Well this is it, we are finishing up with our studies and assessments at JMC Academy. It's scary to think that now our goals aren't "getting our assessments done" but rather "lets keep making awesome games and make a real career out of it!".
First thing I want to talk about it where I'm at with this project. We plan to have a team meeting about where to go from here but here I'm going to talk about how I'm feeling and where I want this project to go in.
These final weeks have been pretty good, we managed to get everything printed off and handed in. We are going to proceed with releasing the game on itch.io when we have sorted everything out with everyone. I'm really looking forward to this personally because it'll be great to have the game out there for everyone to download. I'm really curious to see what people say about it, good or bad (any feedback will help improve the game). We'll be putting it up for free but also adding the option for the player to purchase the game if they would like to show their support. Based on reviews and feedback from the community will determine whether we should change the game a bit, continue on with how it is or just finish it in the state that it's in. I personally think we have created something different from what's already out there but that doesn't mean the community will react well to it. There is still some polishing that needs to be done before release however, more-so just checking that the light triggers all work properly, there's no weird colliders on the ground and some more general playtesting to fix any bugs we may have missed during playtesting. Now that we're out of uni there should be more time to focus on this exclusively. I also want to do another video blog with a newer/nicer version sometime soon to help promote the game.
Big shout-outs here to everyone who helped out with the game. First of all I would like to thank the rest of the team, Connor Simpson, Rhianwen O'Grady and Stephan Herholdt for being fantastic people to work with and making this happen. We all put so many hours into this project and it feels good to actually have something made and we couldn't have done it without eachother. It's been a great experience and I hope it doesn't end here. Another huge shout out was to our lecturer Adrian Forest for showing all the support in the world for this project and motivating us on a weekly basis with the game. His advice has really helped shape this project and made us realize a lot of things to make this game to be where it is today.
More special thanks to all of our contributors on the project. Alec Shea, Benjamin Wardle, Matt Dodds, Ruben Stoney, Josh Watson, Willow Nightingale; you have all done incredible work to make this game come to life with all your amazing music. This game was in desperate need of good audio for it to do well and all you guys nailed it perfectly! Cody Muller and Courtney Murrin; you two have done incredible voice acting work, especially that this was your first time doing such thing. It really helped give the game a voice and definitely helped the narrative with the animatics. Last of all, we have Daniel Springall who did the arms, legs and Canary models, rigs and animations. You have done some incredibly high quality work with all of this and have taken a huge load off our backs doing these for us. Again, a very big special thanks to all of you, it was a pleasure and an honour to work alongside you all to make this happen. It's been a long ride but we've made it guys!
Thanks for taking the time to read this blog if you've been following it, I will be posting more in the future as this progresses but for now it's still a student project and hopefully soon when we get all our contracts signed and cleared we can actually get somewhere with this and make a career out of it. For more updates and information on where I go from here please visit my website http://andrewkiefer.weebly.com/ as this will be the main site where I'll be updating any work I do (Black Lung or anything else) from here.
Thanks again for reading.
Andrew Kiefer.
First thing I want to talk about it where I'm at with this project. We plan to have a team meeting about where to go from here but here I'm going to talk about how I'm feeling and where I want this project to go in.
These final weeks have been pretty good, we managed to get everything printed off and handed in. We are going to proceed with releasing the game on itch.io when we have sorted everything out with everyone. I'm really looking forward to this personally because it'll be great to have the game out there for everyone to download. I'm really curious to see what people say about it, good or bad (any feedback will help improve the game). We'll be putting it up for free but also adding the option for the player to purchase the game if they would like to show their support. Based on reviews and feedback from the community will determine whether we should change the game a bit, continue on with how it is or just finish it in the state that it's in. I personally think we have created something different from what's already out there but that doesn't mean the community will react well to it. There is still some polishing that needs to be done before release however, more-so just checking that the light triggers all work properly, there's no weird colliders on the ground and some more general playtesting to fix any bugs we may have missed during playtesting. Now that we're out of uni there should be more time to focus on this exclusively. I also want to do another video blog with a newer/nicer version sometime soon to help promote the game.
Big shout-outs here to everyone who helped out with the game. First of all I would like to thank the rest of the team, Connor Simpson, Rhianwen O'Grady and Stephan Herholdt for being fantastic people to work with and making this happen. We all put so many hours into this project and it feels good to actually have something made and we couldn't have done it without eachother. It's been a great experience and I hope it doesn't end here. Another huge shout out was to our lecturer Adrian Forest for showing all the support in the world for this project and motivating us on a weekly basis with the game. His advice has really helped shape this project and made us realize a lot of things to make this game to be where it is today.
More special thanks to all of our contributors on the project. Alec Shea, Benjamin Wardle, Matt Dodds, Ruben Stoney, Josh Watson, Willow Nightingale; you have all done incredible work to make this game come to life with all your amazing music. This game was in desperate need of good audio for it to do well and all you guys nailed it perfectly! Cody Muller and Courtney Murrin; you two have done incredible voice acting work, especially that this was your first time doing such thing. It really helped give the game a voice and definitely helped the narrative with the animatics. Last of all, we have Daniel Springall who did the arms, legs and Canary models, rigs and animations. You have done some incredibly high quality work with all of this and have taken a huge load off our backs doing these for us. Again, a very big special thanks to all of you, it was a pleasure and an honour to work alongside you all to make this happen. It's been a long ride but we've made it guys!
Thanks for taking the time to read this blog if you've been following it, I will be posting more in the future as this progresses but for now it's still a student project and hopefully soon when we get all our contracts signed and cleared we can actually get somewhere with this and make a career out of it. For more updates and information on where I go from here please visit my website http://andrewkiefer.weebly.com/ as this will be the main site where I'll be updating any work I do (Black Lung or anything else) from here.
Thanks again for reading.
Andrew Kiefer.