Comments - Pabo

Thank you for sharing. I like posts that give a little insight into indie development. Keep it up!

"Cannibals kill their prisoners properly now."
In-game cutlery comfirmed!

Thank you for posting it here as well as for the clarification. Since there are a couple of people confused about the difference between engine and game, like I was, maybe you could write a sticky post/feature explaining the differences so that they know which one to track? I might be mistaken, but the majority of trackers are mainly interested in the reimplementation of Morrowind, so they should rather track the engine in order to not miss out on future posts.

Looking authentic. What material is the green blade made of?

Good news, this is becoming more playable update by update. Would it be easy to post it also under the game's news, so that people "watching" the game get notified?

Objects that are hovering need a force applied over time, to counter gravity. This force is the telekinetic "magic pool"(/concentration?) of the player. Lifting an object too high, or keeping too many objects simultaneously in the air, quickly becomes more concentration-demanding than the player can provide. The magic pool's size indicates the telekinetic power of the player, and could vary between different characters, but there's a limit to how much a Son of Nor can do to outweigh the laws of physics.

Thanks. Keep in mind though that I'm just one guy and my opinion is not representative of the others (e.g. I prefer Solarians, while others might prefer Nightkins). Experimenting is always good for the game.

I can only speak for myself, but the reasons I liked the lion centaur not as much as the fire boy and the fortune teller were:
a) He was "posing" instead of doing something else, so I couldn't imagine him in his normal environment. The boy and the fortuneteller were occupied with something, which immediately added to their information(/character depth).
b) The device on the lion centaur's left side looks cool on its own, but rather out of place with this character. All three Solarians are giving me traditional oriental vibes (especially the fortune teller, she seems to be inspired by India), and this weapon(?) is the only thing that doesn't fit into that picture. Maybe if it had another form, it'd blend in more easily - but even then, I'd expect it to be carried by a more frail character, and the centaur to be carrying something heavier.

Any chance of there being a 32-bit Linux version? I could alternatively run it on Windows, to which I dual-boot, but I'd prefer playing under my 32-bit Ubuntu.
Nice to see a game developer whose primary operating system is Linux.

That was a lot of info! You've done quite a lot in the meantime. I think it's enough content to stretch it out over two announcements (maybe monthly). That way, the news post becomes more digestible for people who are just curious and don't want to spend more than 3-4 minutes on it, and the increased frequency helps keep people updated without having them lose interest in between two updates. Of course, monthly updates are only good as long as they don't interfere with development.

I agree with your stance on Twitter following - this "follow me then I'll follow you" madness has to stop. I'd much rather have 10 followers who genuinely care about my posts, than 100 who don't pay any attention and are just feeling forced to follow me as I followed them. It just makes everybody uncomfortable and renders the feed less informative for everyone. After all, popularity isn't the main goal of Twitter users - information is.

I like him and the fortune teller the most, followed by the lion guy (chimera?). The colour palette is warmer, and all three characters display more emotion. I can imagine them more easily as real characters with every-day life, whereas the Nightkins's impression is more that of an enemy. For example, I can imagine a city filled with people like the boy, but not (that easily) with people like the spider-woman.
I guess I'm a Solarian after all :).

Hello, I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 and installed SDL, SDL_ttf and SDL_image, however I get the following error:
"./football: symbol lookup error: ./football: undefined symbol: TTF_SetFontOutline"
I tried to redownload SDL_ttf, but got the message that libsdl-ttf2.0-0 is already the newest version. Am I doing something wrong?
I hope I'll be able to play this, it's the best-looking football game I've seen on Linux.

Working on map height, interesting! This should result in some deeper battle tactics, like who gets to climb the hill first or where settlements are being built. Good work!

I saw Rock Paper Shotgun covered Soul Saga already, that was quick! Also, you are now a Staff Pick at Kickstarter. I'm glad the campaign is doing so well for you.
One question (maybe you could add it to the FAQ, if more people ask): Will backers get Desura keys, in addition to Steam keys? It's by far not as popular, but for the people on here it'd be a welcome bonus.

Excellent writing and very interesting post-mortem. You seem to have had a great time, which is confirmed by the good reviews. Thank you for sharing this excellent write-up with us.

I like it. It looks more organized than most game projects on Kickstarter, and I bet you spent a great deal of time working on it. The video was nice and I saw the first bit of gameplay. Some people like it when the developer himself talks to the backers, but personally I liked the presentation, and you can always add this to an update.
I'd maybe add some questions to the FAQ (like platforms, date of release etc.), even if this information is stated elsewhere - some people prefer looking at the FAQ thanks to its organized structure.
Also, great work with the reward tiers! I often see them spread out too thin, or being too confusing, or having too little options to choose from - but not on Soul Saga. A great reward tier variety and a reasonable entry level should help attracting more backers.
$60,000 is a lot of money, but I can only imagine what the project will look like with the additional funding. Good luck!

I'm thinking that Illusions would come in extremely handy when countering the group behaviour ;). Thank you for another interesting look at your AI system.

Good looking - and interesting - characters so far. The JRPG character influence is evident, and that's a good thing. Good luck with your Kickstarter!

Couldn't play it since I'm on Linux. But the gif sure looks nice, I like the color palette.

Thank you for sharing everything, in a short yet concise article. I've never been to a game conference, but I'd surely not think about all these things, so they'll come in handy when the time comes. Glad to see you enjoyed the trip :).

Informative and well-presented. Thanks a lot for this insight into your game's AI.

Nice to see the support the game is getting. As for lore, I can't really decide, everything sounded interesting. I'm personally a sucker for maps, so maybe you could describe the geography (e.g. how big the desert is), or maybe even provide a peek at the map itself?
Good luck with the Kickstarter, two thirds to go!

Very good points. I feel that the aspect that has progressed the most in the gaming industry are the graphics. Which is great, but it's not the essence of gaming; it's rather a means to tell a story, a tool to convey the atmosphere. More integral parts like storytelling and artificial intelligence seem to have been left behind.
Freeing oneself from the cliches and easy solutions of today's games is not easy, but I hope you make it. The industry needs these changes. Good luck!

I'm quite interested in the way you handle the procedural generation - I understand it'll be a step forward for horror games if done right, but can't imagine yet how it could be implemented successfully. Looking forward to the demo.

Very interesting. I'm also experimenting these days with tile-based map generation, although my approach is rather probability-based (ie I calculate for each tile the probability for a certain terrain). It gives pretty interesting maps, and I like how I can change some parameters to go from vast riverland to mountainy islands, but I also guess it's less efficient than yours.
Out of curiosity, how long would it take you to generate a 1000x1000 map? Mine takes around 6-7 seconds, even if my algorithm doesn't support the nice "terrain border" feature that you have.

I played it (on Firefox 19.0.2), and it was nice - each level introduced a new gameplay mechanic, yet everything felt natural and logical. Personally, I found myself enjoying the puzzles more than the encounters, but both aspects were overall well balanced. The demo was fluid, even with more than 10 other tabs open, and the controls responsive. A few fps dips/freezes occured, maybe for a second every 2-3 minutes, but they were not punishing as the game doesn't continue as long as it lags (which is very good and helps lower frustration). The art was also well done, providing a nice background for all the actions and the puzzles, without ever distracting me. One thing though - 5 stages are okay, but in the final game I think it'd be interesting to see a little more variety in the art.
One other remark would be the character development. I didn't feel anything for the girl, it was merely the object that carried out my input, and could've just as easily be replaced by a robot or anything else, without changing my emotional investment in the game. That doesn't really matter as long as the gameplay stays as interesting as in the demo, but it might be good to have a minor story background in the long run.
All in all, it looks promising, and very well polished. Puzzles are clever enough to keep the player occupied, and enemies provide a good challenge as well. Good luck for the rest of development, and for a possible WiiU release.

I'm also a fan of the series, even though I haven't played many of the games yet (just I, IV, VII, and X - am I detecting a trend?). The latest installments have been criticized by the fans, but the question is - how much should a company listen to the fans, and how much should it follow its own vision?

On the one end of the spectrum we have Final Fantasy, which innovates and changes in every single installment - be it for good or bad. On the other end we have the Call of Duty franchise, which offered exactly what the gamers wanted - incremental upgrades from one game to the next, but without really changing anything. Yet it is bashed by many for doing exactly that, giving its customers what they enjoyed.

Of course companies should listen both to themselves and to the crowd, but if I had to choose, I'd go with the company's vision. Innovation is something that keeps the industry going, and Final Fantasy titles have continually innovated themselves (we have a whole new world, characters and battle system in every single installment, after all). Some of these innovations might be bad, but there eventually comes a time that they get it right.

To sum up: I agree that the last Final Fantasy games have not been up to par with the earlier installments. But the right course of action would, in my opinion, be to continue to experiment, instead of going back. Sure, the older games are great, and they would shine even more with better graphics, but this doesn't really solve the problem. And after all, the older games were that out-standing because they didn't rely on something already existing, either.

Good blog post. I also like having a universe with a backstory, especially if it's only gradually revealed. Many games try to give us interesting characters, but forget along the way that perhaps the biggest "character" is the world itself. It has its own secrets and backstory, and is the single entity that affects everybody else (no other character can claim that).
A fantasy world can be interesting, but it only exists in our imagination - and is thus dependent on our own imaginative power. Combine it with known facts though, and it invades our minds backed by our perception of the real world (which if course is much more prevalent and serves as a strong basis). Not only that, but giving our imagination two points, it automatically tries to find their connection. So, if we're given two temporal points of A) Human extermination, and B) Current setting, our brain will not only be preoccupied with things mentioned in the game, but also with anything that could've happened in between, even if nothing is mentioned.
And that's a good thing. Imagination is, after all, one of the most important driving forces for gamers.

Interesting changes. I've been thinking about creating a similar type of game, but maybe playing IGS is all I need after all. I'll keep an eye on it to see how it turns out, good luck in your development!

Wow, this really is a *lot* of instruments. I must confess that I didn't even know half of them - which is good! Different civilizations are probably better represented by local instruments than by globally used ones. Thank you for all your hard work and your inspiring music!