We continue to make good progress on Hero-U, particularly on the art front. I talked a few months ago about the issues we were having getting 2D character animation to look good in our “fantasy realistic” environment.

I am happy to report that Concept Art House has now completed all of the 3D character modeling and animation for the game, and it looks very good! Please visit Lori’s article about the “Anatomy of a Drat” on her Hero-U Leaders Blog.

Dire Rats Transformed

 

The art team has completed sketches of every scene in the game. They are about 70% complete on final painting and rendering. We should reach “art complete” in about 3 months. There is much more to this project than the actual game. The in-game and physical Yearbooks are also coming along very well. Almost 100 backers submitted photos, and Paul and Eric have turned all of them into works of art. Chris Fong is working on summarizing the last 18 months worth of meetings into a series of Insider Access articles. I will release these over time to the Humble Store pages of our “Insider Access” backers.

Disbarred Bards

On the programming side, the Composer tool is essentially complete, although Rob will add new features to it throughout Hero-U game development. Composer provides a structured way for us to create game content and put it directly into the game. It also has features that will allow us to localize Hero-U into multiple other languages.

Composer Script from the Demo

Inside the game, Jonathan and Jerry have created a system that handles displaying rooms, props, and animated characters; letting the player interact with any object on the screen; and much more. Jonathan is currently back to working on the combat system now that we have finished animation approval. We are fine-tuning the turn-based combat interface to make it intuitive and exciting.

How You Can Still Help

Let your friends know about the Hero-U project and the www.hero-u.net web site. In addition to the Leaders blog and forums, we have two store pages. On the preorder page (http://www.hero-u.net/hero_u_preorder.html), fans can get a discounted price on the Hero-U game, digital sound track, art book, digital yearbook, and even access to beta tests.

The Collectibles page (http://www.hero-u.net/hero_u_collect.html) is the place to support Hero-U while getting cool limited-edition collectibles – toy meeps, t-shirts, caps, and keychains. Every purchase and preorder helps us pay team members and contractors so that we can make Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption a great game. Thank you very much to everyone who has backed Hero-U so far, whether by Kickstarter, PayPal, or Humble Store pre-order.

But not in the way you think!

We have scheduled a maintenance window on Friday, June 27th at 11pm (PST). This maintenance is scheduled to last until Saturday, June 28th at 1am (PST) (approximately 2 hours). During this window, all hosting services will be unavailable!

We are aware that there are a lot of questions from you, our backers, regarding when SpaceVenture is going to be released as well as made available for sale. There are many opinions and feelings, varying from the extremely harsh to the quite patient, though ultimately all wanting the same thing; the highest quality SpaceVenture possible. Some want it yesterday, and some have advised us to “take the time you need to make the best game you can.” We have worked hard to not abuse this encouragement.

We are very sensitive to the entire range of feelings. We ultimately intend to deliver to you the best game possible. We can hurry and release a gaming experience we aren’t as happy with, something we would be afraid and certain would be a let-down to you, or take the extra time to give you something we will feel good about in both our hearts and guts, a game worthy of your backing and patience.

We have avoided giving an official release date due to many major unexpected challenges we have encountered as we’ve progressed through the development process of the first new game by our new company. Everyone who has ever worked on a first project of any kind, and especially a game in a new environment, knows there are ‘growing pains’, especially with that very first one. We don’t want to delve into a laundry list of details. If you would like a taste of the issues mentioned in the past please feel free to read our October 16th update.

Having said all that, we have decided to give a soft estimated release time period of 9 months to a year from now without going into detail on why things have moved slower than each and everyone of us has wanted. That means if everything goes more smoothly than the first third, and we see absolutely no way it won’t, we expect to be done by March of next year. We will not let the game suffer due to being pushed by a hard deadline. Know that first and foremost, we are shooting for an adventure game the type of which we offered and for which our fans asked, an ‘old-school adventure with new tech and design lessons learned’ game you backed through Kickstarter and PayPal.

We know without any doubt this release estimate will frustrate most of you and infuriate others, but because of our passion for this game and adventures in general, we stand fully behind this decision. As we have said in the past, we have one shot at making the game great. That one shot will determine the future of the company.

Here is a breakdown of where things stand currently:

FULL GAME COMPLETION

• The story is complete.
• Most storyboards and a good deal of concept artwork done for the full game are on Mark’s wall.
• 1/3 of the game is mostly complete with polish. That includes artwork, game play mechanics, music/sfx, and narrative/dialog. (Please note that this has been a our major learning curve, and the achievement of this will definitely speed progress on the rest of the game. SO many lessons learned here!)

 ARTWORK/ANIMATIONS

• We have very polished artwork for 1/3 of the game and some scene artwork completed for the rest of the game. Although Mark is mostly involved in polishing artwork, he is also overseeing a couple of our artists working on scenes for the rest of the game along with animations and cutscenes.
• Most of the animations needed in the game for Ace and Rooter are completed, something that’s a larger feat than most would think.
• All non-Ace and Rooter animations are added and working in 1/3 of the game.

 AUDIO/MUSIC 

• Almost all sound effects and music have been completed for 1/3 of the game.
• The music is as complete as it can be at this point.

VOICE RECORDING

• At this time no voice-over has been recorded for the game. Dialogue is fluid and we intentionally wait until as late as we can to book our talent and studio time. We are planning to go to the studio in three different recording sessions. The first recording session is coming up. We’ll post more details on that hopefully soon, As with the art, for each part of the game we will schedule our talent and studio time as late as is possible because, as we learned years ago, the dialogue also evolves for the better.

 PROGRAMMING

• Of all the items listed in this update, programming is the one that has contributed the most in causing the project to move as slowly as it has. As mentioned in the October update, we had to design almost all the tools needed to make SpaceVenture ourselves since Unity has been in the past especially a ‘one size fits all games’ game engine. The good news there though is that we have been able to make very good progress now that the tools we needed are nearly complete.
• We have a code base foundation that will be used for the entire game and as well as whatever we do in the future. We’ve essentially built our wheel.

FUTURE KICKSTARTER UPDATES

• In the past, Chris has tried his best to provide unique updates on the 1st and the 16th of each month. This was a decision made with the best of intentions but in reality is sometimes difficult to execute without becoming annoying to some because, even though there is always some progress, there’s not always something with a high-enough drool-inducement factor worth sharing, and we don’t want to give away too much in the updates. Chris will post updates as achievements warrant, to let you know we have something new and exciting or relatively interesting, or when something’s just too cool to not share. We will do our best to give you a clear view of the status of the project.

In Summary: 

There have been many challenges and setbacks that have slowed progress. Yes, there are things we should have anticipated, but also many we couldn’t. No matter how many games with which one is involved there will always be hard lessons along the way. These can be humbling. There have been many moments of frustration, even more for us than most of you. We’ve encountered and surmounted many hurdles, but such is the way of game development, as well as life in general. We are (almost all) merely human. With the exception of one team member, we’ve each had family health care issues that have impacted our performance and progress. Nonetheless, we will continue to push forward fueled by your enthusiasm, from those who’ve backed us from day one to those who’ve just recently become aware of what we are doing, and by our team’s passion for the game and our excitement over what is ahead. Through all of that we absolutely believe we’ll be proud of SpaceVenture, and you will enjoy the end result.

Thank you all for your support.

Guys From Andromeda LLC

Scott Murphy, Mark Crowe, and Chris Pope

Tobiah Marks recently asked me to do a podcast for his “Be Indie Now” web series. For some insight into the indie development side of the Hero-U project, check out the result at http://www.tobiahmarks.com/2014/04/be-indie-now-24-hero-u-rogue-redemption/ or visit Tobiah’s site at www.BeIndieNow.com to learn about other indie game projects.

In case you missed it, Lori and I were also on Up at Noon with Greg Miller in February. You can view the show at http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/02/17/persona-4-meets-dungeons-dragons-hero-u-on-up-at-noon.

Chaos Can Be Cool

When Lori and I started working with Sierra in the late 1980’s, the company was very informal. We didn’t sit down in a conference room for meetings – There were no conference rooms. Instead, two or three of us would stroll on the roof of the building or around the parking lot until we knew how to solve the issue of the day.

A few years later, Sierra set up a one-day training session to help the middle managers to work better with our teams. I had been promoted to Programming Manager for the educational game group, so was invited to the workshop. For one of the exercises, the trainer took each of the team leaders aside and instructed us in the management style we should use. I was the Authoritarian manager – My assignment was to dictate every detail of the project and brush off any suggestions. The second team leader was Democratic – She was told to listen to the team and then direct the project. The final team was Laissez Faire – The team leader was to dither and not make any suggestions, nor do anything to promote the team members working together. It was pure anarchy.

The expected winner was of course the Democratic team, one in which there was solid leadership, but everyone had some agency. The *actual* winner on both technical and artistic criteria was the Anarchist team. The trainer was astonished. He said he had been running these workshops for over 20 years, and the Laissez Faire teams never won; they fell into chaos and got nothing accomplished. Why was our workshop different?

I looked at the trainer and said, “Anarchy? That’s pretty much the way we make all our games here. We thrive on chaos!”

Anarchy might not be ideal for getting a game out the door, but it does promote agency and creativity by every team member.

All Around the World

Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption development is far more challenging than developing our games at Sierra. We didn’t start with a multi-million-dollar development environment hand-tuned for making adventure games. We don’t have any full-time team members because the budget doesn’t allow for them. Communication is sometimes difficult because our team members are located all around the world – Australia, Virginia, Florida, Connecticut, Washington, and several locations in California. How could we all work together effectively?

Sometimes the answer is unfortunately, “We can’t.” In those cases, we’ve dropped team members or they’ve left on their own. And sometimes we have temporary issues because long-distance communication is hard. We decided to use a multi-tiered approach to keeping everyone on the team “on the same page”.

The Sierra workshop provided part of the answer – If each team member is highly talented and motivated, we can trust them to do their parts of the job well and to infuse them with their own creativity and talent.

We are also taking advantage of several network technologies that didn’t exist in the 1990’s. We have two weekly team meetings via Google+ Video Chat. One is mostly for the artists, and one for programmers, but everyone is invited to both meetings. We use Google Drive and Dropbox to share documents, and Trello to track project tasks. Occasionally team members phone us with specific questions. For anything less urgent, we send email either to specific team members or to the entire team.

Down in the Dungeon

Agents for Good

Our approach is inefficient – I would never recommend it for a manufacturing operation. But it is workable for creating an original computer game. One of our artists remarked recently that he is really enjoying the sense of “agency” and creative freedom he has on Hero-U, as well as the lack of deadline pressure.

Yes, we could ship the game sooner if we insisted on tight deadlines, but we do not think that approach leads to great games or good team morale. Lori and I gave talks on “The Fun Factor” at early game developer conferences. One of our points was that the team must have fun – The attitude of the team comes through in the final game.

As it is, our team members frequently surprise and delight us with the little unscripted touches they have added to their work. John Paul Selwood painted an unexpected magical plant that we did not specify in one of the school offices. It is a perfect Easter Egg in the game, and I will have a great time writing descriptive text and player actions for it. Our latest art team member, Chris Willis, is doing a fabulous job imparting the right mood and detail into the Catacombs and other underground areas of the school. Paul Bowers and Eric Varnes have done a fantastic job creating backer portraits that will add to the game instead of being obtrusive.

We are basing an entire dungeon area on work from one of our high-tier backers. If we implemented his entire scenario, it would be a game by itself, so we adapted selected portions of his design to fit into Hero-U. This collaborative approach adds more richness to the game than we could invent by ourselves, and is stronger because we can adapt everyone’s work to fit our overall design framework.

Does the development approach affect the experience of playing the game? Yes, it does, absolutely! Read “How Music Works” by David Byrne (of the “Talking Heads” musical band) for some insight on how the environments of the performers and listeners/players change the music/game experience.

Agency, creativity, collaboration – A game is stronger when many creative minds are free to do their best work… as long as someone is there to make sure all of those great assets work together consistently.

Portrait of a Hero-U Backer

Some Other Great Projects

Two of our favorite artist/writers – Phil and Kaja Foglio – are in the final days of a Kickstarter project to print the latest volume of their wonderful Girl Genius graphic novels. Consider supporting their creative efforts at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/girlgenius/girl-genius-volume-13-agatha-heterodyne-and-the-sl. Girl Genius 13 has met its funding goal, but has some nice stretch goals.

Mark of the Old Ones (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1168767162/mark-of-the-old-ones-a-metroidvanian-adventure) is more of an action game than a graphic adventure, but we think it is worth supporting. The art is luscious, intriguing, and beautiful; and the concept and story line are original and intriguing. The tentacle-based game play should make an interesting variation on traditional run/jump/shoot platformers. Mark of the Old Ones has received a little over half its goal with one week to go, so it will need some extra support.

Jane Jensen, the creator and lead designer of Gabriel Knight, has completed Moebius, her first Kickstarter-backed adventure game. Read more about the project at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1005365109/jane-jensens-pinkerton-road-2012-2013-csg/posts/811469. This update tells you where you can buy the game and get a nice discount.

Incidentally, Gabriel Knight 3 contained one of the most infamous puzzles in adventure game history (unfortunately overshadowing the wonderful writing and better puzzles in the rest of the game and series). I’m spoofing it in one of the Hero-U puzzles just because I can.

Quest for Infamy, a project inspired by our own Quest for Glory series, announced a release date in its latest update (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1992695780/quest-for-infamy-an-adventure-game-by-infamous-que/posts/827735). The game sounds fun. Creator Steven Alexander is an active and influential voice in support of adventure gaming. He deserves our support.

More Hero-U Resources

In case you missed it, here are some other places you can read about and continue to support Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption.

• http://www.hero-u.net is the hub for game information and resources.
• http://www.hero-u.net/forum is the forum for discussing and learning about Hero-U and our previous games.
• Your friends can pre-order Hero-U at http://www.hero-u.net/hero_u_preorder.html. Pre-orders help us fund current game development and have a smooth transition into the development of future Hero-U games.
• You can purchase our cute and limited edition collectibles at http://www.hero-u.net/hero_u_collect.html. All preorders and purchases help give us enough time and resources to make Hero-U a great game.

Thank you so much for your continuing belief and support of our efforts to make the world a little more Heroic, one game at a time.