Launch Trailer

It's finally done!  The launch trailer that is.  Take a look!
Watch The Elementalist Launch Trailer on Youtube!

The game is pretty solid at this point too but I'm still trying to add a bit more music variety before the early access release.  I ended up spending more time trying to get the trailer put together than I had initially expected.  Probably because I haven't done any video editing since '92 or so when it still involved actual tapes.  Yikes!

I also ended up spending a lot of cycles trying to dial in the musical sound of the game.  I had been using a really great flexible and free tracker-like tool called SunVox but I ultimately decided to dial the sound all the way back to the original NES era so I switched to a more rudimentary program called FamiTracker.  FamiTracker emulates the original hardware (including the eccentricities) of the original NES 2A03 chip.  It can even output to the same format for playing on the original hardware.  So cool!

I have converted all of the music I had produced for the game to the lo-fi format and I'm happier with the way it sounds.  I feel like it gels better with the pixel art aesthetic of The Elementalist.

FamiTracker doesn't have the easiest or most intuitive interface I have ever used but now that I'm a bit more familiar with the work-flow I am starting to appreciate what it does offer.  There is a surprising amount of possibility given two square channels with 16 discrete volume levels, a triangle channel that can only sort-of change volume with some shenanigans, a noise channel and a sample channel.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the trailer.
Cheers,
Zack

Spring Cleaning

If you are like me you spent almost the whole day cleaning and organizing your garage so you could get your apocalypse preparedness supplies out of the house where they belong.  So it's no surprise that you are exhausted!  You are probably looking forward to kicking back, drinking a beer, and writing a much delayed blog post...  Let's get to it!

I know it's been a while since I posted an update here but I have still been super busy continuing to mold The Elementalist into the game I want it to be.  Most of my time has been spent with fleshing out the world and filling it in with things to do, people to meet, and enemies to fight.  Creating the game content is definitely the largest chunk of the work but I made it part of my process from early on so it has not seemed too daunting a task.

The core content is essentially complete and I am taking the time now to polish things up. I am currently working on adding more NPCs and more dialog to those that are already present as well as making more secrets to discover and embellishments to the world. I am also playing around with balancing enemies and powers and items to hopefully make it fun however you like to play.

So how much content is there currently?

•  An over-world map consisting of 420 rooms.
•  174 homes, caves, ruins, and other hidden locations.
•  8 dungeons with a total of 300+ rooms.
•  16 spells (including 4 elemental forms).
•  18 usable items.
•  56 unique enemies.
•  36 interact-able props.
•  36 pieces of gear to find and equip.
•  And other numbers of things I didn't count!

But I'm not quite done.  I figure there are still a few more enemies and props to be added as well as some more rooms and maybe even a couple more items. So this isn't the "I'm done" post, but it is the "I'm getting there" one.

My plan right now is to release at least an early access version that includes darn near everything I want to see in the game by the start of September. So I'm going to keep plugging away and looking forward to showing you the "fruits" of this labor in a couple of months.

Cheers,
Zack