Shifting Red

Hello all. It's certainly been a hot space-minute since we've updated this devblog, that's plain to see. But the gears are still turning here at Fam HQ, even if it's just one piece of a great big puzzle at a time. The core team is still meeting every weekend to touch base and do what we can, when we can. 

Part of the reason there haven't been many posts is that art is both the thing best suited to flashy PR stuff and the hardest, most time-intensive thing to do for a small volunteer project like ours. Still, the talented, venerable and long-suffering LordFryingPan has brought our steampunk-in-space world to life better than I ever could with words alone, and you can see some examples of life aboard the Familiarity yourself below.

Now that I've grabbed those fantastic photo-receptors of yours, I'd also like tell you about a shift in focus that we've decided to undertake.

Here's the space-skinny: originally, way back in the day, the plan was to have four routes, with four different heroines, written by four different writers. As time went on, the plans for the game solidified and the core team shrunk. Today, I (Lunch, hi) am the last writer standing, and while I have a rough plan for the other routes, I was intending to finish Sam's storyline first before trying to give the characters of Morial and Diane the stories they deserved. And the script for Sam's route is almost done, and I adore it, I really do. But it's taken me a long time to get this far. Longer than anyone had intended, longer than we could have asked for. If it comes down to finishing the game with one route or trying to do three and never finishing at all, we've chosen the former. 

So what does that mean? It means that Sam's story is now the main story of Familiarity. It's still a branching story with choice points, diverging paths and consequences for actions, and the other heroines will still be along for the ride. But we've made the difficult decision to restructure the game from a common first act and then three different routes to a single path. I know that's not what we originally promised, and I'm sorry if that's a disappointment. I'd say you could have your money back, but we've never asked for it and never will, we're still aiming for an eventual free release on Steam someday. So yeah. The work continues. We plan on eventually releasing all of Act One as a standalone demo, we're mostly just behind on sprite assets for that. Until next time. Be well. 

Moon Pulls

It's been a hot minute since the last time we updated this dev blog, there's no point in denying it. A lot of things, in our lives and in the world at large, have changed for better or for worse. Is it fair to say that these are trying times? I think so. Unprecedented ones, in some ways. That's not an excuse or really even an explanation, it just is what it is. 

The bottom line is that we're still here. Still doing what we can, when we can, to inch this project further towards becoming a reality. I personally have so many moments in the script that I dream of one day sharing with anyone willing to give them a try. I hope that some day I'll be able to make you laugh, make you smile and look forward to whatever's coming next. Maybe I'll even find a chord to resonate with you, or a heart string or two to tug on. I hope so. That's what makes it all worth it, in my admittedly limited experience. 

Creativity is an outlet. It's an act of expression, and personally, for me it's often a satisfying and even joyful one. But it's a lot of work, too. It takes time and effort, and life weighs on me heavily these days. It weighs on my team mates too, in its own way for each of them. But we're trying to hang in there, and I truly hope that you're doing the same, too. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for reading.

Keeping The Lights On

 The galaxy is a big place, and it can take a long time for a message to get from one point to another. That could be why we haven't said much in the last 9-ish months! It isn't, but it could be!

Real talk though, I'm just dropping by to let anyone listening know that yes, work is still continuing on Familiarity. The team still meets every week to work on scripts, forge new art, fetch and master SFX, etc. Currently we're focusing on improving the game engine, reviewing and editing writing material and slowly but surely cranking out more amazing background art.

Rome wasn't built in a day, just imagine how long Space Rome (in space) will take! Actually, I'd rather not think about it.

As always, thank you for checking in. Be well, stay safe, and may we all emerge from this hell that is 2020 as unharmed as possible. The consequences will never be the same.

Titles Are Hard

I'm going to be honest (and if it was hard to tell, in terms of blog posts we're usually not much of anything at all), I don't want it to be Christmas yet.

It's not that I don't like the holiday. I love it! It's one of my favorite times of the entire year. The lights, the opportunity to make the people around you happy with a thoughtful or silly gift. The weather not so much, unless you don't have to go anywhere. But personally, I rarely go anywhere, and here we are, T-minus just over six hours from the big day (here on the west coast, at least) and I haven't laid eyes on a snowflake since probably our last blog post. So that's not what has me dreading the passage of time.

See, the downside to Christmas finally getting here is that the buildup to the big day lasts so much longer than the main event itself. That there's such a crescendo during Christmas The Season, and once Christmas The Day gets here, before you even know it it's already over. And then everything, the lights, the cheer and whatever goodwill towards men that man was able to scrounge up this year, all of that is on its way out.

But that's just the way things are. And I know, I know, if Christmas never left, then it would never be able to arrive, either. But it's just so hard to feel the spirit of it all these days. Does anyone else feel like it's getting harder and harder to feel very much of anything at all? Wait, don't answer that. That was a rhetorical question. And you didn't come here for rambling, you here for a check of a pulse, if I had to make a guess.

It's to that end that I'm here to say that yes, we are still making progress towards completing the game that we set out to make, what feels like an unsettlingly long time ago. Do I wish we could go faster? That everyone had more free time and energy and less of just life getting in the way? Sure. But I enjoy what we're doing. And we do it in the hope that some day, you might enjoy it too.

From all of us at Airheart Interactive, we wish you a merry Christmas, a happy new year, and the best for every and any other opportunity you might take to celebrate. I'll leave you with just a few little things to hopefully tide you over, until next time.

Never Too Late

Slow Down to Speed Up

Hello everyone! Jumper here again. Oh boy it’s been a while since you’ve heard from us! I can assure you we are still going and still kicking, still having weekly meetings where we toil away at whatever needs to be done. I assume if you’re reading this you’ve stuck with us too, and we appreciate that!

Artwork by Fry!

You know for me, this time of year is a time of introspection. A good time to reflect on the past year, see what I did right and what I did wrong, and perhaps change so I can do better next year. This past year was admittedly slow for us. After putting out the second demo, we stopped, took a breath and evaluated what all needed to be done, and what we still had to do. We’ve been quietly working without anything to publicly show from it, a new song here or new backgrounds there, I know I’ve made many good quality of life changes to Familiarity, something I hope you’ll appreciate. As I reflect on the past year of development, I think of us slowly and quietly working to make things better, and to set us up so when we’re ready, we can kick it back into high gear and start cranking out finished scenes and new builds.

So that’s what we hope to do in 2019. We’re gonna speed it back up, get things going and start working on a lot of cool stuff we hopefully can show you. I know I’m personally very excited to see where we take everything. It’s good to slow down and take a rest, just as long as you know when to get going again. We hope you’ll stick around for it, and enjoy what we have to show.

With the holidays approaching, we hope you take the time to slow down a little too, and spend it with your loved ones, the people you cherish in your life. We at Airheart Interactive wish everyone a very happy holidays, and a very good new year. See you in 2019.

COMMUNICATIONS STATUS: //OPEN

Greetings and salutations, salacious citizens of our sovereign Empire! I bid you a most humble hello on this great and truly auspicious day! For it is I, the one and only Otto Von Aureus, the most proficient publicist, editor in chiefly fashion and director of reportation at The Daily Space Walrus, the finest source of news in all the galaxy that you've managed to get your grubby little hands on!

I know what you're thinking, dear reader. What could possibly be so great, so dire that such as dedicated a public servant such as myself would lift my finger from the pulse of our great and vast Empire and direct it instead to be addressing your most undoubtedly dubious self? I'm glad you asked, for I had the same question and as they do indeed say, great minds tend to think alike! And now that you have found yourself in such as fine a company, I ask you to divert your eye (or closest analogous visual receptacle) to the main body of today's article: a gentleman's primer on The Spacer's Almanac, that seminal work that has guided many a wary traveler through the perils of the unknown.

Written in (editor's note: missing date? Who was in charge of researching this piece? If you can't find it Otto, REMEMBER TO DELETE THIS SECTION LATER), The Spacer's Almanac is a veritable fountain of life, in that the information contained therein can allow you to keep on living! Every page contains knowledge of note about history, technology, xenobarloogy (editor's note: is this supposed to be "xenobiology?" DO NOT PUBLISH until this is verified!) that can light YOUR path in the darkness of space!

For demonstrational purposes, today we've borrowed a copy of the Almanac from one... oh. It looks like "Garbin Clack." (Really? Who comes up with these names?) It appears that the fine young Mister Clack possesses a secondhand copy, but we at the Daily Space Walrus would like to remind you, dear reader, to always purchase a new copy upon every revision of The Spacer's Almanac, because the updated wording and occasional rearranged chapter could be the difference between life and death out there in the void!

As luck would have it, all editions of The Spacer's Almanac are highly portable, and as such we recommend that the savvy spacer carry their copy on their person at all times! One never knows when the information contained within will suddenly become relevant, and the more one sees of the world, the more they might find to be worthy of further reading!

Now, as we have clearly demonstrated both in this article and in our regular public publications, a well read citizen is indeed a happy and prepared citizen. However, the great minds of Administration in the Summerdale district have asked us (that's one way to put it, Otto) to gently remind you, dear reader, that perusing the pages contained within The Spacer's Almanac is not required, as it were, to survive here aboard the HMCS Familiarity.

This information should be considered supplementary, to be read for one's own pleasure and enlightenment. We here at The Daily Space Walrus are proud to offer you both at (take it down a notch here, Otto) regular intervals, so please look forward to our next report coming soon (no), which will blow the whistle on a scandalous surprise sequestered within our own very city-ship: the charismatic cabal brewing within our very own admiralty academia (absolutely not. You know the rules about them.)!

Until next time, dear reader. Remember, at The Daily Space Walrus, "We" "Work" for "You!"
-O.V.A.

final drafting complete, publish immediately following clearance from official censors (DO NOT PUBLISH. SEE ME IN MY OFFICE.)

(did you forget to put in the call for more artists? You did, didn't you?)

Toss out your Telegraphs

Hi everyone, just a mini update from Jumper! We have a Discord server now, so join to come chat with us, get more frequent updates, play games, overthrow a small nation, and other Fam related things. Hope you enjoy it!

https://discord.gg/U7x4z5S

Finding Our Space Legs

Hey there. Lunch here again, I just wanted to make a post to talk a little bit about Demo 2 now that it's out in the wild, and about what's next for us here at Airheart.

If you haven't already given Demo 2 a try, it's available from our Downloads page or the post right below this one. If you have taken the time to play through it, we'd love to hear what you thought! Any and all feedback is useful to us, anything you liked, anything you didn't like, any typos or bugs you encountered, anything you think could be done better differently, all of it helps!

Moving forward from here, the team is working on smoothing out several things that had to be rushed in order to (mostly/kind of/almost) meet our self-imposed New Year's deadline. Eventually we'll be releasing a slightly tuned-up version of Demo 2. There won't be too much hullabaloo about it, it will just be the same content with a little further polish and a few corners uncut, but we hope that it will be the definitive version of the demo going forward and we plan to post it in a couple more places in search of further interest and feedback.

Even (potentially way) further down the line from there, we plan to eventually release the first full act of the game as a final demo before the release of the full game. While I can't give a guess for a release date for that, I can say that the script for act 1 is completed pending editing, and many of the art and most of the music assets are already completed and waiting for their time to shine.

As always, thank you for stopping by. We're glad to have you here.

Forward Towards Uncharted Worlds

Hello again everyone, Jumper here. It's been a while since you've heard from me. I'm happy to speak to you all again, and as usual, I come bearing gifts for the new year!

On the note of gifts, I have good news. Our second demo is finished and ready for you. And on time as well! 

Those of you who played the first demo may not quite recognize this one. We've completely overhauled the whole look and feel. The user interface is completely different, and the scenes from the first demo have been altered due to player feedback.

Additionally, we've added new stuff! Like, 2X as much stuff! 

Instead of going on about it though, how about we show you? You can head over to our download page for the link, or get it here. (Please note: Familiarity contains language and mild violence. Young children or those who are easily disturbed should be wary.) 

We hope you all have a great 2018, and appreciate you taking the time to spend a little bit of it with us. From everyone here at Airheart, please have a happy new year!

Impish or Admiralty

Hello again. It's weird how fast 2017 seems to have gone by. At least in my own experience, so many memorable things happened in the previous year that 2016 felt like ten years in itself, and god, oh god was I ready for it to be over by the time it finally ended. But 2017 has, more or less, been something of a smoother ride. Not necessarily better or worse, but less earthshaking overall. On that note, when last we spoke I promised that we'd take some time in November and discuss the ongoing progress on Demo 2 and beyond, and that's what I'd like to do next.

Now, Demo 1 was a little longer ago than I would care to admit, and while it was made with copious amounts of blood, sweat and tears, it was more or less a proof of concept. We made it to prove to ourselves and to the world that we were still alive and capable of putting something out into your hands that was actually playable, whether there were rough edges or not (which there definitely were). Now, with Demo 2, we've worked hard to both polish and improve what we already had in place (such as UI and writing, as well as adding an additional background image for a scene we felt was lacking), and also give players a better overall impression of what Familiarity is and what the first chapter of the game will be about. Depending on your actions during Demo 2, you will be able to meet two out of the three main heroines, as well as make choices both large and small that will have lasting consequences in the full version of the game. In terms of sheer content, Demo 2 comprises everything from Demo 1, including some scenes that were spit-shined and reworked, as well as several additional scenes that continue the story past where we left off before.

Our team is currently hard at work wrangling the build into submission and aiming for a New Year's 2018 release, as well as hoping to finish up the last few sprites required. Music, backgrounds, writing and editing are considered done for this demo. But enough words words words, here's some stuff you can actually look at for a change.

Presenting our new main menu...

...and new and improved options screen.

Areas on the surface level of the ship have a day/night cycle. Fancy!

Well, that's about all we have to say/show for now. I'd like to offer a big thank you to anyone and everyone who's been willing to stop by and forgive our admittedly slow development pace. We all work in the hope that the end product will be worth it.

Here's hoping to see you in 2018!

Ju Ju Magic

Hello again to any and all. Today we've reactivated our deep space communications array to wish you a happy and safe Halloween, whether it's a space Halloween (in space) or a regular old normal Halloween (I.E. not in space). From everyone here at Airheart, best wishes before we all plunge headlong into the holiday season.

Artwork by Chocojax!

If you were hoping for a more substantial post to show off some progress and discuss the impending Demo 2, don't worry! Another update will be coming in November. As always, thank you for tuning in.

And Then It Was June

I can't believe the time has gone so fast. Obviously, our hopes for getting demo 2 completed swiftly didn't come to pass. I'm not going to bore you with excuses, I just want to say that we're still here. Progress continues if only as a trickle, one that we hope to increase in size and volume once life begins to calm down for members of our team. Thank you for stopping by.

Someday.

An update on the lack of updates

Hey all/any. I just wanted to give an update on the status of the demo that we mentioned a little while ago. Right now most of the work on Demo 2 has been completed, we're just waiting on a few more assets to get finished and then a final round of bugtesting and tweaks.

Eventually.

I'm sorry that we weren't able to deliver the demo when we originally planned, but we do hope to have it ready to release within the next week or two. Thanks as always for your patience and your interest.

It's the horrible legacy one. (Updated)

Goddammit, 2016. While there's no silver lining to the loss of Carrie Fisher, the upside of our resident programmer spending a few days in the hospital is that the rest of us have a little extra time to do playtesting, bugfixing and last minute tweaks before we're ready to put Demo 2 out into the wild.

So to make a long story short, give us one more week, please. Here's some nice art for your time.

Soon!

Update: Sorry everyone. It looks like we need a little bit longer to get things to the level of polish that we're happy with. Please check back with us towards the end of the coming week.

Baby, It's -270.45°C Outside

That's the average temperature of deep space, by the way. You know, because sci-fi and stuff. Anyway, hey every and/or anybody. It's hard to believe that the holidays are almost upon is again already, but here we are. Time just never seems to slow down.

It has been one hell of a year for pretty much everybody, and we are definitely no exception. I'd like to save the bemoaning for another time though, because we hope to have something very special (read: new demo!) to show off at the start of the new year. Will this come true, or will the horrible, horrible legacy of 2016 rear its head one final time? Stay tuned to find out.

Look Familiar?

Hello and welcome to anyone taking the time to read this. It's Lunch here again, and this time I'm happy to show some of the progress that our team has made over the last few months.

I've mentioned before that our next planned demo will be consist of both new and old-but-improved content, particularly on the writing side of things. While we're still currently working on finishing sprite and CG assets required for it, the needed backgrounds have been done for a little while now, so we've had a chance to give the game's user interface a complete revamp.

New menu, old placeholder title screen image.

To be honest, it's taken us a long time (and many, many reworks) to settle on an overall design and theme for our GUI. Part of the reason for that is because we had to decide just what a retro-futuristic adventure on a nuclear-steam-powered spaceship in an alternate, space-oriented Victorian era would look like, and that's easier said than done! It's not like you can just pop all that junk into Google and go from there. It's a journey in itself, and it's one that probably won't be over until it's over, but we've recently settled on some design choices that we're happy with. See for yourself and let us know what you think!

If you noticed the "Almanac" button in the screenshot on the top right, the Spacer's Almanac serves as the game's codex, and will allow players to continue exploring the lore of Familiarity's universe as they unlock new entries during gameplay. Hooray for world-building, down with info-dumping!

Speaking of building worlds, now is also a good time to mention that the preliminary (as in not first but not quite last) draft of the first act of the game is now complete, clocking in at about 145,000 words when accounting for all alternate scenes and branching paths. That's a whole lot, and it may shrink or swell a little after further editing and revision. Eventually we'd like to release the whole of act one as a large, standalone demo, but there's a lot more work to do before we reach that point. Particularly in the art department, so if you or an artist you know might be interested in joining our team, we'd love to hear from you!

Come to outer space, we have fireflies waifus! Art by Chocojax!

Well, that's about all we have for this update. There are a few other things we could show you (such as a rather incredible song by Doctor Jekyll, who suffered through no less than seven drafts to make it so, my fault entirely), but we do have to keep some tricks up our sleeves. Until next time everyone, and as always, we welcome any thoughts, questions, concerns or feedback you might have. Thanks for checking in.

Deep Space B(r)ass

SEVEN
WHOLE
MONTHS
Without a blog post. Dang. Is there anybody still out there?
Well we're all still here, and we've been making slow but sure progress where we can, when we can. We have some cool stuff to show and tell you about, so here's something that will hopefully tide you over until we have it polished and spitshined.

Above is a time-lapse of our design process for creating backgrounds in Familiarity. Our stalwart and talented artist LordFryingPan starts with a description and tone provided by our writers, creates an initial sketch, and then we work together until we eventually reach the final product seen here. Check back (potentially much) later for more!

Spaceballs the Christmas Update

When I was a kid, December itself seemed to last six months, and the wait until Christmas was a slow and torturous crawl. Now the month is measured in pay periods, and all I had to do was blink to send 2015 hurtling towards its inevitable conclusion. But here we are, and while we're here, there's a couple things we'd like to talk about, starting with an overview of our progress towards our next demo, and our plans beyond that.


Demo #2 progress:

• Script: 95% - barring final editing
• Programming: 35% - much of our focus lately has been retooling our GUI and adding new features, while getting scenes up and running in the engine has taken a backseat for now
• Music: 90%
• Sprites: 20%
• Backgrounds: 110%
• CGs: 10%

As you can see, while we've made a good bit of progress, there's a still a long ways to go. Just as a reminder, Demo #2 will include all the reworked and improved content of our first demo, plus three new scenes. After it's done, we plan on eventually releasing all of the first act as a final and standalone demo. Speaking of which, the script for act one as a whole (which consists of about 30 scenes including branching paths) is currently sitting at about 80% completion.

So enough of boring old words, words, words, what else do we have to show you? Well, you've already seen that our ever-awesome artist Chocojax has worked hard to provide us with some lovely art, and while we don't have as much progress on the UI to show off as we would have hoped, our faithful and hardworking musician, Doctor Jekyll, has whipped up a holiday-themed song just for the occasion, We hope you enjoy it, and from all of us here at Airheart Interactive, have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. 

Spacechix & Chill

Okay, I swear we didn't mean to go silent for this long. When I said "next update in another three months," I really did mean it as a joke. Yet here we are.

Well I'm sorry for the lack of updates around these parts. To be honest this year has just flown by, and while we have made progress it's been pretty slow. I'm quite pleased with how the script has come along, but then again I wrote most of it, so of course I'd say that. Actually, besides a little editing, the script for the scenes that will be included in our next demo is done and now we're just waiting for art and music assets to get done, and for the improvements we've made to the build to be ironed out.

In other Fam related news, Hearts, one of our writers, has chosen to step away from the project in order to focus on personal matters. We wish him all the best, and he will be and is missed.

While it's true that things would be much easier if we were to cut the total number of routes down to just two, we think it would change the feel and scope of the game too much, if it was a yin-and-yang kind of thing with just Morial and Sam. Besides, Diane's character and arc have vast potential for exploring the political landscape of our retro-futuristic setting, so it's totally still something we want to do. At this time we aren't actively seeking a new writer to take on her route, but in the future we might put out a call for someone to help bring our automatonic love interest to life.

While I'm at it, one other staff opening we would like to announce right now is for an additional musician. The loyal, talented and handsomely-mustached Doctor Jekyll has been a huge help, but these days he's so busy that it would be very nice if we could take some weight off his shoulders. If you think your musical style would fit our little space adventure and you're interested in contributing even just a track here or there, please use the contact link in the sidebar to the right or drop by our public IRC channel and get in touch with us.

That's about all we have to report right now, I think. Thanks for your time. Here's a parting gift from all of us. As always, feedback, comments and critique are welcome and appreciated.