Betrayed Alliance 2 Development Journal

[Doan Sephim]

Small update today.

Working quite a bit on artwork these days. Trying to flesh out the forest area.

[MusicallyInspired]

Beautiful screens!

[Doan Sephim]

Beautiful screens!

Thanks, only about 65 more to go   

[Doan Sephim]

A whole year! Today, one year ago, I posted that I'm working on BA2.

Just wanted to let you know, I'm still working. Little by little, every day. The current goals have changed a little bit. When I first posted, the idea was to complete both Books 2 and 3, but after working a while, I realized the workflow works better if I complete the book 2 before working on book 3.

I also am looking to finish sometime in 2022.

I've put up a One-Year-Retrospective/DevLog on my website if you want to check it out.

I also update and share info/pics on my twitter account.

[Doan Sephim]

End of 2020 Update:
Here's some screenshots and artwork pieces:




I've completed the Sprites of the "main" characters in the game:


The story and gameplay elements are also coming along nicely, but are still mainly in the "Notebook" phase of development. This game is still far more a "project" than a game yet, and there are exactly ZERO puzzles implemented in the game so far. Best you can do is walk around and interact with a little bit.

For instance, there will be a mechanic that allows you to peer ahead to different rooms to check on the placement of enemies, etc:



I've also begun working on some music. I've had some brief conversations with someone who might be willing to lend his talent to this project, but for now, here are a few tunes.

Hope everyone has a happy Holiday Seasons.

Feel free to leave comments and/or questions - critiques are welcome also.

[OmerMor]

That's beautiful! Both the artwork and the music!

[MusicallyInspired]

It's all indeed so lovely! Great job!

[gumby]

Looks great, nice work!

[Doan Sephim]

That's beautiful! Both the artwork and the music!

Thanks, OmerMor! Especially for taking the time to listen to the songs. For me, it's always nice to have different types of things to work on. After drawing pics gets a bit tedious, I can move on to music or views.

It's all indeed so lovely! Great job!

Thank you, Music! A bit of positive feedback is always welcome for my own motivation!

Looks great, nice work!

Thanks for commenting Gumby! I'm always thankful you were there to help me out when I was finishing up the last one (some 7 years ago  ) Crazy to think it was that long ago!

[Doan Sephim]

Been half a year, so what's new?

Working mainly on asset creation and story/puzzle plotting. On that front, I've produced somewhere near 60 or so backgrounds. For a project that was just supposed to be 1/3 of total game, this one is shaping up to be more of a full-length experience than I had anticipated at the outset, but I think that's great because it means I keep having more story and puzzle ideas to flesh out (and a bigger forest to explore). For comparison, Betrayed Alliance Book 1 had 56 Backgrounds, and I feel like I'm nowhere near finished making backgrounds. I would estimate maybe 100 or so would be the final amount for Book 2 (which is in the ballpark of some of the Sierra Originals).

I've also been working on character animations for the main two playable characters. Death screen animations and pictures were a focus earlier this year.



I will admit that work on the game has diminished to about 50% of my usual work in the last couple of months as I've been focusing on my health. I'm generally healthy, but have high blood pressure and have been working to get my weight down so that my blood pressure will reduce as well. So I've been working out more in my "free time" which has cut into my ability to work on the game. But I'm already at the halfway point for my weight goal having lost 18 lbs, so I'm looking forward to not having to focus so much energy on that and can get back to full creative capacity!

Here's some of my newer screens:

[gumby]

Looks great, your project is progressing well!

[Doan Sephim]

TWO YEARS! Where’d the time go?

Status update: LOTS going on! 70 of an estimated 100 backgrounds are “basically done.”

Also, a friend of mine has offered some help with concept and pixel art for various creatures in the game and some bigger sprites for battle. You can see them on my latest update.

Perhaps most importantly moving forward is that I’m ramping up to launch a kickstarter to raise some money for our friend Musically Inspired to compose some awesome music for the game using the MT32. I’m also hoping to fund the creation of a physical player’s guide (although I abandoned the idea of a box as it just wasn’t cost efficient and caused me nothing but headaches).

While I still hope for a 2022 release (in December), the closer that date gets, the more wishy-washy I am on it. That being said, my next milestone will be to put together a playable demo of the first part of the game. Not sure on dates for that, but that’s where my attention is at the moment.
Thanks for reading and I hope to have more to show (and play) soon.

[Kawa]

Looking great there.

[gumby]

Very nice.  I really liked the Cthulu/frog thing animation eating the hero.

[Doan Sephim]

Looking great there.

Thanks!

Very nice.  I really liked the Cthulu/frog thing animation eating the hero.

Thanks. That animation took a bit of time with the frogtopus being so detailed a sprite. I'm very pleased with how it turned out too