Why were people upset about this: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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Branholme City
As the home for the School of Technology, Branholme is filled with imaginative wonders and innovation.
Branholme building sketches
Branholme Level Art In Progress
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.
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.
Singed Male Cavalier
Singed Male Guardian
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
User Interface
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And finally a little bit of fun with our Cavalier and his Transfer skill.
As always, we appreciate your continued patience and support.
Sincerely, Matthew Scott
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
is it really a change when the succession of setbacks is so beautifully uniformAnother major change in development.
You missed the diversity one in September.
i feel like things changed quite a bit somewhere on page 5
What is the reason of making the game at this point? Next they are not going to be able to use Sakimoto's music.I think it's because they can't use the original artwork
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:
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.
- Precise movement options & scale
- Emphasis on verticality
- Balancing melee and ranged combat
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.
Next, I use my Physician to heal another unit.
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.
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.
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
Thank you for your continued patience and support.
Sincerely, Matthew Scott
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".So, now this game has 0 relations to the original idea.
Uh, so who's the scammer exactly? The original developers who took the kickstarter money have been out of the picture for years.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".So, now this game has 0 relations to the original idea.
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.Uh, so who's the scammer exactly? The original developers who took the kickstarter money have been out of the picture for years.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".So, now this game has 0 relations to the original idea.
So Little Orbit (the new devs) are "scammers"? What did they scam you out of, exactly? What's going in their pocket?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.Uh, so who's the scammer exactly? The original developers who took the kickstarter money have been out of the picture for years.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".So, now this game has 0 relations to the original idea.
So Little Orbit (the new devs) are "scammers"? What did they scam you out of, exactly? What's going in their pocket?
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.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.So Little Orbit (the new devs) are "scammers"? What did they scam you out of, exactly? What's going in their pocket?