Devlog Sep 12 - Applying for a grant

 Welcome to the first September devlog!

As an experiment, we now start each post with a themed picture relating to the content of the post. The idea is that this picture will also be the thumbnail for the post, making it easier see what each post is about.

This time it's another unusual update, because our focus has been on writing an application for a grant for the game.

Before we continue to examine how this process went, it's important to stress that grants like these are likely different from region to region and country to country.
So if you're reading this and considering applying for a grant for your own game, please check the available grants in your region and check their specific requirements. The process and requirements described here might not match those available in your region.  

That disclaimer out of the way, let's continue describing the experience.

Writing an application like this is a new experience for me, so it did take a bit longer than anticipated. The organisation behind the grant requires quite a bit of information, and although we already had a lot of this information written down in internal documents, it needed quite a bit of editing before it was suitable for the application.

That said, if you're a reader of this blog, you know that we're not afraid of showing something that's in progress. Allowing a peek into the behind-the-scenes can give an idea of our way of working and the process, even if the final product isn't ready.

Also, having to re-read and re-write the ideas to be a little more articulated and formalised is not a bad idea to do anyway. It can allow us to remind ourselves or think again about some of the original ideas and principles.

For example, we drew this diagram of the long term goals for the game. The game planned to be the first of 3 or 4 games with a continued story

This is of course a very rough sketch, but good enough to communicate our intentions

The diagram explains how the game will lead the player on a journey north through this fictionalised version of late iron age europe.

When we started this project, it was already clear that our story was too ambitious for a single game, especially for a solo developer with a quite short time schedule. Our solution was to divide the story into multiple games. As such, we have so far focused on developing Game 1, which is going to be the introduction. Everything we have shown on the Blog will be part of Game 1.

The plan is that Game 1 can be played on it's own and will have a satisfying climax, but the story will continue in Game 2. We don't want to spoil too much of the story in the subsequent games, so let's leave it there for now.

The grant we only applies to Game 1. But do not fear: Even if we do not receive the grant (and there are many applicants, so it's likely we do not), we should be able to finish Game 1 on our own. Of course, we hope to be able to continue on with Game 2 and 3 and that becomes much more likely if we are lucky enough to receive the grant.

Part of application is a recorded video of ourselves playing the prototype of the game that we have so far.

Therefore we also spent some time this sprint on improving a few aspects of the game. We naturally want to prototype to show off the game as well as possible

One thing we did was draw a new character (both a portrait for the dialogue and also a walking animation). This is the Morani soldier.

Like many characters, we have drawn a few different expressions and poses for the soldier.

This is the first character where we will re-use the same sprite for multiple soldiers. We have therefore created multiple variants: Some with extra officer details, som with beards etc. That way, we can have multiple soldiers show up in the game and they will have small differences.

The reason we decided to draw this character is because he shows up in the early parts of the game and so far he only had a placeholder sprite. We prefer not to have placeholder graphics in the video.

Finally, we fixed a small number of bugs. Sometimes enemies would enter tiles in combat that they should not be able to (such as obstacles). We have fixed a couple of spelling mistakes in popups and in the ingame combat log.

Last but not least we updated the enemy combat behaviour to better consider which tiles are walkable when they are deciding what action is the best for them to take.
Before, if for example the path to the best target was blocked by an obstacle, then the enemy would not use that ability. Now, they should consider if they can use the ability on the second best target instead. 

That's all for this period. Thanks for reading, even if we didn't have many new things to show this time.

The next update will be on September 27th, where we will start drawing and implementing the next area of the game and the characters we will meet there.