Devblog #14 - A long overdue update news

Hi - long-time no speak! Sorry about that... It seems that, once again, real life got in the way and things like regular blog posts and updates fell by the sidelines. But fear not, as we’re back with a whole heap of news and project updates!

There is a LOT to share, but for the time being we’re going to focus on the 4 big pieces of news that we’ve been holding onto for awhile now. These are:

• Bushido is now being developed in UE4
• We have a functioning multiplayer prototype
• We’ve more or less completed all of our pre-production work
• We’re hoping to start full production within the next 3-5 months

So, first things first:

Unreal Engine 4

Around April last year, the team decided that we needed to investigate our options when it came to game engines. We’d been developing on Unity for around 2 years by this point, and by then had a bunch of the core game-play concepts nailed down in prototype form.

After a bit of experimenting, we started to play around with Unreal Engine 4 - exploring some of its core features and scratching our heads about whether or not it’s better suited for our game. Safe to say, it wasn’t long until we realised what a fantastic tool Epic had developed, and after spending 3 months porting our prototypes over, we had a robust, stable prototype of the game. Safe to say - we haven’t looked back since!

A functioning prototype

Our current prototype build includes all of the core features we wanted for combat, including:

• An attack system (8 directions, based on mouse input)
• A blocks (same as above)
• A Dodging mechanic
• An attack combo system (chaining attacks together)
• A targeting system
• A Health / Stamina system
• A robust hit detection system that compensates for lag/low frame-rates

We’re all SUPER proud of what we’ve managed to achieve by working on the project part-time over the last 9 months. We’re sorry we couldn’t show off more, but with all 3 of us working full-time on client work, it’s difficult to find time to work on the game - let alone create blog posts, video updates, etc…

Pre-production

After nearly 2 years of slogging away on our evenings and weekends, the lion’s share of the pre-production work is now done!

I can tell you - planning a game like Bushido is a HUGE amount of work... We’ve got over a 1000 pages covering everything from our basic Game Design Document, to a more advanced Technical Design Document, Budgets, Asset Lists, Workflows, etc… The list goes on.

The good news is that there are only a few minor bits left to work on - meaning Bushido is effectively ‘planned’ and ready to go into production.

Starting production (...actually making the game)

So we’ve got our shiny new game engine, a functioning prototype, AND all the pre-production work is basically done. So what now?

We’ve been weighing up all our options, and have recently started having conversations to try and secure the funding we need to take Bushido all the way to completion. As you can imagine, these conversations are lengthy, complex, and by no means a guarantee.

However - as ever we’re 100% committed to delivering Bushido and ensuring its a success, so regardless of the outcome we’re going to strive to secure the funding we need to finish the game and get it delivered to our fans (we still haven’t ruled out a Kickstarter, but it’s on the back-burner for the mean-time).

Well - that’s it! That’s basically what we’ve been up to over the last 9 months. I hope that this gives our fans some encouragement that the game is VERY much still alive and kicking… but you might just have to bear with us a little longer until we start showing off any new content (e.g. videos, screenshots, etc…).

Thanks again for all your continued support!

Sam & the Meteor Pixel Team