As some of you may know, we recently closed our Patreon because we weren’t sure how well we’d be able to maintain it with other life responsibilities getting in the way. But we enjoyed sharing our development process with our supporters, and we’d like to keep doing that in some fashion. So here’s our latest development log!
OBJECTIVES
Prepare new demo for release!
Compose new music for romantic moments
Change the colors of Jones’s outfit
Set up barns for use in the 3D environment
CHALLENGES
Down-sizing a Demo
In case you didn’t already know, we recently released our first public demo of Crimson Spires on itch.io! We were excited to share it with the world, but it took some work to prepare. This game will probably be our largest yet in every way, including memory size. We knew we would need to delete a lot of assets from the full game in order to trim the demo to a pallet-able snack size. And this meant deleting a LOT of assets.
To spare you many tedious technical details, I’ll just say that we had trouble deleting the correct assets without causing errors. Our first few build attempts were missing some important files, so they failed. It took several attempts to juggle files around before we got a build that worked. But we finally got it working, and now we’re really excited to receive feedback from people who try it out!
The Scandal of Jones’s Pants
We also had the pleasure of sharing our demo with a live audience this week. It was a great opportunity to watch reactions in real-time and gauge people’s reactions to the opening of the game. In a group setting, people’s reactions can be heightened and more apparent than an individual playing alone. People might voice thoughts and reactions to the group that would otherwise stay quiet. In this case, a lot of people in the room started laughing when Jones’s first appeared.
We’ve demoed the game before, but always with individuals playing the demo alone. Never before did we get the reaction we got this time: a lot of people laughing hysterically. And it’s because they thought Jones had no pants on!
I’m not sure if it was the size of the TV, the color settings, or if it’s just something that no one had ever commented on before. But it did, in fact, look like Jones’s had no pants! So naturally, after laughing along with everyone else, we got to work fixing this as quickly as possible.
Now Jones has nice blue jeans instead of skin-colored khakis. Someone also suggested we make his shirt red; it’s an inside joke you might get if you play through the demo 😉
De-Bugging Modular Assets
To help build out the world of Bataille, as well as provide some variety to the environment, we’ve ended up using a few content packs purchased from the UE4 asset store. We’re very careful adding these to our game, because we’re aware that haphazardly throwing together different modeling/texture styles can lead to an aesthetic mess. Whenever we use something purchased from the asset store, we go through all of the models and textures and make sure that they are sufficiently low-fi, often modifying them to fit the style we’ve already developed.
Even though this is time consuming in its own way, it still is probably faster than building everything from complete scratch, especially when it comes to modular content. What is modular content? Walls, doors, roofs, and other sections that can be combined to make custom buildings. These are incredibly helpful because (a) they’re usually easier to modify to match our style and (b) they can be used to make a variety of structures.
This week, we picked up a content pack specifically for building barns. Since a decent amount of Bataille is spread out and rural, it makes sense there would be a few farms in the area. Unfortunately, this pack was a little more difficult to use than the other two we’ve added to the project, specifically because of how it flipped certain meshes by using negative scale values. This isn’t something we like to do in our projects for some complicated reasons related to using instanced static meshes, so we had to manually edit several of the modular pieces and build our own actors within the game. It wasn’t a big deal, however, and now we’re ready to fill out some of the outskirts of Bataille with farms/abandoned barns.
Romantic Music for a Horror Game
A challenge we’ve often faced while working on this game is meshing the horror elements of the story with romantic themes. This challenge presents itself in the music, as well. As we worked on blocking romantic sections of the story, we realized we needed softer, happier music that was not yet present in our soundtrack.
To solve this, Jenny composed a new song in a major key, but she tried to maintain a faint element of bittersweet sorrow in a few areas. To balance it with other tracks, she used a lot of the same instruments present throughout the soundtrack: strings, guitar, clarinet, and viola. She threw in a little harp to emphasize to the wistfulness of romantic emotions.
We’re excited to say that we finished our big update for Echoes of the Fey: The Immolation in March, and it’s now available on Steam and itch! The game should now perform better on lower-end computers, and everyone can enjoy remastered artwork and new special effects. Meanwhile, our work on Crimson Spires continues!
WINDOWS OF ILLUSION
A few months ago, we considered trying to make false interior windows in the style of (among other games) the PS4 Spider-Man game. It was a half-realized thought that we didn’t follow through on because we weren’t sure it was worth the effort considering the lofi visual style of the environments.
Well, it turns out there was a good reason to start looking at fake windows, but instead of false interiors we were motivated by creating false *exteriors.* There aren’t too many times you’ll be wandering around inside a house or other area in Crimson Spires, but in the few instances we had, we found that the black reflective material didn’t quite create the effect we wanted. It was just too reflective and looked like everyone was blacking out their windows with paint. That might work for our conspiracy-theorist Thomas Wagner, but characters like Erika and Maddy wouldn’t be doing that sort of thing.
With this in mind, Malcolm decided to re-explore the idea of using bump offset to fake depth and create some background images for windows that look outside. To do this, we created some textures based on screenshots of the open world and built a shader to adjust their depth based upon the angle of viewing. Bump offset isn’t quite as good at this as it is at fake interiors, but given how rarely players will actually walk around the windows to see the seams, we think its an effective way to portray exteriors without having to build out some small version of the 3d world outside every interior level.
This is completely placeholder, because we haven’t taken the final
screenshots for the material yet. When we do, we’ll actually take
three–one for day, another for dusk, and finally one for night. Using a
vector material parameter, we’ll fade between them to correctly show
time of day.
Once this was done, we had to give the fake interiors another shot just in case we wanted to use those as well. They look better in motion than the fake exteriors, so we may end up using those as well.
BLOCKING OUT THE SCENES THAT BLOCKED US
In March, we passed an important personal milestone: blocking out the sequence of the story that gave Jenny writer’s block for so long. This was a segment of the script that she rewrote at least 5 times. She started to fear she would never find an iteration of the script that was solid enough to keep building upon.
At long last, adding one of these scenes to the game felt like confirmation that she was on the right track again and ready to keep going.
Here’s later in that scene, blocked out in UE4:
This whole scene didn’t even exist until Jenny’s final rewrite of that story sequence, but now it’s a pivotal moment that ultimately brings Erika and Julian closer together.
REDO ONE CG, REDO ‘EM ALL!
Similar to how Jenny ended up redoing every sprite in the Immolation after fixing up a few animations, most of the CGs also got a makeover. Jenny knew she could improve upon her old digital paintings. At first she was just going to touch up a few details, but then it was hard to stop.
In this case, it’s easier to show you the changes than try to describe them, so here are some examples.
There are plenty more CGs we remastered, but we’ll let you discover those for yourself when you play the update!
ADDING LIFE WITH MOVEMENT
While working on Crimson Spires, Malcolm started to worry that the world felt a little too static. While we’re still going for a look that evokes older 3D games on simpler systems, we thought some movement in the world might make it more interesting. To accomplish that, we modeled and added a handful of new props.
While no one drives in Bataille, we thought it wouldn’t be too unreasonable to think that no one ever bothered to take down the streetlight. Is this just sleight of hand to let us make a small Twin Peaks reference at some point? Maybe.
It wouldn’t be small-town America without a lot of American flags flying across the town. Since we have incorporated weather effects, we thought the flags should be affected and created this prop with that in mind.
We’ll continue to add other less-than-static tweaks to the environment as we build it out, hoping to make it a more interesting place to explore.
In February, we kept working on Crimson Spires, but we also went on a detour to work on our first game in UE4, Echoes of the Fey: The Immolation. A lot of big changes will appear in the next patch of the game, hopefully next week! Meanwhile, here are the high lights from last month’s development. Check out our Patreon to see updates like these every week!
AVOIDING BURNOUT AT A JAM
In case you don’t already know, we participated in the 2019 Global Game Jam! Overall, it was a blast. But during that weekend, we had to keep a close eye on our burnout levels.
To clarify: we LOVE working on video games. But considering the fact we spend most of our days already working on games, it’s hard for us to get excited about a game jam. We try to spend our weekends doing OTHER things, like going out, socializing, or even just PLAYING games instead of making them! A lot of our good friends were planning to jam, and we wanted to join in on the fun. But we worried it would lead to creative burnout if we spent our whole weekend working on another video game.
All of this changed when we started joking about making a Bandersnatch parody. I’m sure most of you heard of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, an interactive movie on Netflix with a lot of hype around its release. We enjoyed Bandersnatch, but all the hype around it annoyed us, considering that interactive stories–and even Full-Motion-Video games–have been around for AWHILE. We also had some issues with the story, which we already ranted about on our blog here. We also heard it praised as a technical marvel for having no loading times, and we were like, “We could do that in Unreal Engine 4. No biggy.”
SO WE DECIDED TO GO FOR IT.
The best part about making an FMV game (for us) was that it would be a huge diversion from normal development. Instead of staring at code all weekend, we’d be FILMING! Mind you, there was still some coding involved, but we survived. Most of the weekend, we got to goof around and make a movie with our friends. And we had a blast!
Malcolm played the main character, Sam. A lot of us on the team took turns playing “Cornelius,” a ghost who lives in Sam’s house. Meanwhile Sarah Wahoff, a talented musician, was the only one who could play the ghost while jamming on a violin:
We’re trying to get an HTML5 version of the game working, but until then you can download and play the game from our GGJ page!
WALK SPEEDS – REALISM IS A DRAG!
Along with getting our fast travel system working, we’ve had to reconsider and tweak Erika’s walk speed many times over. At first, we had her moving at a standard human walk speed–a little over 3 mph. But we found that while playing, this felt excruciatingly slow. We have fast travel now, but we want to encourage exploration and we were afraid the slow walk speed would discourage it instead.
We effectively doubled the walk speed, meaning that in actuality Erika is intensely jogging everywhere. Fortunately, video games aren’t reality and “feel” is more important than realism. We believe with her current speed, she gets around town a lot better without feeling like a hurried sprint (even if, technically, that’s what she’s doing if we apply real life measurements to the game).
RE-DRAWING A CHARACTER I’VE KNOWN FOR YEARS
One of the challenges we faced when revisiting The Immolation involved touching up animations for Sofya. In our new and improved VN Framework, it is crucial that every frame of animated blinks and mouth movement have the same pixel dimensions (more on that below). In order to accomplish this, we would have to redo every single character’s animations. But how could we stop there? Once Jenny started redrawing Sofya’s mouth and eyes, she kept going. She made a lot of small adjustments to Sofya’s face.
As you can see, Jenny simplified the line art quite a bit. She also sharpened the shading. (The only reason her scar and eyes are different, of course, is because The Immolation occurs before her transformation.)
The challenge with redrawing Sofya is that we’ve looked at her existing design for years. We’re so accustomed to it that it’s very difficult to accept any change. But since creating The Immolation, Jenny’s style and process has changed and improved in a lot of ways. She really wanted to bring some of those improvements to Sofya’s design, especially in the hopes of using the changes for an eventual Episode 3.
We’re still getting used to the new version of Sofya, but we hope that the new design will make for a better introduction to Sofya in The Immolation.
ANIMATED SPRITES ARE THE SOURCE OF MUCH STRIFE
Here’s a little more detail on why we have to redo all the blink and mouth animations for the Echoes of the Fey: The Immolation update!
For all our Echoes of the Fey games so far, the blinks and mouths have looked something like this:
If you look at the pixels around each sprite, you’ll notice they’re fuzzy, smudged, and inconsistent. The dimensions of each sprite are different, as well. The second blink is taller than the first. Some of the mouth animations are taller than others, because the entire jaw moves up and down.
Now that we have experience making so many games, we have realized why designing sprite animations in this way is such a horrible idea. When separating the various layers into sprite sheets, it becomes a mathematical nightmare to keep every frame of each sprite in the right place on the character. The tiniest inconsistency causes a blink not to fully cover the eye, or makes the jaw look slightly unhinged.
With Crimson Spires, we finally learned from our past mistakes enough to create a new method for designing animation layers. In the new method, each frame of each sprite layer always has the exact same dimensions. Shadows are sharper to reduce the need for blurred edges around sprites. Mouth animations are smaller, no longer moving the jaw, and causing a smoother look in the finished product. Blink layers contain a half-ring of pixels around the eyes that always stays in the same position with the head.
While moving Echoes of the Fey: The Immolation to our new VN Framework system, we knew we’d need to redo all the animations. So Jenny figured that while she was at it, she would go ahead and fix up the original drawings, too. And that’s why we’re redrawing so much to make The Immolation update as good as possible!
Made in UE4, Crimson Spires blends horror with otome-style romance. First-person character control allows you to explore the stark town of Bataille, MO–a 3D environment inspired by PS2-era horror games–while experiencing an interactive story.
The small mining town of Bataille, Missouri has been cordoned off from the outside world for six months. The inhabitants have no idea why. All they know is that ever since the so-called “Contingency,” planes no longer fly overhead, strange creatures have been glimpsed beyond the perimeter, and large mechanical towers gun down anyone who tries to escape. As Sheriff Erika Wright searches for the truth, she must listen to the advice of a serial killer, mingle with extreme conspiracy theorists, and negotiate with vampires.
Expected Work and Payment
For now, we are simply gathering expression lines for each character. These are short, expressive lines of dialogue that occasionally play when a character speaks to punctuate their current emotion. Payment is $0.50 per expression line, including all takes. Each character will probably have between 30-100 expression lines.
*Important Note!*
Please be aware that this casting is considered preliminary. Due to the project’s early stage of development, our immediate plans are only to record approximately 30-100 expression lines for each character to have in place for demos, pitching to publishers, etc. Our hope is to eventually commission scene dialogue with the same cast, but that is not guaranteed, and will be renegotiated in the future according to budget and project needs.
Rating/Maturity
This game will contain adult language, violence, and sexual themes. We are not yet rated officially, but we expect to land in the Mature/R rating category. There will be F-bombs. Romance scenes might get a little racy, but not explicit. Please only audition if you are comfortable with that!
Audition Process
Please record the included audition lines for the roles that interest you and send them in either .wav or .mp3 format to jenny (at) woodsy-studio (dot) com. Please include your name and the character name in the files, such as “YourName_CharacterName.mp3”. Multiple takes and styles are highly encouraged so I have a good sense of your range. The last day to audition will be Saturday, Sept 29, 2018.
WHAT I LOOK FOR WHEN CASTING:
When I cast voice actors, what I care about most is your ability to act. This is more important to me than vocal range, accent, or other secondary details. Although I generally don’t judge your audition on a resume or past roles, I find that it’s beneficial for voice actors to have theater experience, so feel free to mention that.
As for demonstrating your ability to act, try to fully embody the character your voicing and let their personality shine through every line. Major bonus points if you can somehow help me see the character in a new way I never even thought of before. Err on the side of feeding an audition line too much emotion rather than too little; I always know I can ask you to tone it down, but I don’t always know whether you can kick it up a notch (and do it well).
SIDE NOTE ABOUT ACCENTS: You will see a note that some characters have American/Slight Southern accent. Technically, those characters would have a Missouri accent, which is like a softer version of the typical Southern accent. I’m flexible on whether the final casting choice uses the accent, though; I’ll select based on acting ability and capturing the character more than the technicality of an accent. If you can, try a take each way!
CHARACTERS!
August Flynn
(Human, Male, Romance Interest) Before the towers rose, August Flynn was a philosophy professor accused of 7 murders, coined the “Heartbreaker” for removing the victims’ hearts. Erika doesn’t believe his claims of innocence, but she might need his expertise against darker forces.
OVERALL PERSONALITY: Playful, dangerous, can be charming, but slightly unhinged
AGE: Early 30s
ACCENT: American
***********Audition Lines************ Line 1: (playful, charming) “Do my hands look like they belong to such a cold-blooded killer?” Line 2: (threatening) “Truly, Agent, I would not advise trying to shoot me in these circumstances.” Line 3: (haughty) “You’re trapped in a prison far worse than mine, Sheriff Wright. The prison of your own mind.”
Julian Bataille
(Vampire, Male, Romance Interest) Julian Bataille excels at acting calm, polite, and practical in most situations. He claims to maintain order in Bataille with his wealth and influence. He does like to maintain order and peace, but in the end, he cares most about accumulating power and control.
OVERALL PERSONALITY: Calm, collected, very charming, but can be dangerous/threatening when opposed
AGE: Late 20s/early 30s
ACCENT: American
***********Audition Lines************
Line 1: (charming) “It’s a shame we don’t see you more often, Sheriff Wright. May… may I call you Erika?” Line 2: (cold, threatening) “I think the easiest thing for you to do right now would be to drop this whole issue and return to the police station.” Line 3: (angry) “Don’t be pathetic. Your decisions are your own. Don’t blame your poor life choices on your sister.”
Liam Bataille
(Vampire, Male, Romance Interest) Adopted by the Bataille family at a young age, Liam has always struggled to feel like he fits in with the family. He’s easily the nicest member of the Batailles with an optimistic attitude, and he regularly urges to Erika to relax and have fun. But his loyalty is frequently torn between his personal virtue and his desire to please Julian and Charlotte.
OVERALL PERSONALITY: Kind, optimistic, tries to be laid-back
AGE: Late 20s/early 30s
ACCENT: American
***********Audition Lines************
Line 1: (sweet, charming) “Oh, maybe I can show you around the mansion sometime! Beautiful building. Even has an indoor swimming pool!” Line 2: (reassuring) “Good point. I’m sure Charlotte will think of something. She always does.” Line 3: (upset/angry) “I will. I see now I never should have tried to help you at all. I thought I would win your respect. But you’ll never respect me, will you?”
Bradley Jones
(Human, Male, Deputy US Marshal) When you wake up in the morning and see the star of a 80’s action flick in the mirror, you tend to act like it. Jones is no different. Cocky and carefree until sparked to anger. Has risen quickly, in status if not rank, but not because of his careful police work.
OVERALL PERSONALITY: Works hard but knows how to play, kind, charming, a little cocky
AGE: Early 30s
ACCENT: American
***********Audition Lines************
Line 1: (relieved) “Thanks for the help, Agent Wright. I’m… I’m so glad you’re here.” Line 2: (charming) “I guess until the cavalry arrives, it’s just the two of us.” Line 3: (angry) “I’m not going to sit here and wait for them. Not after what that monster did to Gant!”
Madeleine (“Maddy”) Gray
(Human, Female, Romance Interest) Growing up as a lesbian in a conservative, rural town often made Maddy feel like an outsider in her own home. The Batailles were the only people who fully accepted her, so she feels loyal to them. But as she learns the real truth of the Batailles, she’ll have to fight for the greater good.
Line 1: (sweet, helpful) “You could use some help, don’t you think? You’ve been doing this alone for months and it has to get tiring.” Line 2: (cheerful, determined) “I’ve got your back, boss!” Line 3: (angry) “I can’t believe you’re letting a serial killer help you with this case over me!”
Charlotte Bataille
(Vampire, Female, Antagonist) The dangerous leader of the Bataille family, Charlotte may be the only one in town beginning to grasp what’s truly happening. She’s rather spoiled and used to getting her way, but she’s also smart and resourceful.
OVERALL PERSONALITY: Scheming, haughty, maniacal
AGE: Late 20s/early 30s
ACCENT: American
***********Audition Lines************
Line 1:
(tickled, laughing) “Oh, that man is a riot! Why on earth do you leave a brain like that to rot in a cell, Erika?” Line 2: (haughty) “You’re going to set him free, Erika. And you’ll do it now.” Line 3: (annoyed, dangerous) “I am growing rather tired of this exchange. Do I need to repeat myself? Or should we settle this… a different way?”
Stacy Grenier
(Human, Female) Growing up, Stacy never thought she’d be able to leave Bataille. Now she’s trapped permanently, but at least Bataille is interesting now. An optimistic foil for Erika, Stacy is also vulnerable to those in the town with quick fixes and semi-plausible answers
Line 1: (happy) “Oh, welcome home, Erika! I hope you’re hungry, because I just finished cooking!” Line 2: (concerned) “I reckon you had an awful day. I heard about Jessica and Gary. People at the Dollar Store wouldn’t stop talking about it!” Line 3: (nervous) “Then again, folks have seen some strange things since the Contingency. Silhouettes of monsters roaming beyond the towers.”
Instructions (Refrain)
Once again, please record the included audition lines for the role that interests you and send them in either .wav or .mp3 format to jenny (at) woodsy-studio (dot) com. Multiple takes and styles are highly encouraged so I have a good sense of your range. The last day to audition will be Saturday, Sept 29, 2018.
The small town of Bataille, Missouri has been through a lot. First the lead mine closed. The owners of the mine moved their money elsewhere. Everything fell into sharp decline.
And then the towers rose.
Bataille had always been a bit isolated, but now… Now they are truly trapped. No way in. No way out. No idea what is happening on the other side. Planes don’t fly over Bataille any more. The radio is nothing but fuzz; the television is nothing but static. The Bataille family–the former owners of the mine and the namesakes of the town-say the towers are there to protect the people. They don’t say from what. And what on the other side could possibly be worse than the Bataille family themselves?
Very little. Because the Bataille family are vampires.
We at Woodsy Studio are very excited to announce our next project, Crimson Spires, which we hope to release for PC in 2019. Crimson Spires is a mix between an otome-style visual novel and an adventure horror game, developed in a style intended to evoke the eerie simplicity of early 3D games. That’s a lot to try and reconcile, so it’s probably better to introduce the game through its story.
Six months after the rise of the Contingency Towers, the town of Bataille is broken. Dozens have died trying to escape and it is clear there is no way out. The town’s sheriff, Erika Wright, may be the most broken of them all. A former FBI agent from the city, she was trapped in Bataille after chasing a serial killer across its border moments before the rise of the towers. Now she spends her days patrolling the border, looking for any new corpses of townspeople who tried to cross.
When two people go missing–legitimately missing–from a town with no escape, Erika Wright will have to team up with one of four potential love interests to investigate, find the truth, and confront (or join) the vampire family that controls the town. As for what happens along the way, well, one of the themes we’re looking to explore is the inevitability of mystery. Things have changed in Bataille. Maybe things have changed even more outside of Bataille. You won’t be able to solve every mystery of the strange new world, but maybe you can find a place in it.
Crimson Spires will play differently from our earlier visual novels. First off, after our good experience with miraclr: Divine Dating Sim, we’re structuring our story in a style similar to many Otome games. Rather than a single storyline with small-to-medium branches based on several choices, Crimson Spires will feature a separate storyline for each potential romance/investigation partners. Each story branch will cover (approximately) the final third of the game and will be entirely distinct from all the others.
Exploration will be different, too. Instead of a side-scrolling approximation of the environment, Crimson Spires will feature a fully-explorable 3d world. Small side quests and details about the entrapped town will be sprinkled around Bataille. There will also be a handful of interiors to explore, as well.
If you’re interested in checking out a (very early) demo of Crimson Spires, we plan on showing it off publicly for the first time at PixelPop here in St. Louis THIS WEEKEND. We’ll also have The Last Sacrament there as well, so if you’re in the area you should definitely check it out. If you’re not, make sure to follow us on twitter for updates about Crimson Spires.
Hey folks! It has been a long time coming, but we’re happy to announce that Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament is out now on Steam and itch.io! Join Sofya as she is recruited to protect the Emperor’s daughter, Katerina Lapidus, in Vodotsk…all while she’s being blackmailed into investigating the mysterious Krovakyn Church by one of Katerina’s political rivals.
The Last Sacrament is our longest and most ambitious game to date. We have worked hard to give you all a game with lots of drama, romance, and high quality storytelling. Thanks to the power of the UE4 engine, we’ve added 3D camera views and other cinematic effects to the traditional visual novel elements. You can also play the mini-game, RiftRealms, to get new insights on the world and its characters. We sincerely hope you enjoy this game, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Greetings Woodsy Studio fans. I come to you today with both bad and good news. First, the bad news. For the last few months, we’ve been fully committed to making our June 26 release date for Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament, but events out of our control have forced us to modify our plans. We’re just as excited to get the game out there for everyone to play, so this was not an easy decision. However, you won’t have to wait much longer for the continuation of Sofya and Heremon’s story. We’re only pushing the game back two weeks, so our new release date for Steam is July 10, 2018. Believe us, this one is sticking.
The good news is that this delay will give us the time to make the initial release of The Last Sacrament even better. We’re not just going to spend the two extra weeks polishing the game, but also implementing a few features that we weren’t sure would be able to make the release window.
The first of these extra features is going to be a replayable, semi-random RiftRealms game. Throughout the story of The Last Sacrament, Sofya plays a light RPG mini-game with a number of characters. Her character in this mini-game is persistent and you can buy upgrades between games. However, all of these RiftRealms games are one shot adventures, with no way to revisit them or play whenever you feel like it. This theoretically limits how many upgrades you can purchase for your character, especially if you have bad luck. We always hoped to be able to add a replayable RiftRealms game (even if it came in a later content patch), and this delay will ensure we have the time to flesh it out and properly test it for release.
Hopefully over the next couple weeks, we’ll be able to announce one or two more features we’ll be adding for release. Please follow us at www.twitter.com/WoodsyStudio for updates
A little over a year ago, I set out to complete a strange task: I wanted to build a visual novel in Unreal Engine 4. To some people this seemed like using a rifle to shoot a fly. I was even prepared to admit they were right. But once I got deeper into the UE4 engine, I didn’t regret a single thing.
Why UE4?
The short answer to why I love using Unreal Engine 4 is this: the engine can accomplish just about anything I imagine, and it can do so quickly. It’s a wonderful engine to work with and it’s capable of so much.
That said, Ren’Py is still a wonderful tool to create traditional visual novels. If you don’t plan on adding 3D elements or complex mini-games to your narrative, then there’s probably no reason for you to switch to UE4. BUT if you want to expand the boundaries of a traditional visual novel and set yourself apart from the other VNs out there, I can assure you that UE4 might be a great tool to accomplish that.
Screenshot from our UE4 visual novel, Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament
How to Get Started?
When I started my first VN project in UE4, I struggled to find helpful resources. Not many people had tried to create a traditional VN system within UE4. I found a VN marketplace plugin, but it only functioned for very small-scale projects, and was completely unwieldy in terms of handling a large script or rewrites. So after a lot of searching and banging my head against the computer screen, I set about building my own system from scratch.
Now, one game and many months later, I want to share what I’ve learned with the game dev community at large. I’ve started a video tutorial series that will help you build the foundation of a VN system within UE4. This system is designed to handle large-scale projects and gameplay elements beyond just dialogue. You can begin by writing your script in a typical Open Office or Word document, then convert it into a spreadsheet and import it into UE4.
End scene and destroy actors when scene is finished (7:58)
In the tutorial series created so far, I don’t yet get to branching dialogue or character sprites. But if people find this first series useful, I may go on to create tutorials about that later. You can also find my posts about the VN system on the UE4 Forums.
Meanwhile, we’re running a Kickstarter for our current visual novel project, Echoes of the Fey – Fantasy Visual Novel Series! If you enjoy my work or find my resources helpful, please support us!
Hello Woodsy Studio fans! Today, we’re announcing miraclr, a new, small scope visual novel project that we hope to release for Android phones in early September with a (possible) iOS and Steam release later down the line.
What is miraclr?
miraclr is a comedic workplace romance starring the biblical (and apocryphal) archangels, told in a mobile office collaboration app.
In miraclr you play as an unnamed human recruited to assist the archangels of heaven with the creation and implementation of the first true miracle in over 400 years. Because you can’t visit them in their office, you are given access to miraclr, an app used by the Archangels for intra-office messaging. It looks a little like Slack, with similarly structured channels and PMs. (Very early screenshot below)
When you first start up miraclr, you will decide on a time zone and a scheduled time for daily morning meetings. From then on, miraclr will unfold (mostly) in real-time, whether or not you have the game open. Your co-workers (the Archangels) will talk among themselves, ask for your input, and private message you for both work and personal reasons. Your timely responses–or lack thereof–will affect how the story unfolds and romantic relationships.
Why a new game now?
Woodsy Studio is currently in the middle of developing Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament, the next episode of Echoes of the Fey and the follow up to The Fox’s Trail, which just released two weeks ago on Playstation 4. So why divert our attention and resources away from that?
First off, The Last Sacrament is going to be a big game. Easily the largest and most complex we’ve ever done. We’ve made lots of progress–all but a few environments are done, half the game is playable and the RiftRealms mini-game is getting close to its final form. We still believe we’re on track to release in 2018.
But right now we need a break from it. We want to get something new out for people to play. We’d like to expand our presence on mobile, something the scale of The Last Sacrament just doesn’t allow with a two person team. And finally, we want to explore other methods of storytelling and experiment a little with what our audience wants from a visual novel style game.
With Echoes of the Fey, Woodsy Studio largely moved away from the traditional visual novel format and dating sim conventions. We’re bringing those back with miraclr, which will feature multiple romance paths and more focus on character/dialog than the mystery stories of EotF. It will also be a bit of a return to an older style for me (Malcolm), since most of my writing experience is in comedy. This will largely be a return to my writing style in The Closer: Game of the Year Edition, though with fewer baseball and philosophy jokes for a different audience.
When will it be done?
miraclr is a unique project for us, in that we’re hoping for a very quick turnaround. The format (a slack-like messenger app) limits the scope of the project, especially in regards to artwork. There will be CGs, emojis, and “photos” shared by the angels in the channel, but we intend for the main draw of miraclr to be the writing and unique time-based format. It won’t be a terribly long game–a visual novella if you will–but there will be seven days of content and multiple branches.
We’ve already proto-typed a version of the app that can display the story in real-time and have most of the first day written, which along with some initial art only took a few days. We also know that Echoes of the Fey is the main focus for our studio, and we can’t let a new project take too much of our focus away from that.
With all that in mind, we’re targeting an early September release date for miraclr. Hopefully you’ll be playing it soon!
*UPDATE*: As of September 20, we are finished with “miraclr” and in the testing/porting phase! We’re now hoping to release on Google Play and the App Store for iPhone and iPad September 26. Stay tuned!
For updates (as well as Echoes of the Fey info) follow us on twitter at @WoodsyStudio.
Today, we’re proud to announce our newest addition to the Echoes of the Fey franchise, Echoes of the Fey: Fuel Your Choice. We think this program speaks for itself, so check out the video below.
