Development Report 9/7/2019 (Patreon)

Hi people!

Here is the first pos-vacation dev report… Well, this one is much more than a dev report we’re going to talk about a lot of stuff (Bioasshard post release, money, dev reports, clarifications and even answer to some comments) and will be possibly a long post. So, let’s start right now:

We received this e-mail from Patreon  yesterday  so I suppose that we’ve to inform you about this:

There is more info on these links:

Link 1 (What is Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) under PSD2?) 

Link 2 (Patreon Help Center)

The Versus X Studio ‘Team’

After the latest Bioasshard Arena release we saw a lot of people a bit confused about VXS. There are some people that thought we’re a team with several members, on the other side there are other people that thinks that VXS it’s only me (Mr. Versus X). None of these are correct ^^ we’re 2 devs:

Meguido: Programmer (for all of our games), Animator and director of Bioasshard.

Mr. Versus X: ‘Artist’ and director of Punised Mai and the future Omnia In Unum. 

I hope this clears up this little misunderstanding.

Comments

Before we start, I want to say that even if we don’t respond to comments, we read all of them, the problems are (as we already explained in a previous post) the lack of time and/or not to be in the mood.

So, let’s start with this, we’re going to answer some of the comments here (it’s possible that we save some of the comments for other parts of this post).

Icarus Video, James Dunn and J Justice.

VXS: Thanks for the marketing tips we’ll take these into account. In any case I think that none of those will prevent the Patron losing after they get their links (one of our biggest problem since we started with VXS).

Darkinidy, Loogie, Peter Boswick, Busoma, Thomas d bontempo, Jonathan Marlow and many, many others.

VXS: Thank you very much for the kind words, support and feedback.

VXS: Unfortunately, there is no other method right now. I’m setting up a personal Ko-Fi page for my personal use but it uses Paypal as well as a payment processor. We’ll investigate other ways to support us on the future. In any case thanks for your interest.

VXS: Those are problems with a hard to find solution because it depends on user-end. That's the kind of stuff that we can’t fix as we just can test it in our machines.

VXS: This is once again is something very specific. Didn’t heard of anyone else with the same problem. So, it seems to be a hardware/software related problem on your end. Maybe updating graphic card drivers or the Visual C++ Redistributables to the latest version help? I don’t really know for sure.

Bioasshard Arena - A Post Release Analysis

We’re going to talk a lot about money, we know that this is something that some people don’t like but we think that this is absolutely necessary here for you to understand the stuff we’re talking about and the stuff that will happen in the future (this part of the post is just informative, neither a criying looking for pity, nor looking for advice or comments about the situation). Also, this is the last time I’m going to talk about money  but for this time is very important. So, if in the future you see we take some drastic changes, cancel a project, delay a release or cut some content on some project you will know that the reason for this is the money and we won't need to justify ourselves every time we have to do this kind of stuff.

Well people, we mentioned in the previous post: “We're now Catching up, organizing a lot of stuff, analyzing the impact of Bioasshard's release and thinking about our future steps. We got a very nice support but unfortunately still far away from the 'support' needed for a game of this level... so we need to think carefully our next steps.” so it’s time to talk about this.

Before the release we made some ‘maths’, we estimated a minimum amount of money we're going to need if we want to make a living with this plus have some money to invest on the development of the projects. Below that, things get very difficult and I made a proposal to Meguido: “If we don't surpass the amount of 1000$ we’ll have to cancel the project [Bioasshard]…”. Meguido accepted.

And then, after the release we got a ‘surprise’…  we didn’t reach the minimum amount we needed but we surpassed the 1000$. As always our plans never goes as expected...

The Infamous Log-in System

One of the most controversial stuff on this release was the log-in system we added to give the rewards to Patrons. 

A lot of people cried about this, other said they have fear of their personal data being stolen due to piracy… This, added to the fact that the server we used for this was a shit made us to ask our FOX Patrons (via poll) if it was better to get rid of the log-in system, and they decided that it was the better choice (by majority, some of them preferred the system in-place as it was).

When we announced a new version (the actual 0.1.18) a lot of people applauded this decision, even some of them predicted the arrival of lots of sipport (money) thanks to this change. 

The Version 0.1.18 was released and then, the harsh reality made its appearance. 

What happened? Let’s put it in numbers for easy understanding:

-Version 0.1.0 (with log-in system): We started at 500$ before the release, after that we, reached +1800$. This means we growth 1300$ more or less. 

-Version 0.1.18(without log-in system): We started at +1800$ before the release, after that, we reached +2100$. This means we growth 300$ more or less.

I think this is clear as water… 

Where is that ‘A LOT of new support’ predicted? 

Where is this win/win? 

I can’t see it; can anyone tell me where it is? 

But don’t worry, it can be worst, and after a week or so, since we reached to 2100$, this number started to fall off until today that is at 1502$. 

Above, "the reward for working so hard for more than one year of your life."

Looks like the log-in system wasn’t that bad after all… but we got rid of it forever from the game and with it we lost support but not only that… 

Yeah, we had planned some cool extra features for the log-in system that will be lost forever and ever, here are some examples:

On-line leaderboards for the different game stats.

Automatic updates with hotfixes, to make your life easier. (no need for download and installs patches manually)

And the biggest one: On-line Coop mode!

Sound nice? Well they won't be in, because all of this was stuff planned in conjunction with the log-in system.

Bioasshard Arena is NOT Bioasshard (the game)

OK people, let’s go with this once again… looks like that no one has asked about the difference of this 2 this time but still people don’t understand the meaning of this; So, I’m going to repeat again the difference of them both, explain it with other words and finally I’m going to put some practical examples.

This is from the Bioasshard FAQ:

-What's the difference between Bioasshaard Arena and Bioasshard? 

Bioasshard Arena can be considered as a Testbed for Bioasshard. When all the game systems are implemented (on the Arena), we will start with the main game (Bioasshard).

I think it’s pretty clear, but I’m going to explain it with other words: As a testbed, the Arena will be focused on adding gameplay mechanics and other minor stuff that will be needed for the game’s (Bioasshard) development. This means that we're VERY focused on the programming side (even if we add graphical stuff and experiments). And also, means that we are NOT going to add stuff specifically for the Arena or stuff that is not important for the game base even if it is stuff that will be added on the game itself.

With that said, let’s put this ‘in practice’ using as example features/stuff requested by players since the release:

More animations and more enemy variety

With the explanation above, what do you think? …

Yes, it’s NOT necessary for the arena. It’s possible that we’ll add more in the future as long as it's necessary / easy to add but taking into account that this is not useful for the arena. Also we're doing a base for a GAME not a collection of animations.

Gallery

Well, I think the answer to this is even clearer. NO. It’s a nice feature, but for the game itself not for the arena, so no, no gallery feature is planned for the Arena.

Level Selector

Ummm… The GAME will not have a level selector so… NO. No level (map) selector will be available on the arena.

But there is a similar feature that will be added because it will be present on the game: Chapter/Mission selector. 

This one was tricky ^^ but a chapter is not that same as a level because a chapter can contain more than one level.

Save System

YES, the arena will have a save system but we’re delaying it as much as possible for 2 main reasons:

1-Right now there is only 3 levels and can be completed in less than 30 minutes (I've seen someone that finished it in less than 12 min.)

2-Save System is a very tricky system to program. It needs to store a lot of data from the other gameplay systems so if we add it too soon, we’ll need to update it every time we make a change or add a new system to the Arena and this consumes time. So, we’re waiting to have the majority of the gameplay systems ready to add the save system.

And with these explanation with examples we hope to not have to explain this kind of stuff ever again.

From Now On

So, what to do now?

This is a very difficult question to answer as we can’t predict the future (even if it appears to be very dark) but after a lot of discussion with Meguido we decided to adopt a series of measures to change a lot of things on VXS.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to expose those measures here because some of them are very personal. Those measures are directed to fix the way we see our work, a work that's supposedly something we love, but working, as we've been doing until now and the reward we obtain from it, has become into a nightmare, ultimately, affecting us even on our health.

So basically, we’re going to change our mentality about VXS to NOT have to hate our projects, our followers/fans/supporters, our way to work and finally, ourselves for not achieving our own expectations.

Everything is going to change, starting with the logo.

This is our new logo. It has 2 versions. Take a look:

And Now For The Dev Reports

Despite that the final rush to release this version of Bioasshard has destroyed all our schedule for the rest of the projects on this year we’re going to maintain this image has a guide for our plans:

This was posted on the new year post and now has been updated. 

The yellow stars are for released projects on this year.

As I said above, we’re going to follow this image but with some changes:

1- The 'time-limit' to do all of this on this year has been deleted, I mean no time constriction to finish those ‘projects’.

2- Number 16 – The F Mission comic will be the next project to be released and possibly Number 12 will be the one following it.

3- Number 2 – No longer exists as an independent project. It’s now integrated on a bigger project (more info on this when the time has come).

4- Number 14 – Omnia in Unum: It will be impossible to make the 1st release for this on this year so we have some plans that will be explained below.

5- Number 17 – It will take longer to show you something about the future of Punished Mai, sorry. But we don't forget about it.

6- For the rest of the projects, we will give info when it's appropriate.

Omnia In Unum – The F Mission Report

Really good progress made on this project lately. Here is the summary:

-Posing phase: Finished!

-Rendering phase: Finished!

-Post-Process phase: Finished!

-Text phase: Finished! 

-Translation phase: 2 of 37 pages are ready. 

Finally, we’re back to normal speed for this project.

I finished the writing on this and Meguido did a quality check and I fixed all the problems.

Now I have to re-export the fixed pages while Meguido is doing the English translation. As we said above, this project is almost done and will be the next release.

Omnia In Unum Dev Report

As said above, it will be impossible to make a release for this project this year so we've decided to work on this with another target in mind. 

Do you guys remember that old post called The Reintroduction of Vile Resident? That one where we shown the evolution from Vile resident to Bioasshard, from 2D to 3D, etc.

Well, that’s the idea we have right now for this. We want to show you how this will look; we want to make a post explaining some concepts of the game but mainly covering how the game will look graphically. Don’t know how much it will take but it will be as soon as possible, now that we have decided some of the key aspects on this part of the project.

Bioasshard Dev Report

And after all that has been said is the time to make the question: 

What will happen with Bioasshard?

Well, again, this question has a difficult answer… 

If we maintain (at least) the support we have right now, the development of Bioasshard ARENA will continue. This is for 3 main reasons:

1-The Patrons that really loves the game.

2-To not consider all this time spent, in developing the Arena, a waste of time.

3- This is the most important reason: Bioasshard Arena will serve as a ‘starter kit’ for 2 other projects, one is a completely new project, the other one something related with one of our currently announced projects. This will also affect the priority of the features to be added on the arena.

So, yeah with the Arena we’ll be going step by step. Then, when the time has come, we’ll decide what will happens with Bioasshard (the game).

Meguido’s Message

Here is a message from Meguido. He has a lot to say today:

Hello everyone!

Back from a very well-deserved holydays, and here to give you some info on the latest progress I’ve been doing.

I’d like to ask you something… Did you like it how much features I saved from mentioning during the dev-reports for this latest Bioasshard released version? Did you like the surprise or do you prefer to have everything spoiled during dev-reports?

I, myself, prefer to save some stuff for the releases, so you can have surprises. I think it’s better than knowing everything a release will feature beforehand. But I’ll let you decide.

Well, before talking about what I recently did, I have to talk about some stuff about the already released version. I’ve been reading a lot, a lot of feedback, a lot of love, a lot of hate, a lot of crying, a lot of a lot XD.

I’ll start with the mechanics or behaviors some people consider bugs:

· Interacting with items, doors, etc. – These are no bugs at all. I’ve read people recommending to reset the game then try again. That won’t change anything because the code is the same the first time and the second time. The way Julia interacts with stuff is pretty common in games nowadays. You make Julia face the ‘item’ you want to interact with and then ‘F’ will appear for you to press it. Obviously if the item is below Julia’s pov you’ll have to point your camera down and the same if the item is above. I tested that like hundred of times, in the editor and in compiled versions with 0 problems at all. There was a problem with the key in the sewers in the old 0.0.1 version with it having a very small interaction box. That’s why I made sure every interactable actor has a big enough interaction-box to avoid this problem again. And that’s why I tested this so deeply.

· The character customization screen shows unavailable options – This isn’t a bug either. As we mentioned in the posts prior to the release, only Patrons can change options in that screen. With Pigeon ones only being able to edit the Julia’s display name, while the rest Tier levels, being able to change everything.

· The Sexttack animations – The only one bugged are the cerberus’ ones. The rest are working properly. There are 3 blowjob, 4 vag and 4 anal animations. All tested and working.

· The big guy in the mansion level can’t be killed – This is obviously not a bug. As I said “there’s not enough ammo in the Arena to kill him”. And that’s true, even if you cheat it, you won’t have enough ammo to get rid of him, mainly because that’s not the ammo that will damage him.

· Once the big guy grabs you, you can’t free from him and when trying to break free from his Sexttack, you get the Game Over – This is not a bug. That’s the behavior I programmed for him. First, he’s strong enough to kill you with one or two blows. So, you can’t expect Julia to being able to free from his grab. Then when in the Sexttack, if you pay attention to the UI, you’ll see that the text to break free from it, it’s different, saying “give up”. Yeah, that text is used to give you the idea that there’s no way out from him and that you’ll have to give up.

Now it’s time to talk about some mechanics some people consider are bad implemented or directly useless:

· The knife. That’s how the knife works in RE5, and that’s how it’ll remain. Well I should say in RE5 it’s worse implemented as it doesn’t matter where you attack the enemy with it. Here, in the Arena, you can attack the different key-zones to inflict different damage. Meaning that if you hit the head with it, you’ll make him more damage than hitting an arm. Right now, there’s no destructible stuff on the Arena, that made the knife in RE5 a lot more useful. But for fighting the enemies is basically the same, as this is the knife not the stun rod xD.

· The shooting system. I mentioned this a long time ago. The system was reworked from scratch and that’s how it will work from now on. Don’t expect it to be less ‘clunky’. At least with the handgun in level 1. With no upgrades made to the weapon (when the upgrade system is implemented) it will remain as it is right now. That’s how that handgun works in lvl1.

· The controls. Here I have nothing to say. I’ll try to implement a rebind keys option, but can’t promise anything. I never played a RE game in PC. I always did it in console. So, all I did was to get the PC game manual from RE5 and use those same control-scheme. I hate playing on PC, but honestly, I got used pretty quick to this control-scheme, I don’t find it that bad… lol, anyway, I’m not a PC gamer so what would I know.

Now, on to another thing. I know, lots of you were expecting a quick fix/patch for the Cerberus’ bugs, but that won’t happen… why? Well because I had a lot of bad reports from the patch we released for the old version (you know, that one that applied to the 0.0.2 and converted it to 0.0.3). False positives from antivirus, people that didn’t know where to install it -even with an included readme-, etc. So, from now on, all releases will be absolutes, unless it’s something REALLY important, then we’ll make a patch for it obviously, but for the rest, they will be made as normal releases.

Now, with all that said, I’ll tell you what I’ve been working on since the back from the holydays.

First thing was to review, analyze, plan and proceed with everything that happened since the 0.1.0 release with Mr.Versus. That took a lot of time, but with that done, I got back to work in the next Bioasshard Arena version. 

I made half of a new system that will be implemented for the next version. This system works more like an aesthetic one, but I think it was something really necessary to have it implemented as soon as possible. Also fixed a few reported bugs (these were real bugs lol). 

Then before making the other half of the system mentioned before, I decided to take a look and try to find the cause for the Cerberus’ bug and as I suspected, it’s not something simple to fix. I tried reusing the code for the average Infected on him, but looks like biped and quadruped can’t work with the same base. So probably, to fix this problem and avoid future ones, I’ll make a totally new and independent base template for quadruped enemies.

Also, apart from working on that new version for Bioasshard Arena, I’ve been working on Omnia In Unum (you know, our FF parody) and I have to say I’m pretty happy with the results we’ve been getting so far. I love the characters and their look <3. I can’t wait to show you guys how it looks.

And that’s all for now from my end, see ya in the next report.

The CP system

Remember when we announced that the login system was going to be removed from Bioasshard? We also mentioned something about a new system to 'protect' the rewards, with the temporary name: CP System.

Well, we have finished the design of this. We’ll explain how it works in a future post. The only thing I’m going to say today is its final name: 

Fantasy Card System.

As I said, more info about this subject is coming soon.

Bioasshard FAQ Outdated

I'm going to repeat this once again with the hope to not be ignored... 'once again' xD:

"we're going to update the Bioasshard FAQ, so if you have any questions leave them here."

And this is the end of this long post… I feel it like the end of an era for us, don’t know if our new internal philosophy will bring us more support but hopefully it will erase all the frustration, we're into every day. And in the end our health and our love for our projects come back to us. 

See ya in the next post!

- General FAQ - Bioasshard FAQ - Project List - 

Regards <3