Arbiter - Annual Recap - 2020 (Patreon)

Hey there gamers!

Hope you're all staying healthy and had some kick ass holidays! I've decided to roll the monthly update into my annual recap to keep things simple, but I'll talk a bit about how December went first.

December

I've spent the last two months or so doing some R&D for environmental art styles and workflows, as well as honing my level design skills. As of late, I've been mostly focused on writing some new environment shaders for stuff like terrain, grass, etc., but I've since moved back to level design.

Truth be told I'm not quite in a position where I'm ready to share just yet—everything's kinda jumbled together right now. But rest assured I'll be showing off some environments soon. I think once I've got something semi-decent looking, I'll start making some more regular videos and whatnot showing off gameplay, but until then, I'll stay in my cave modeling rocks.

2020

Hoo boy, what a fun year it's been. Jokes aside, Arby development was pretty good this year. I resolved to modeling every single damn human character in the game, and somehow, I actually did it (we even got Ashe's forms done too!). There's still some generic NPCs to do like villagers, but otherwise all of the game's main and side cast is finished and ready for animation, so that's a big step forward.

It's a bit tangential, but I can see some folks wondering why I'd prioritize such a thing before stuff like level design or user interface. In short, I spent pretty much all of 2019 focusing on gameplay, so I wanted a change of pace this year.

Working in indie dev, let alone solo, can be taxing on your mental state. You have to be very careful about how you manage your schedule so you don't burn yourself out or lose interest in your project. What keeps me motivated to finish Arbiter is the story I've written and the characters within it. It's what I'm most attached to, and I want to see these stories play out and for all of you to enjoy.

Being able to actually see these characters, fully rendered, does more for my motivation than I can put into words. I can see the story beats more clearly in my head, I can see the characters interacting with each other, I can see how I'll want to animate them, I can see the concept artists get excited about their characters being in-game—the list goes on. But in general, it just gets me excited to work more on Arbiter, and I think that holds more value than people realize.

Lastly, I'm simply more comfortable modeling characters compared to other aspects of development. It's like an exam—you want to answer the easy questions first so you can maximize the time you have on the hard stuff. Stuff like level design and environmental modeling are unknowns to me, so I don't know how long they'll take. But I know how long it takes me to model a character, so that process is much more predictable. With the characters done, I can now focus on the unknowns of level design without worrying as much about wasting time. That's more or less my process, and I'll let you know how it works out in a couple years or so.

2021

My goal this year is pretty simple: finish a new demo. Like I said, the stuff I'm working on now is a little unpredictable, so I honestly don't know how realistic that goal is. But nevertheless, I'm gonna try.

I'll be pretty focused on level design for the first quarter or so, then I'll likely move onto more gameplay polish and eventually user interface, music, and sound. I'm aiming to have something that show's off the game at its best so I can hopefully snag some more support on here and potentially shop it around to more publishers. I've been approached by quite a few already, but I'd like to reach out to a few more just to see what's out there. I may even just end up self-publishing, who knows.

I will say though, I don't want this demo to spoil the game or anything. So don't expect it to have every ability, transformation, and story beat readily available. It'll just be a short and sweet level designed to show you (in general) what the game's about. Nothing too crazy. Still, I'm excited to finally have something that's not... whatever the hell that old demo was.

Conclusion

Anyways, that wraps up this update. Thanks for reading! Apologies I'm not as active these days, be it on Twitter, Discord, etc. I don't like to get too personal, but my family's been dealing with some emotional hurdles that make it hard to excitedly talk about Arbiter as much as I'd like to. That said, I'm proud of the progress I made last year, and I plan to make plenty more this year in spite of whatever else gets thrown our way. Here's to 2021 being the redemption arc we all desperately need 🥂

Stay safe, Jordy