Shadows of Adam Trailer
We are preparing for a Kickstarter and public demo launch for January 20th, 2016. To build anticipation, we created a pretty sweet trailer!
More info is available at the Shadows of Adam website
Weekly Content Blog #40: End of Year Wrap Up!
Hello everyone! As you may have noticed we did not have a post last week. This is because we were busy trying to get our demo ready to send out to testers. Since our start in October 2013 we have reached a staggering total of 3000 commits to github. The Something Classic machine has been in high gear creating one of our most productive periods as a team.
Beta Demo has been sent to testers!
As mentioned before we have finally sent a playable demo to testers. This is the first time anyone outside of the five of us has played the game. The testers will help us get the product to the highest level of polish for our public demo release in mid Jan 2016.
Look out for a kickstarter/demo release in Jan 2016 !
As Josh mentioned in our last post, we are planning to release a kickstarter in Jan 2016. The kickstarter will be released in conjunction with a free playable demo. The demo is around an hour or two of game play that covers The Tangle through the Misty Woods.
2015 was an amazing year for Something Classic, which has seen a huge update in the quality of our project. It was a long and tough road but we are finally nearing the end. Thanks for taking this journey with us.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from all of us here at Something Classic!
Weekly Content Blog #39: What’s New?
December is shaping up to be a productive month here at Something Classic. We’re working hard on our demo, which is finally nearing release. Here are a few things that have happened recently.
We’re on a Podcast!
Tyler and I recently did an interview for the great folks over at Matt in the Mancave. We chatted about the game, what we hope to accomplish, possible release dates, and why modern technology allows us to revisit classic RPGs while pooping! It was fun and we hope to check in with them again sometime in the future! Be sure to check it out here.
We’re working on a web page for the game!
The design for the page you’re viewing was a bit rushed, I’ll admit. But we (okay, mostly Tim), spent a lot of time working on a dedicated promo page for Shadows of Adam. It’s designed to look like those totally rad 90’s magazine advertisements you may or may not remember. That site will be launched very soon, so stay tuned.
We’re finishing up our demo!
The demo is finally nearing completion, which is a huge milestone for us as a team. This past week we’ve been working on squashing numerous bugs, improving our title and game over screen, and implementing some cool new animations. We’re very excited to finally have something ready for release and there will be more details forthcoming.
We’re preparing for a Kickstarter!
Last, but not least: we’re planning a Kickstarter campaign. We’re aiming for sometime in January 2016. We’ll have some cool rewards planned for everyone who backs us, and a successful campaign will certainly allow us to go above and beyond in terms of content and overall quality. More details forthcoming.
2016 is shaping up to be a great year for Shadows of Adam. After over 2 years of development, we’re hoping to get something playable out to the world, along with a finished product later in the year. Thanks for everyone who has shown interest in us so far and remember to keep checking back, because some big updates will be on the way.
Weekly Content Blog #38: New stuff!
Has it really been five weeks since my last blog post? Time is flying by! Like my last post, I am going to cover some of the changes we’ve done over the past five weeks. Most of the commits to our repository have been simple bug fixes with not a whole lot of tweaks, but there have been a few visual adjustments I’ll share.
Night lighting adjustment
Tim did some changes to our night-time lighting. We wanted a more ‘magical’ feel in our night scenes, instead of an all black environment. This change makes the sprite animations during a night scene easier to see, and makes the environment itself feel more alive with the added color.
Post-processing effect enhancements
(Note: Some of the thumbnails are GIFs! Click to view) Before the update, our post-processing effect capability was basically motion blurs. However, we need the ability to do some more intensive layer blending for a few scenes. So we updated our post-processing effect system to handle more screen blending modes and to also apply some real-time filters to a frame for some extra polish.
Airship implemented
Josh hammered out our airship functionality. We don’t have an Airship sprite created yet, so we’re using an enlarged Curtis sprite as our airship. Hey, if we lack the time to do a proper sprite, we’ll just create some elaborate story and give Curtis the power to fly. Stranger things have happened in old skool jRPGs.
New Select Icon + Animations
We have some awesome new battle attack animations, mostly for enemy abilities.
New areas!
With Luke’s latest maps, there is only one more major dungeon to map out. Every other level is fully mapped with puzzles and other gameplay elements linked up. There is still some polish work that needs done on some of these maps, but they all look solid even without the polish layer!
That’s all for this week! See you soon~
Weekly Content Blog #37: Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning’s End
Sometimes as a member of a team you make compromises. And sometimes you and everyone else on the team later comes to regret it.
In late 2013, when I was creating a complete script for Shadows of Adam, the very first dungeon of the game was already mostly finished, cutscenes and all. My script was a significant departure from the original ideas, but no one really wanted to make major changes to the first dungeon, so I did my best to meld the new ideas into the context of that dungeon and the existing scenes.
The result was not great. In fact, I had the sinking feeling that what we had was borderline terrible, and overtime this feeling became stronger and stronger.
Other members of the team felt it too. The beginning of the game just didn’t work! The team began to discuss small changes that might help, but I was now convinced that a full face-lift was required.
Finally, I fired off this e-mail:
Hey Tyler, I read through your ideas, and I do agree that some mention of the [REDACTED] at the beginning might be warranted.Â
However, as I’ve thought more about the intro, I feel like we should take it a lot farther.  Honestly, I think we should seriously consider doing some major re-work on it.  I’m probably super biased in this, but I would sacrifice [REDACTED] to have a better beginning.  It’s a hugely important part and we really need to impress and get people on board.Â
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In the current opening, all the characters and their purposes are so weakly defined and the [REDACTED] is just there…  It’s too chaotic and confusing to be satisfying.  There is very little character development.  We don’t come to understand the relationships and motivations till afterwards.  So we are really hurting with the current opening. It should be a major launchpad from which we blast off, but it  feels like a mini-tramp.
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I’d really like to better establish the characters and give the first dungeon much more intrigue.  Also, I’d like to establish the [REDACTED] as a force to be reckoned with.  Give it some umph!  Blast off!
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Below I have sketched out what I believe would be a much stronger opening that would not require a massive overhaul of the rest of the story.
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This led to the creation of a new beginning with a new dungeon: the Tangle. It’s a beginning the whole team is proud of and we can wait to show it off in the demo. For now, you can see a brief preview here.
Till next time.
Luke