SEAR DevBlog, week of 4/20/26: Teaser prep

Concept art for Last Days of Zala phase 1

It took me a couple days to dig out from under the VGM Con pile, and once I did I was mainly focused on getting assets together for the teaser trailer we're putting together for SEAR. Having this teaser trailer will be a huge step and I'm looking forward to sharing it with the world, but man did UE have it in for me this week. It must have crashed 8 times yesterday alone. Part of it was my fault, as I made a Sparse release environment in Perforce which apparently does not play nicely with UE's integrated file-checkout system, but even after resolving that it was still being finicky.

I wasn't able to connect with a lot of the team for most of the week and a lot of them were quite busy with other things anyway, so there wasn't a ton of progress in the project proper this week, but we did start laying plans for a general sprucing up of the in-game assets to start moving away from that early prototype look and implementing some changes based on feedback at VGM Con, particularly changes to the tutorial and the way concepts are initially introduced. I also had a few ideas for different ways we can change mechanics from Compete to Vibe modes to further welcome non-racing players and accommodate their default playstyles. That's all I can say about that right now; some hands-on testing of the ideas will be needed before I'm ready to share them.

I'm leaving town tomorrow for 3 days on personal business, so it's another weekend away from the project for me.

Short update this week!