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Vapourware "Yasumi Matsuno may or may not be surprised his new game is being released" Unsung Story thread

Siveon

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
The art is Torchlight tier. I've certainly seen worse.
 

pbrand

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I appreciate their honesty, but the fact that Playdek burnt bridges with Akihiko Yoshida (you know, by not paying him) before Little Orbit even entered the picture is really going to seal the deal with the artwork. From all those backer comments, it seems 2 things are clear: they have high expectations for the mechanics to evoke FFT/Tactics Ogre and they have high expectations for the aesthetics to do the same.

Not sure about how this project is going to end (I "hope" it turns out okay, but I'm long past caring), but I hope at the very least Playdek's name is permanently dragged through the mud for this awful bullshit
 

Damned Registrations

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I don't get why people are so upset. They're really trying in their earnest to deliver on the project and to be as transparent as possible. This is not their specialty to do pixel art and they have to deliver a game.

If only every Kickstarter developer was like them. Their attitude was refreshing.

Vandal Hearts Flames of Judgment wasn't a super masterpiece, but as a game it was ok. It wasn't a turd by any means.
Why were people upset about this:

7Bbigod.jpg
 

Zombra

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Update #80

Jun 16 2018

Developer Blog #3 - Animation

Hey Backers,

This is Rowan Ryder from Torus Games, here today with Taliesan Arnold, who’s an animator on Unsung Story. He made the Disciple animation you saw in this month’s art update, and you all had so much positive feedback on it that we thought we’d focus on animation for this month.

In this post, we’ll talk a little about our processes, games animation in general and where we’re headed in the near future.

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An early “blocked out” version of the run animation on a placeholder model, used to test timing and functionality.
Animation Pre-Production

The first thing an animator needs to begin animating is a fully “rigged” and “skinned” 3D model. Most of you are probably familiar with the idea of a 3D model, but the ideas of “skinning” and “rigging” are a bit more esoteric.

“Rigging” is essentially the process of creating a skeleton that sits inside the 3D model, which an animator can then use to control motion. Each skeleton is comprised of several controllers that the animator can use to quickly deform and move different parts of the model, which is obviously useful!

“Skinning” refers to the act of assigning the amount of influence that each of these controllers have over the model and each other. In the real world, moving a part of yourself moves everything connected to it to some degree, which is what skinning emulates. For example, when moving the arm of a model, we want the shoulder to influence the whole arm, the elbow to influence the forearm and hand and the wrist to only influence the hand.

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A second pass at the run animation on the same model, this time with a bo staff equipped.
It is possible to start animating without a fully skinned and rigged model. Rigs can be shared among multiple models — all male humans could share a rig, for example — which means we can start animating before we receive a particular model.

However, a good animation needs to take the entire model into account. One animation will work well on one model but not another, despite sharing a rig. One model may have heavier armor, for example, which couldn’t be shared with a stealthy character’s lithe movements. So, it’s always best to start with a fully skinned and rigged model where possible.

Once we receive the model, the next step is to choreograph and plan out the actual animation. Especially complex animations may require the additional step of storyboarding, but typically it’s okay to jump straight into “blocking out” the animation — this is the process of creating just a few key frames to get a sense of the motion and timing. With a blocked out animation, the team can quickly spot any issues in timing or functionality, allowing the animator to make changes before too much time is spent on actual animation.

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The run animation applied to the Disciple model.
The Animation Phase

Keeping technical considerations in mind (length, timing, starting and ending poses, frames per second and so on), it’s time to start animating! Since we already have a blocked out animation, the next step is to take these key frames and start adjusting them along the timeline, looking for how long each key pose should be held to create a sense of weight and flow to the animation. Next, we create transitional frames between these key frames, which helps to flesh out the timing, weight, drag and so on.

Next, the scariest part of animation: Splining. This is where Maya (the software we use for animating) can take the existing key poses and automatically fill in the gaps! It’s never quite perfect (especially if you’ve over-rotated or forgotten a key somewhere), but it saves an enormous amount of time.

From here, it’s just a process of cleaning up the motion, weighting, timing, arcs and so on (if you’re unfamiliar with them, it’s worth reading about the 12 Principles of Animation). The animation is then tweaked and refined until the animator is happy (enough) with their work.

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The first pass at a casting animation for the Disciple.
Animating for Unsung Story

Unsung Story leaves a lot more room for creative expression in animation than games with stricter timing requirements. We’re absolutely conscious of the risk of animations being too long, but by virtue of being a turn-based game, there’s a bit more time to play with for any given animation.

At its core, Unsung Story is fun to animate! Each class and weapon is distinct and interesting, and it’s great to be able to feel out and explore the styles of combat on display. The project has a lot of animation work left to do, but we’re at a point where the pipeline is steady and we can begin to produce and refine animations quite quickly.

We look forward to sharing more of our work in the future.

Until then, thanks again for your support, and for being a part of this journey!

Thanks,

Rowan
 

Zombra

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A bunch of these images are actually video links, check out the update page for the full treatment.

Update #81

Jul 1 2018

July Update - Travel the World

Dear Backers,

This month I traveled back out to Melbourne, Australia, so we could all sit down as a team and go through every aspect of Unsung Story together. I've only just returned, and I'm fighting a bit of jetlag, so I apologize in advance if this month's update is a little unorganized.

In case you didn't see it, be sure to check out our Dev Blog on Animation from this month. Taliesan and Rowan do a great job of walking you our process on character movement. I love watching them breath life into these characters.

We're nearly a year in!

There's so much going on at this point, it's hard to pick and choose what to talk about while still not spoiling major elements of the game. However, in keeping with the theme of travel, this month I want to finally take our players on a visual walkthrough of our world to see how it has been developing.

The World of Unsung Story
Welcome to Lasfaria, the location for the 77-year war between the Alionne Kingdom and the Saxtel Empire. It represents 11 months of digging in, hard decisions, and pushing forward to get where we are today.

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Various names for the world floated around in the documentation we were given like Rasfalia, Razzfaria, and others. But Lasfaria was my favorite, and I felt it was time we finally named this down.

Zooming in a little further, we'll take a look at Branholme and the surrounding country side of the Alionne Kingdom.

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Branholme City
As the home for the School of Technology, Branholme is filled with imaginative wonders and innovation.

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Branholme building sketches
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Branholme Level Art In Progress
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Stone and Building progress
The Alionne citizens know prosperity and comfort, much of which is built by harnessing the power of a special ore that can absorb and release sound energy. This ore is something that can only be mined in large quantities within their Kingdom.

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Branholme Mining Platform
Over the eons of exposure to this raw element, a new race has emerged within Lasfaria, the Singed.

The Singed are the third and final playable race in Unsung Story. Players will get to control units that are Human, Horned, and Singed through out their adventure.

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Singed Male Cavalier
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Singed Male Guardian
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Singed Female Priest
Next I'm going to go over a general progress, then I'll walk through some UI progress, and I'll end with some videos of current gameplay in our visual target mission.

General Update
  • All 51 missions are now in the game. This is a big milestone for the game, and now begins the long road of building out and perfecting the gameplay of each level.
  • Lots of work refining the narrative. We spent a significant part of June fleshing out cutscenes, character dialog, and story moments. Each mission design had to be reviewed and in many cases modified to make sure it still contained all the elements necessary for the story.
  • "Crescendo Attack" system created. These are the big ultimate attacks that are meant to change the pace of combat and deepen the strategy of the game.
  • Initial AI design created. Currently each unit has the same priority system, but moving forward we'll be starting to differentiate how the AI plays each class, so they take advantage of their core abilities.
  • Initial Tutorial created. This is a rough pass through the tutorial elements that happen during the first two missions. The goal is to keep tutorialization as light as possible, while the player gets into the game. We expect to learn a lot from our early alpha testers to help us.
  • Significant work on core game flow. This covers critical things such as the order in which abilities are resolved as well as the order in which UI and animations are played and displayed.
  • Added many base animations to the game. These include locomotion (movement between nodes), scaling/climbing, dropping to lower tiles, Disciple Bo-Staff attack (used for all physical attacks currently), Archer basic draw and release (used for all projectile attacks currently), reactionary animations for buffs & debuffs (basic stagger).
  • Basic progression is in the latest build. Players can now save, load, and create new games.
User Interface
In May, our Dev Blog talked about the UI design. That work has continued in June, and we have our first efforts to show stats and game elements. Next month we'll be working on creating and integrating as many screens as possible to get the core game flow in.

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Any Tactics game is filled with stats and abilities. It's the heart of the game. But in Unsung Story, we have the added complexity of equipping two different classes at once - which doubles the amount of important information we need to show. Our job is to surface all this information as cleanly as possible, so players can understand the impact of changes they make.

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Initial Skills and Abilities UI work
Much of the work above is placeholder. We haven't yet created the style guide with icons, fonts, colors, and window frames. But this was a big step forward in defining what we need to do.

Visual Target Level
Lastly, let's take a look at what some of this looks like together.

Sometimes early in development, the team will create a single level to try and capture the feel of what we're building. We call this a "Visual Target". As is often the case, this level will never be used in the game. It's purely made up and has no part in the actual story. Many of the art elements in the scene are still placeholders, and not representative of final level art.

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We're playing with a lot of things in this scene, however we still don't have all the classes modeled out yet, so we've inserted our Disciple for all the units. You'll notice he is human with a regular skin tone. Each class can be any of our three races with a number of skin and other variations.

The triangle grid is really coming along. The guys have done a great job visualizing this system in a way that feels seamless and less intrusive.

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We're using the grid render system as a way to surface lots of useful information like distance ranges and attack areas. Here we some of our Elementalist and Physician skills visualized.

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And finally a little bit of fun with our Cavalier and his Transfer skill.

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As always, we appreciate your continued patience and support.

Sincerely, Matthew Scott
 

Zombra

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Right on time with another monthly update.

Another
major change in development. Up to now Little Orbit has contracted the actual dev work to Torus Games. Torus is "stepping back" and Little Orbit is taking all development in-house.

They've also decided to double the workload for the art team by enabling two different visual modes for the game.

Update #82

Aug 1 2018

August Update - Course corrections

Dear Backers,

One year ago today, we took over Unsung Story. At that time we decided to completely start over. So for me today is a bit of a birthday.

I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by.

Before I jump into this month's update, I'd like to personally thank all of the backers for their patience, support, and comments - even the ones we didn't agree with. I know our execution on the project hasn't been perfect, but we've had a lot of fun so far digging in and building something we're proud of.

This month's update is going to be different. For some it's going to be disappointing. For others it's going to be a birthday gift of sorts.

I had a lot more content and video planned from the latest build, but I feel like we need to take some time this month to address an ongoing issue.

After the last couple updates, I've received many polarizing comments about the direction of the game. Many of these comments have been very supportive, and I want to thank those backers for their kind words. Many of those comments were not. Most of them echo the same sentiment, This isn't the game I backed, or, The art makes me uninterested in this game, or the most painful version, It hurts more having you bring this game back from the dead and then changing the art so much that I no longer want to play it.

So we're at a bit of a crossroads, and I need to make a fairly significant decision about the direction of the game and how well it matches the original Kickstarter project.

After some reflection I've decided that we're going to make some course corrections, which is what the rest of this update is going to be about.

Art Adjustments

I feel like the aesthetics of the characters are the #1 place that backers have voiced their opinions. I'm going to go on record and say that I love the art. We never set out to copy Final Fantasy Tactics, and I think we need to give Unsung its own place to shine. I admit that I also have more art to review which helps give me a bigger picture of what the game will actually look like. I can understand how difficult it is for Backers to extrapolate the look of the game from only a couple pieces.

We are not going to scrap the art, but we are going to pause development to experiment with giving players two modes for the game art: Hero vs. Classic

Our Hero look will continue to emphasize more statuesque body silhouettes and the palette will be more saturated. We realize this isn't for everyone, so we're adding a new Classic look that will have re-sculpted body forms which are more conservative featuring a more muted and less saturated palette. We're also adding Thin and Heavy forms for characters to help build diversity.

In Unsung Story, the look of your units is randomized. The goal is to allow for lots of variation through blending each of these various forms, either Thin - Hero - Heavy or Thin - Classic - Heavy. Hopefully that will give us a huge amount of character variety.

This is a big change.

It affects our entire character pipeline, model requirements, switching classes, and the animation system. It also involves making sure the color palette for environments match up to your selection, so it is going to take a bit of time to implement. We couldn't pull together a prototype for today, but I'm hoping to show off this direction next month.

Impact to Q4 2019 Release Date

I spoke about this earlier in the project when we decided to start over on the art. Putting the project on hold while we address major art concerns is a very dangerous decision to make. Not only does it affect the momentum of the team, but it has a very real affect on production timing and resources. Pre-production resources are very different from Production resources, and developers often shift these talented individuals around during the project to meet the demands of each phase.

Any time you have to revisit pre-production elements, it has a terrible affect on your production schedule.

We are still going to push hard to hit the original date, but I want to be clear that the project release date might push out a bit further.

Change in Developer

Lastly, the net result is that Torus have graciously agreed to step back and help us make this change.

The good news is that much of their work is complete. On the design side they have delivered the combat mechanics, the classes and abilities, and all 51 candidate white box levels for each mission. On the engineering side, the core tactics engine is nearly Alpha and very playable with the latest iteration of the Triangle Grid and UI. We're going to spend August buttoning up a few remaining items with them, and then we'll move everything in-house.

Hopefully our commitment to the project and the backers is clear.

As always, we appreciate your continued patience and support.

Sincerely, Matthew Scott
 
Last edited:

baud

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Apparently they are still working on the game. Here's the last two updates:


Oct 1 2018

October - Pulling it all together
42 Comments

Dear Backers,

We're back for another packed update of progress, and this month the theme is pulling it all together.

Internal Development
Last month, we announced that we were bringing the remaining work on the title in-house.

Since then I have had many fans and backers ask me why we decided to move everything away from Torus.

The decision was based on a gradual take over of the project that started back in March, after Torus faced a number of challenges coming out of Pre-Production. Unsung Story was always going to be very collaborative because of the Matsuno source material, but by May all of the art production had been moved to Little Orbit, and in July we took over several of the design deliverables. By August it was clear that the project would start to suffer if we continued to split development between the two studios. Little Orbit has an 8 year working history with Torus, and they have shipped many titles for us. I deeply appreciate all the work they did on the title for nearly a year.

August and September have been a blur of ramp up.

In addition to the existing internal folks already working on the game, my Executive Producer, Nick, has officially taken over along with his associate producer, Kyle. We moved a new designer (Jared) onto the project at the end of August. We have a new lead level designer and two new engineers joining the team today! And we'll be moving over two more engineers (Brandon and Rodney), a UX artist (Jessica), and a technical artist (a different Nick) as they free up off other projects later this month.

Storyboarding
At this point we have a lot of great 2D art, 3D art, design docs, white boxes, test levels, and engineering. Last month's update showed off some of the early results from R&D in the engine. But with a project this large that was being managed out-of-house, there have been a lot of moving parts to get re-organized. The team has spent weeks digging through everything, and in some cases making revisions. Often during this process, we found ourselves asking questions about the impact of a specific ability or an objective of a mission within the overall scope of the game.

Admittedly we found in many cases we didn't have enough documentation to help with the answers.

So Tyler and Jared have taken on the process of pulling everything together into a massive Storyboard Walk Through that incorporates all the work done to date. Think of this as a pen and paper version of the game - complete with D&D-style module descriptions, enemy stat charts, mockups for cutscenes, graph paper maps, character sheets, and dice.

Needless to say, the ability to sit down and play the game without spending hours and hours of 3D modeling and engineering is fantastic. Of course we have already stumbled across a bunch of minor flaws and issues in the design, but overall it has helped to validate the game. Also this effort will all go into the Strategy Guide. For the backers who ordered that reward, it should be fun glimpse behind-the-scenes at the design process.

General Updates
Here are a couple minor design alterations:

  • Scout abilities have been re-worked a little and renamed to Operative
  • Saboteur abilities have been re-worked a little and renamed to Engineer
  • Sellswords have been renamed to Mercenary
  • Swordspeakers have been renamed to Bladesinger
On the art side, we're done with all the concepts for all the classes. We now need to go back and do gender swaps for the class armor.

On the engineering side, we are working through the engine itself to streamline battle mechanics, how the grid is surfaced, and movement.

Music
We are running behind. Mr Sakimoto had a personal injury that affected his hearing, and he took several months off to recover. But he is back now and ready to go. In fact, I am delighted to report that he just turned in his first rough cut of the main theme!

As soon as more of the music has been composed, and Mr. Sakimoto feels comfortable, I will find a cool way to share it.

Lethanor & Mana Classes
This is one of my favorite regions of Unsung Story. Lethanor sits right on the border between the Saxtel Empire and the Kingdom of Alionne, and makes special use of a series of water gates to produce sound and magic throughout the city. It is also home to the school of Mana, and has long been a zen-like place of contemplation and neutrality.

You'll notice in addition to the water gates, bells are also significant in Lethanor. Bells are also a common theme in the class armor for the Mana School.

ART NOTE: Please remember these are all early concepts. They were designed as an exploration to push the aesthetic of each location and class based on what school they are from. It is our belief that over the course of the project, they will pull back into a more classic look based on a number of things we are still finalizing.

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Lethanor City Section
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Lethanor Domed Roof Detail
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Lethanor Detail Sketches
We have previously introduced you to the Disciple and Priest class concepts. To round out the School of Mana here are the rest of its classes.

Elementalists

Elementalists represent magical power in its most pure and destructive form. They take great pride in their ability to manipulate the weave of the elements around them, and seek rapture in the great expression of skill that accompanies every dazzling spell.

They avoid direct confrontation, flinging powerful spells towards the enemy from the relative safety of the backline. They’re not physically powerful, which makes them vulnerable to enemies that can close the distance (or ranged attacks, suchs as arrows).

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Mana Elementalist
Librarians

Librarians wield the ultimate power—manipulation of time itself. We have hinted at the way Unsung Story is told in reverse, and that mechanism is connected to Librarians who care for the "Opus", the first song and source of power behind the Schools. Librarians have changed the outcome of countless battles, slowing down the nimblest of foes, speeding up their allies and even undoing devastating losses. They focus on manipulating these mechanics through buffs, debuffs, passive abilities and reactive abilities. The Librarian is especially effective when paired with a slow but powerful class, or when facing extremely fast opponents.

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Mana Librarian
Spellbreakers

Spellbreakers arose not for a great need to fight against magic, but as a way for the School of Mana to express their artful dominance over others. For when your enemy’s flames are quenched and their spells falter, who are the true masters of magic?

Spellbreakers are powerful anti-magic tanks, capable of absorbing magical damage. They should be grouped up with allies that are vulnerable to magic attacks, or used to hunt down enemy magic users to end them quickly. However, Spellbreakers don’t perform especially well against physical attacks, and can become overwhelmed quickly if they strike too far in search of enemy mages.

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Mana Spellbreaker
In keeping with this month's theme, we thought it would be cool to show you a line-up of the Mana classes, so you could get a feel for them all together.

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Mana Line-up
Technology Classes & Alionne Creatures
On the Alionne side, we have a number of classes we still haven't shared. Here they are.

Engineers

This class is undergoing some re-design. Engineers are the builders and researchers behind the School of Technology. They are combat-trained, but tend to utilize their expertise over brute force in combat. They can rush ahead of the allied team, placing as many traps as possible before retreating to safety. Once behind allied lines, they can pelt the enemy team with bombs, dealing decent ranged damage to an area.

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Technology Engineer
Physicians

The Physician is the oldest discipline in the School of Technology, and represents the shift from magical research to the scientific. While they’re the precursor the many advanced classes, their skills are quite useful later on.

The Physician supports allies with curative effects from a distance. They’re extremely versatile and powerful support units, but come at two heavy costs.

Firstly, they require items to be effective. If the player runs out of items, they’ll have to buy more from shops while outside of battle.

Secondly, the Physician has almost no offensive capabilities. They can heal and support their team, but can deal almost no damage to enemies, other than some light harassment from their Slings.

Finally, Physicians are capable of combining their items to create new effects. This becomes especially important in the late-game, where advanced items can only be created by combining two lesser items.

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Technology Physician
Operative

The discipline of scouting was designed to help find precious resources in the Alionne Wastes. Operatives are fast, stealthy and extremely independent, though there’s a reason they tend to avoid toe-to-toe combat.

The Operative infiltrates enemy lines, sneaking up on a vulnerable backline enemy and finishing them off before the enemy team can react. They’re also capable of stealing equipment, which makes them essential versus powerful units, such as some bosses. Stealing isn’t easy, but results in not only disarming the opponent, but giving the stolen equipment to the player’s party. No gear in the game can only be obtained in this way, but it does allow players to obtain powerful equipment much earlier than they would otherwise be able to.

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Technology Operative
Cavalier

Cavaliers represent a noble and honorable approach to combat, appropriate for warriors of a more sophisticated age. Don’t let their civility fool you, though; many are the combatant who has fallen to the Cavalier’s guile, disarmed not by their blades, but by their skillful footwork.

The Cavalier is a tank class who focuses on avoiding damage. The rapiers they wield have naturally high weapon evasion stats, allowing them to easily parry incoming blows. However, Cavaliers are lacking offensively, and will struggle to deal with magical damage. Placed well, Cavaliers can hold the line against several enemies. If the Cavalier is placed poorly, magical attacks will kill them before they ever get a chance to fight back.

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Technology Cavalier
And again, we thought it would be fun to present everyone together.

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Technology Line-up
Alionne is the most sophisticated of the Lasfaria countries, but at the cost of its surrounding environments. Here is a quick look at some creatures from that region.

Automa-Tank

Not every technology invention works as intended.

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2D Automa-Tank Concept
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3D Automa-Tank Model
Croakenmire

These hyper intelligent amphibians wander the Wastes.

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2D Croakenmire Concept
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3D Croakenmire Model

3D Art from Last Month's Concepts
In last month's update we showed off a number of concepts including Aramar in the Saxtel Empire, a couple creature designs, and some new classes. This month I thought I would start by posting how some of those items are coming out in 3D.

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3D Props from the Saxtel Wilderness
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3D Heronfir Creature
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3D Lionus Maximus
Lastly, September was a particularly brutal month for those that work in the games industry. We lost some excellent studios including Carbine, Capcom Vancouver, and Telltale due to closures and games being shutdown. If you are in the industry, please take a moment to post any jobs you might have for those who might be looking.

As always, we appreciate your continued patience and support.

Sincerely, Matthew Scott

Nov 1 2018

November - Focusing on the Divine
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Dear Backers,

Bonjour from France! I'm finishing this month's update in Paris after Games Week. Little Orbit was here working with our European Distributors, many of whom will be helping us release the retail version of Unsung Story next year.

During the show, I got a small break to stroll around and visit Notre Dame.

Standing in the cold October air under the shadow of such an amazing structure, it was easy to imagine what it must be like for the citizens of Hodh in Jelamond, home of the School of Divine magic.

This month I'll be giving a general update and walking through early conceptual work for the locations and classes of the Divine.

General Update
We've been expanding. In October, we added two designers, one character technical artist, and several more developers to the project.

The Storyboard work I mentioned last month is progressing well. We're now complete with Chapter 5 and part of Chapter 4. This is much more than redoing elements of the whiteboxes, it also includes all the dialog, intro and outro cut scenes, and extra objectives. I looked for a small snippet to share, but it's filled with notes and spoilers.

The developers are building out some of the more boring systems like Dialog, Audio, and Streaming based on requirements from the design team. They will also be starting all of the character customization systems in November, since our character technical artist just started.

In addition to the Storyboard and level layouts, the designers have been polishing up abilities and progression, so I'm going to share the class unlock tree. This shows the path for player units to progress from the starting classes through to late stage classes.

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Class Unlock Tree
The art team is mostly done with conceptual work. You'll see the last major chunk in this update. They are focusing now on 3D modeling, texturing, and animation based on the requirements from the Storyboard.

Music Update
There has been a lot of back and forth on the music tracks this month.

I've listened to 20 unique tracks so far. This includes the main theme plus one lighter variation. Some main battle music themes, and then some of tracks for each chapter. This has been incredibly fun, and I am anticipating a trip to Tokyo before the end of the year to help provide final feedback to Mr Sakimoto.

Like I said last month, I'm working on a format that will allow us to share a teaser to some of the music.

And now for the rest of the class and location concepts...

Jelamond & Divine Classes
Jelamond and it's capital city of Hodh are among the most “ethereal” of the locations in Unsung Story. Built as high as possible in the Northern most peaks, this country is situated more evenly between the cosmos and the earth.

It is home to the School of Divine, which reveres the soul. Practitioners of this School use the resonant quality of the “ethereal body” or soul to transfer, store, magnify, and unleash magic. It is a reverent culture of sacred ritual, ecstatic song, and spiritual devotion. Practitioners of the School of Divine do not fear death and believe in reincarnation.

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Jelamond Cathedral Section
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Cathedral detail sketches
We have previously introduced you to the Guardian class concepts. To round out the School of Divine here are the rest of its classes.

Bladesinger

This class unites the arts of swordplay and spellcraft, creating a wholly unique fighting style that can baffle opponents, if they managed to live long enough to consider it. Bladesingers are masters of all weaponry, summoning whichever blade they deem appropriate at a whim.

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Divine Bladesinger
Necromancer

Necromancers are masters of death, within others and themselves. Often considered deplorable to those unfamiliar with their creed, in truth Necromancers bear no ill will toward the dead, instead opting to utilize that power to its fullest potential in aiding life.

Their primary weapon is a Scythe. They can manipulate corpses and debuff opponents.

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Divine Necromancer
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Necromancer 3D Model
Echo Knight

This class wields an unusual and incongruous power, warping the very fabric of space around themselves and their foes. The Librarians sing of Echo Knights who have stopped whole legions, all without shedding a drop of blood.

Their primary weapon is the Greatsword.

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Divine Echo Knight
Shadow

Shadows are the unspoken and unseen hand of the Divine, dealing with matters that the public face of the School would deem reprehensible. When the seemingly healthy enemies of the church drop dead in broad daylight, citizens tend to assume it was by an act of God, rather than the immoral act of subterfuge.

Their primary weapon is a Hook and Chain, and they can 'mark' an enemy to perform extra abilities.

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Divine Shadow
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Shadow 3D Model
Like last month, we thought it would be cool to show you a line-up of the Divine classes, so you could get a feel for them all together.

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Divine Line-up
Nature Classes
We completed Alionne last month, so we'll finish off with the last of the Saxtel classes. Here they are along with some gender swap concepts.

Archer

This class is unlocked early in the game. They are a simple but effective long-range attacker, capable of striking distant foes with ease - the backbone of any successful army. Archers maintain a backline, pelting foes with debilitating arrow attacks using their primary weapon, the Bow.

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Nature Human Female Archer
Animation Test - Nature Male Mercenary

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Animation Test - Nature Male Mercenary
Gender Swaps

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Nature Horned Male Wildlord
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Nature Horned Female Berserker
And here is a line-up of the Nature classes.

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Nature Line-up
This month I'm also going to show off two of my favorite creatures.

Gravemother

An alluring female siren with a snake lower body. She has snake hair like Medusa and is covered with thick scales down to her snake body. Holding her small magical harp, she can attack with her tail or by her strumming an evil chord.

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Gravemother Concept
Hive Lord

A large knuckle walking spore beast with a giant bee hive growing out of its back. When casting spells on enemies, it sends its bees out to swarm and sting the enemies or plunges its arms into the ground with roots spiking up under enemies.

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Hive Lord Concept
As always, we appreciate your continued patience and support.

Sincerely, Matthew Scott
 

Zombra

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I received this one :)

Some of the still screenshots here are actually videos on the kickstarter page, click over if you want to see them. It's nothing really worth seeing except as proof that the game is being worked on.

Update #86

Dec 1 2018

December Update - Revisiting the Grid

Dear backers,

This month we're going to take a break from showing off art, and instead I'm going to walk through a fairly large change we are making to the design of Unsung Story.

We're not going to be moving forward with the Triangle Grid.

Changing gears this late in the project is very difficult. It's a particularly hard decision because I've already made and reversed this decision once before. But more painfully, it invalidates a bunch of work the team as done.

However, I'm going to spend our December update discussing why this needs to happen.

For those that want the context around the grid system discussions, I had originally posted an update in December 2017 saying that based on extensive analysis, the Triangle Grid didn't work. You can read it here.

My conclusion back then was: The Triangle Grid system added complexity without really adding value. It's harder to estimate distance or directional facing – the two core elements any good tactics game needs to help communicate.

Then during my visit to Tokyo in January earlier this year, I met with Matsuno, and he adamantly insisted that the Triangle Grid did work, and he challenged us to avoid cutting it. So my team spent a couple weeks working on the issues, and we came up with what we felt was a nice solution. I showed off an early prototype in my March update. You can read it here.

In that update, even though we had found a way to make the system work, I acknowledged: I'm taking a risk in one of the biggest gameplay systems in Unsung Story - a risk that introduces a million new ways to fail. Hopefully it will be worth it.

Since then, you've seen some of the progress on our Visual Target mission, the 20 classes and 240 abilities, and the 50 white box missions for the rest of the game.

However around the 1 year anniversary in August, issues started popping up with the mission designs.

Early testing on some of the levels showed that while they were functionally complete, they just weren't fun to play. We started back tracking over the issues and making adjustments, but the issues we encountered didn't change. Ultimately we have come to the conclusion the majority of the problems in the levels rest with the Triangle Grid.

To be clear, the Triangle Grid does technically work. That was my initial problem back in December. We solved that, and I'm even a big fan of how we implemented it.

But now we've hit a new problem - the Triangle Grid doesn't work for a tactics-style gamewhich needs to focuses on the following:

  • Precise movement options & scale
  • Emphasis on verticality
  • Balancing melee and ranged combat
For the next couple examples, I'm going to refer to the mission design for Chapter 5 Mission 5. You can see both the Triangle Grid and Square Grid white boxes for this mission.

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Chapter 5 Mission 5 White boxes
NOTE: We started using hexes in our Triangle-based white boxes. This was done just to approximate the geometry and to lock down movement areas. After that we went back and smoothed over the hexes and swapped everything to triangles. From my perspective the main benefit of the Triangle Grid (as opposed to traditional hex grids) was to get organic looking levels that didn't require have hex-shaped art everywhere.

Now onto the issues:

Problem #1 - Precise movement options & scale

First, you'll notice that the Triangle-based white box is much larger than the Square-based white box. This is because with six directions you can't turn as fast, which means that you have to move farther to engage things. Each move feels less precise or meaningful. In a tactics game, I would argue every move should feel important.

You can see how large we had to make our Visual Target level in our July update here.

Problem #2 - Emphasis on verticality

After playing a couple different levels with the Triangle Grid, we've noticed that you can't get a lot of verticality. You can see this above. The bulk of the main movement area in the top white box is flat. This is because you can't easily model stairs or smaller roof areas in the Triangle Grid.

In the bottom white box, we see all kinds of vertical options with stairs, accessible rooftops, etc.

Problem #3 - Balancing melee and ranged combat

Looking at the top map, you can see that it might work great for a ranged combat game in the style of XCOM. Since the scale is larger, melee abilities are limited and become problematic.

For Unsung to truly work in a Triangle Grid, we would need to re-work about 50% of the classes and abilities to focus more on ranged abilities. We would need line-of-sight rules, cover points, and mostly flat levels. But then that would be an entirely different game...

So where do we go from here?

Honestly, there's a lot to re-work. Over the next couple months we'll be going through each mission's white box to convert it to the Square Grid and building out new UIs for how spells and ability ranges are rendered.

This month, I'm going to show off some of our progress converting a specific mission to the Square Grid so you can see how this plays.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: You're about to see some very rough work-in-progress. This features "Heroic" characters without any of the changes for the "Classic" look, and there are a LOT of placeholders. The Plagueweaver unit on my team is meant to be an Elementalist. The Disciple is a Physician, and the Sharpshooters are supposed to be Archers. UIs, grid indicators, and damage VFX are all temporary.

You'll also notice a lot of the UIs have been removed because we're working on re-implementing them with the final UI style guide. Don't worry, those will be back soon.

Chapter 5 Mission 5 Overview
Welcome to Branholme! You and your band of mercenaries have just arrived upon this floating City of Wonder at the behest of your latest client. They weren’t very forthcoming with the details; but the pay was well above expectations so any questions from your side were minimal. Get in, protect an important figure from any unsavory types, and get paid. You’ve done this a hundred times over in a hundred different ways. How could this be any different?

Here is the write up from one of our designers explaining how we got to this mission:

When players first find themselves at Branholme, they are tasked with locating and protecting a very important figure within the world of Unsung Story. Unbeknownst to you and your party, a rival faction covertly sent units into the city just days before, and their mission isn’t as helpful as yours… Almost as soon as you locate your target, the enemy springs into action, and you are suddenly face-to-face with an overwhelming force right in Branholme’s town center! Fight through the town, keep your end of the bargain, and try to get out alive.

In this first sequence, we had already started work on re-organizing how a player's turn works before we changed the grid. The goal is to allow players to preview movement and attack ranges before they commit to their turn. Many tactics games punish new players by not allowing them to undo a mistake. In this sequence, I'm moving my Archer (represented by the Sharpshooter) and I'm trying to see how far her range is so I can hit the enemy's Archer with my Toxic Arrow ability.

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Next, I use my Physician to heal another unit.

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Then I massively underestimate the enemy's ability to gang up on me. My Mercenary doesn't last long. The black ball over a unit's head is a placeholder for units that are unconscious.

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And finally here is a shot of my Elementalist leveraging how close those enemies are together so I can use my Flameburst ability to hit more than one unit.

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Ultimately I felt like this version of the game is much closer to the feel we want. Each movement felt important. The scale felt good. And ranged felt balanced with melee. We'll be back next month with more progress to show.

But before I go, here's an animated overview of the unit we featured in this month's gameplay footage.

The Automatank
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Thank you for your continued patience and support.

Sincerely, Matthew Scott
 

Goi~Yaas~Dinn

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...Why the fuck are they going for hexes when four triangles form a square? What am I missing here? Wasn't there an easier way to do that?
 

Zombra

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So, now this game has 0 relations to the original idea.
Now, we can officially call it a scam. At this point the only thing they intend to deliver are the vaguest outlines of what was promised- an SRPG with the title of "Unsung Story".
Uh, so who's the scammer exactly? The original developers who took the kickstarter money have been out of the picture for years.
 

Goi~Yaas~Dinn

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So, now this game has 0 relations to the original idea.
Now, we can officially call it a scam. At this point the only thing they intend to deliver are the vaguest outlines of what was promised- an SRPG with the title of "Unsung Story".
Uh, so who's the scammer exactly? The original developers who took the kickstarter money have been out of the picture for years.
Who then gave their word they'd deliver per terms of the kickstarter, if memory serves. "Passing the buck" does not mean the "buck" no longer exists. Don't take the project if you can't deliver at least most of what was promised.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
So, now this game has 0 relations to the original idea.
Now, we can officially call it a scam. At this point the only thing they intend to deliver are the vaguest outlines of what was promised- an SRPG with the title of "Unsung Story".
Uh, so who's the scammer exactly? The original developers who took the kickstarter money have been out of the picture for years.
Who then gave their word they'd deliver per terms of the kickstarter, if memory serves. "Passing the buck" does not mean the "buck" no longer exists. Don't take the project if you can't deliver at least most of what was promised.
So Little Orbit (the new devs) are "scammers"? What did they scam you out of, exactly? What's going in their pocket?
 

Goi~Yaas~Dinn

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So Little Orbit (the new devs) are "scammers"? What did they scam you out of, exactly? What's going in their pocket?

They didn't scam me out of shit, I gave up on the gaming industry years ago when it was clear it was turning into Little Hollywood. Everyone who actually backed this clusterfuck just got hit with a bait-and-switch.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
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11,539
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
So Little Orbit (the new devs) are "scammers"? What did they scam you out of, exactly? What's going in their pocket?
They didn't scam me out of shit, I gave up on the gaming industry years ago when it was clear it was turning into Little Hollywood. Everyone who actually backed this clusterfuck just got hit with a bait-and-switch.
:lol: No, we didn't. (I'm a backer.) We lost our money years ago when the project crashed and burned due to Playdek's mismanagement. Unsung Story was gone, completely gone. A failed kickstarter, we've all seen them and moved on with our lives. Nobody expected anything at that point, zero. Then a new developer came along and started building something out of the wreckage, which they're essentially going to give us for free. Characterizing Little Orbit as "scammers" is patently idiotic.
 

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