increase the quality of the gameplay for Sword Of Symphony.

See you all in the next update! :)

- Stephen