I agree tho with the anonymous interviewee, it seems like they probably WOULD have more if even only 15 mins a day was spent working on the game. Fifteen minutes a day for two years, one of which being a leap year, that's 731 days. That's 10,965 minutes of time spent on the game, which SHOULD be enough time to get a little more done than we have already, and if ALL the devs did that, then it would be 10,965 minutes per dev, which means we could have had a LOT more finished. Just saying.

Although you are right that development has dropped off a bit in general, for me, and a lot of the members (who are still in education) this is largely due to it really being crunch time in terms of exams. This has a knock on effect - as when members see less work being done they in turn have less motivation to get work done themselves, and thus little gets completed as a whole. There are also other members, who have personal or work related issues, for instance our new UI developer got a kidney stone and was thus unable to complete the initial new UI mockup that was set for him, which was also meant to be the visual benchmark for the next stage of the website design. Vreg is the main component in this obviously as project lead, and with him really underestimating how much his job would take out of him in weekdays, he currently only has the weekend available for development. This is something Vreg freely realizes and acknowledges and is something we are discussing in how he is going to have to free up more time. Obviously the general pace of development is unacceptable right now considering the array of talent we have in the team currently thanks to Saitou.

However, to get to your comment about 15 minutes per day, if you have any experience with any type of development or work in general, it simply is pointless to work that amount of time, you will have barely sat down to work by the time your 'development period' is over. To get any real work done you have to sit down for a few hours at a time, and naturally that is not something most of us can do consistently at the moment, as it will have negative impacts on our other work. We will have to wait to see how this changes over the coming months. Personally, once ive finished my exams after June, i have the next year totally free to work on concepts for the game, and im sure lots of the members will have similar situations in being more free after exams.

Until then, EE signing out.

Congratulations to @Whatasnipe, @Malix, and @Snoopy  - you have made it to the next round of the Social Media Manager application contest. You will be contacted shortly on the details of the next round To the applicants who didnt make it, we may do similar contests like these in the future when its needed, so until then, keep practicing and improving!

Quote from: EternalEyes on September 03, 2016, 02:07:25

•  Optional - Writing lore/backstory for SLO (locations, characters, mythos etc) – however this is NOT a requirement for this role if you would prefer not to

Would it be possible to apply for the role of Lore Writer?

I would have applied as the Social Media Manager but I have 0 experience on Photoshop and no desire to learn.

We currently don't have any real need for a specific lore writer, a lore writer will only really be required post 1.2.0 and Kickstarter. The most we 'need' right now are small descriptions on each village and their relationship to the other villages, and although I wouldn't be against someone developing the lore of the game further, there are far better uses of said persons’ time and English skills on things like the dev blog and management of our social media- hence why I opened this position rather than a lore writers position. And although I am sure in the future, when it is needed, we will open up such a position to members of the community, I am immediately put off by your attitude. The lack of the skill is not what I have a problem with, that can be learnt, it is the fact that you have ‘no desire to learn’ whatsoever – those kind of ideals are simply not suited to an indie dev team the size of ours, or any ‘team’ really. Every dev on this team has had to learn different skills and take on different roles then they would ideally like to, for the good of the team and the project. I had no particular ‘desire’ to even start the dev blogs in the first place but I thought it would be beneficial both for us to get our work quality out there to draw in new supporters and team members and for the community to get a further insight into our developments, so I did it. In the same way if you watched a 15-minute tutorial on the basic aspects of Photoshop alongside guidance from me you could have a very positive impact for the game and would still have the chance to work on the games lore. That being said, and to reiterate, we will not be opening a ‘lore writer only’ position, if you want to be on this team, you will have to work for it, and perhaps not do exactly what you want to do at all times, but instead learn and evolve knowing that everything you do both will benefit the project and your own skillset.

Thanks and keep applying people, still got some time before i start selecting people to move onto the next stage

These are dope man, i planned similar designs, especially for snow. Good job!

Dev Blog – April 30th 2016  

And we’re back! Sorry about the postponement of this dev blog, exam season is upon us and as a result less time is able to be spent by us developing the game in this period. However, we have done our best to put as much time into SLO as possible without wrecking our futures; still, keep in mind the content we have available will not be to the same extent as the other dev blogs. With that said, let’s get started!

Texturing

Matt has maintained his ferocious pace and has completed the texturing of yet more of the hidden hill buildings over the past month, all of which will be added to the rapidly growing building compilation which is sure to fill up my hardrive pretty soon. His exceptional skills have also landed him some freelance gigs with Raf which have taken some of his time away from SLO, but he still has found time to help Vreg implement the character into the game and once those are wrapped up he will be back to focusing applying his talents in completing our village, jutsus and characters!


Modelling/Animation

Unfortunately, little has occurred in terms of actual modelling since the last blog, with Rafael being occupied with his work in the military as well the freelance project in conjunction with Matt, but he has continued to help Matt with polishing the buildings to be ready for texturing, and Vreg with implanting the character clothing models into the latest SLO build. Similarly, Othman has decided to postpone his work on the hair until he has completed his exams- hence the continued presence of the bald character within the game.

Concept Art

In regards to Concept Art, I have dedicated any revision breaks to continuing to develop the hidden snow concept, and have made some decent progress, fixing some of the perspective issues and laying in photo textures to start to establish the realistic quality our game is going for. Due to the slower progress in the other areas of development, I've decided to show an early WIP of this concept, side by side to the thumbnail to show the iterative steps that have been taken and the changes that have been made from the thumbnail to now. I would not be showing this normally and actually this will be the first time even the team have seen it, so expect many changes from now to final. With that being said, I welcome the critique of any issues you may see in regards to the concept, better to get them fixed at this stage rather than once everything has been tightly rendered.


Music

If you have been paying close attention to Rustams Soundcloud account, you might have again got an early look at the two gems he has created in the past months. The tracks, entitled ‘Training Hard’ and ‘Heart of the Shinobi’ are opposite in style, with ‘Training Hard’ being a faster paced, action based soundtrack that will no doubt act as perfect background music for intense shinobi training regimes, and ‘Heart of the Shinobi’ being more of a soulful piece that will likely serve as ambient background music for when the player is wondering around the world. Rustam’s soundcloud account is linked below.
https://soundcloud.com/rustam-shafigullin

Vreg

If you haven’t yet picked up on my references throughout this blog, we just released a new update to the game, SLO Pre-Alpha version 1.0.9.8, which was pretty much single handedly implemented by the one and only Vregmeister. This update is centred around the addition of the new character clothing seen in the last dev blog, and includes the ability to both change the colour of the vest or remove it to see the shirt underneath as an indication of our clothing modularity, aswell as the inclusion of a new SLO title screen OST from Rustam’s growing collection of tracks. Like the rest of us, Vreg has been heavily tied down with vital university studies; I hope the fact that he was able to dedicate some time to getting this update out to you guys is appreciated – I know it is a long anticipated addition to the game for many of you! I’ve put some screenshots of the character in game to give you guys an idea of how it looks, but I urge you to go test it out yourself, they don’t do it justice.







https://www.shinobilifeonline.com/index.php?action=downloads

And with that our forth dev blog is complete. As I have mentioned throughout, this is a tough and unusual period for much of the team, and as a result unlike the other dev blogs I won’t confirm that we will have a dev blog next fortnight. However once the exam season is over for us, we will have far more time than we had even before exams (summer holidays), allowing us to get to work on getting the village and new systems, jutsus, environments and character models into the game for you to enjoy. Until then, sayonara shinobis!

 

That arim rigging animations looks similar to a puppet master jutsu. is that a thing or is it just a example of the rigging on a model?

cant wait to see the earth dome in game!!
Keep up the good work guys.

Haha unfortunately not that was just a test illustrating the successful skinning/rigging of the character - something like a puppet jutsu system is an extreamly complex mechanic and therefore a ways off.

is all this in next update?

Much of progress shown here will be featured in the next update, without a doubt the fully clothed/textured character and a complete earth dome jutsu will be major features of that update. The rest of the progress shown will be incrementally implemented into the game dependent on the completion of relevant game mechanics- for example the swords will be used once the kenjutsu system has been finished. Hope it helps

Also thank you all for your encouragement and support, it is much appreciated

Dev Blog – March 16th 2016 

In this week’s dev blog we will look back over the last few weeks and reveal some of the work we have been doing as a team. Bear in mind that lots of the work featured may be WIP and very much subject to change and development. With that being said, lets dive into the second dev blog!

Texturing

As usual on the texturing side Matt has been progressing full steam ahead, and in a fortnight has completed the texturing of 5 more buildings- at this rate, the village will be fully textured within months! Whilst maintaining this exceptional pace on the buildings, Matt has also begun the texturing and retexturing the clothes for the character, starting initially with the shirt (also shown below). For those wondering about Matt’s process in creating these high quality and detailed textures, he has made a short video showing his process for, in this case, creating his 13th building. Also, for those who haven’t yet seen them, I’ve put a compilation of all the small props and weapons which hadn’t been posted to Facebook below, to give you guys a small idea about the kind of variety and busyness we want for the village.




http://sendvid.com/4uxhfmfb---> link to process video





Modelling

On the modelling side of things, Rafael, whilst continuing to work with Matt in polishing up the building models for texturing, has begun early development on what will become the hair of the character. As this is a field Raf is far from comfortable with, as well as the fact he is a perfectionist, he has banned me from showing his initial work on the hair, but knowing him in no time he will have mastered this process and I will be showing you some completed, gorgeous hair done by him.

Concept Art

In the concept art department, I have got back to doing some work and have moved to digital to complete 6 (rather than the initially proposed 3) digital thumbnails to give options for the composition, lighting, and basic design of the snow village. At this stage I am happy for you as the community to give your input on your favourite of the 6 so I can move onto the final stage and develop one to completion and full detail. Just for reference, I also put in a little gif as a comparison with the sketches I showed 2 weeks ago to now. On Daniels end, he has been unable to do much SLO work due to being preoccupied with freelance stuff, hence why there are no new sketches this week, but he assures me he will be able to get back doing buildings once he finishes these projects.





Music

With this new section it’s time to introduce another new member of our team, Rustam, our composer. He has been quick to get to work, and has already produced two new tracks which will likely be integrated into the game within time – first, a general one to get used to the mood and style of SLO, then after that one with a sadder, sombre tone - these can both be seen below under his Soundcloud account linked below. The next track style on his list is an action based one, which you can expect to see in the next few weeks.

https://soundcloud.com/rustam-shafigullin

Vreg - Skinning Clothing

With Vreg being Vreg he has the general no how to be able to be able to fill a lot of roles, so from last fortnight where he was doing some jutsu vfx and concepting, this week he has been looking into the skinning of the newly modelled clothes by raf onto the character. His work is already yielding results; as shown by the clothes all being skinned to the character in conjunction with the animations. Additionally, rather than being a single piece, this clothing has been developed to be modular or in seperate parts, meaning customization will be more easily achievable in the future (as shown by the gif below).With this now close to completion, and matt beginning the texturing of the clothing, you can expect a new outfit being implemented pretty soon.





And with that, the second dev blog is complete. We will be back in a fortnight with more development, and more progress. Until then, sayonara shinobi’s!

Dev Blog - First Entry 

This Is the first entry in what will be a fort-nightly dev blog where I give the community an inside update on what developments we have made over the last couple of weeks. Instead of our Facebook, where we only really show things when they are completed, this dev blog is intended to keep you guys enlightened about the continued progress of the game in the form of work in progress screenshots, videos and gifs of any of the modelling, texturing, concept art or animation that we are in the process of creating. Naturally as we will be showing lots of WIP screenshots, the items shown will likely be liable to change considerably, so please don’t take them as a finished product. With that being said, let’s begin this opening dev blog!

Texturing

This will likely be one of the most active areas of the dev blog due to the sheer amount of work Matt produces every week. Recently he has been rapidly progressing through the buildings Rafael modelled, but his pace has been so impressive that I’m unable to show any WIP screenshots as he just finished his 9th building. However, I can show you a blurred compilation of the work not yet posted to Facebook all of which will begin to trickle through in the next few weeks.


However what I can show you clearly are some screenshots from when Matt loaded up these completed buildings in engine, giving you guys a small indication of the attention to detail and quality that will exist throughout the village.


Modelling

Unfortunately, the creation of real modelling content has slowed a bit due to Rafael needing to focus on his personal life, but still has continued to work with Matt in polishing up each of the 50+ buildings he has produced thus far so they are ready for texturing.

Concept Art

With this section it is time to more formally introduce a new member of our team, Daniel or Dati, who has quickly settled in and produced lots of top notch designs at a quick pace. With his great sketching ability, he was put onto designing some more buildings and village props to populate our village with, as shown below. In regards to myself, I have been sliding into more of an Art Director role whilst working with Dati on design and Matt with texturing, but I am working on getting back into concepting myself, starting with the hidden snow environment design, for which I have done 9 very quick thumbnail sketches to be refined to 3 digital ones, then 1 final concept. The thumbnail sketches can also be seen below.



Jutsu Creation

Vreg has been going through the early stages in concepting out how the earth jutsu will look. This initial process involved going into an animation software in order to create a number of quick animations fitting with the idea of a earth dome to be used mostly for defence in warding off jutsu attacks ,or, if the user has the required skills, offense through trapping the opponent in the dome itself. We thought this jutsu would be beneficial to gameplay as it allows the player to slow down and regain chakra and health in what is an fast paced and deadly environment. Ill show you some of the various animations below, but you will have to wait to see which one we decided to develop. Feel free to comment below on which one is your favourite.






And with that the first dev blog is complete. I hope you have gained a small insight into the development progress we have been making and are happy with our work rate thus far. As I intend for this to be a continued log I will be back in a couple of weeks with yet more developments we have made, from stuff in early WIP states to close to completion. Please comment with any critiques or suggestions you might have for this new format. Until then, sayonara shinobis!