SEAR DevBlog, week of 9/8: Getting it done

Not the final title screen, but getting closer.

Another week of massive progress. The first few copies of the pre-pre-prototype have gone out to close friends and team members for testing on different devices, while a ton of progress continues to be made on the base project.

The tutorial levels are finished and undergoing final polishing. Resa has several fantastic voice lines in the tutorial section, with more pending approval. We got big lighting improvements finally done in several of the phases that needed them, and are working on a "damage" effect for when you get hit by the falling stalactites in phase 5. There's an infrastructure in place for routing from one level to the next, which was the last piece we needed in order to get all the menus fully functional so the game is completely playable from title screen through quit button. The last piece there is the loading screen, which is harder to make work than you'd think, but will be fully functional next week in time for the submission to Epic.

It's been really wonderful to see that the scalable functionality I built for the prototype level, by and large, worked right away with the new tutorial level. And it's been a blast finally working on something new and seeing how quickly it can come together.

But the thing I'm the most excited about this week is that finally, reswave boosts (the speed boosts that come from the music) are clearly coming from Resa, the resonator dish - meaning she lights up to signal the boost is coming, then delivers the boost directly when you catch it. This really helps to cement the feeling of "catching a reswave" from the music, especially in the tutorial song, which I chose on purpose because of the thrilling and 8-beat-long resboost smack in the middle of it. When you catch that one there shouldn't be any lingering confusion about what is going on, and it feels really good to ride it into first place. I have been looking forward to being able to visually tell that reswave->resonator->resboost story for months and it's a thrill to finally see it working.

It's also super cool seeing the side engines light up from the beat-drift boost at the same time that you're getting a reswave boost. The exhaust plumes layer to visually reflect the different speed effects you're activating, both coming from the music in different ways.

It's still not perfect - in particular, the whole reswave process needs more sound effects to punctuate it and provide that aural confirmation of everything working. But that shouldn't be too hard to get together - by the latest it'll be in by the end of the month in time for the general public prototype release (hopefully accompanied by the Steam page launch).

With the prototype on the cusp of launch, it's time to start thinking again about getting the word out, this time with a playable prototype to explain the idea for me. Still on track for a February Kickstarter, and I have a few other avenues to follow up on as well to get the word out. That's honestly not my favorite part of this job, but it has to be done, and it's kind of exciting to be at the point where we need to start doing it.

Next week at this time I may have already submitted to Epic. Talk to you then.