Lost Story Dev.Log #2: Concept Arts Talking news

Introduction

Once again we greet you at the end of the month. The summer is coming to an end. Many of you are probably returning from vacations (or are still having their rest), but nevertheless today we are ready to please the fans of Lost Story and the Half-Life universe not only with a long speech, but with some new fresh media-content. And the topic for today is: criterias that we account for during the reveals of our screenshots, videos and music scores.

All aboard!

About our common problems

Many of you are probably interested about the reasons for our prolonged delays in news updates and what criterias we account for before releasing new media-content. This particular topic will be the first topic of our blog.

First of all, all of our media productions starting since 2013 has a certain quality rank that we've raised up due to our game being a whole new game in the Half-Life universe. By the "quality rank" we mean such aspects as the artistic part of the locations and it's "readiness" for release. For example, here are the new screenshots of our "Forest" location.

Secondly, each publicly demonstrated location is not created for screenshoting purposes only. The recent cancel of one of the most anticipated mods has become a great hit for Source modmaking in general. That stands for cancelling the mod itself and for it's content revealed to public. Most of their locations weren't just unconnected with each other, they were simply created for making just one screenshot. In other words, the biggest part of it's media-content was somewhat "fake-ish" and didn't really relate to the project itself. On the one hand, however, such unprofessional methods could be useful for the team for concepting purposes, but on the other hand it's deceiving for the public. We try to avoid such moments as much as possible. And so if some part of the content will not be included in the release version, it will be flagged as "concept" or "idea".

Thirdly, we are keen to sticking to the canon. It means that we are really strict to our storytelling, as it must never create anything illogical or unreal for the original universe. We treat gaming elements the same, as they should be as close to canon as possible so it would not confuse the fans and players. Yes, the players will be learning new things about the universe during the progress of the game. They will become the witnesses of something unseen previously. But it won't mean seeing anything unreal for the Half-Life universe.

Our "rules" for news updates publishing are a little bit different. If we have nothing to share with the fans or if there's nothing we can show because it is not ready yet, we simply delay the release until, we have the necessary material to share with You.

Conclusion

In conclusion we would like to inform everyone that we are currently finishing the development of the core elements of gameplay and we will be sending a test build of the game for play testing to Valve! After that we will be ready to share some of the gameplay videos from the first chapter. :)

We are sure that our new combat system, companion control system and stealth gameplay possibilities will be appreciated by the employees of our favorite gaming company and they will give us the green light for finishing of the development and a soon release at Steam!

And yes, this is the new name of our collective, which was approved by our members in the beginning of 2015. An unexpected surprise, isn't it?

Your mad hedgehogs in shades,
Rock Path Collective