Update #15 - For backers only
Jun 20 2014
Greetings again. Welcome to the Sequel to the First Annual Homestuck Kickstarter Update of 2013!!!
What can I show you this time, you ask? Still not much, since it is still premature to offer any big reveals or spoilers. What I can show you is… let’s see, what can I show you…
“We want to see a few really vague samples of concept art!"
I think I heard someone in the crowd say they wanted to see a few really vague samples of concept art? You got it.
Remember, this is just concept art, not necessarily indicative of final game graphics.
"Let’s see a troll!”
I just heard someone say something about a troll. Ok, how about this guy.
Here is this guy’s bio.
- He is cool.
- He has antlers.
That arbitrary smattering of graphics is all you get for now. Just enough to let your imagination run wild, and probably form some totally wrong ideas about what actually happens in this game. Why don’t we talk about the status of development?
“No thanks.”
I think I just heard some wise guy say no thanks. I’m going to ignore that guy. Aside from a bunch of dialogue, the writing and design work is all pretty much done. The game design documents comprise dozens of files, and around a couple hundred thousand words in total. There was a lot to think about besides just a story. Puzzles, game mechanics, the exact way every little thing works. Bringing such documents to completion involves a lot of effort. I assembled my own little team independently of the game developer to help me get this done. The first person I sought for assistance is someone whose work you might be aware of already. He writes a comic about dinosaurs, and his name is Ryan North. Last winter he and I scribbled down all this stuff. The basic outline of the game, tons of funny ideas and puzzles and such. Then in the following months, I and some other people ironed all that out into documents that programmers can actually understand and turn into a game. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that North was my go-to collabroator when I was looking for someone to bat ideas around with. I don’t even just have him on speed dial. That’s for amateurs. His face is the first thing I see when I open my wallet. If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around that, don’t worry. It’s probably because you don’t actually know the true meaning of friendship yet. I hope that some day you will.
So what does that mean for the status of development? Since all the documentation is just about done, it’s out of my hands at this point. It’s now up to the developer to finish building the systems, modeling, rendering assets, testing, all that stuff. I can’t really give you a solid estimate on how long that will take, since I’m not personally managing the people or resources. When it comes to things like writing I hire individuals like Ryan and others to help, but when it comes to delivering the final product, we commissioned a 3rd party developer with their own staff and time tables and all that, so it’s pretty much their show now.
“WHO ARE THEY?”
I’ve held off on mentioning them for a good while now. Here’s the thing. Homestuck turned into a pretty crazy phenomenon. There’s a lot of fan intensity surrounding it, which was especially true when I was still updating. While we were still in the high level planning stages of this, I thought it would be better to keep the developer out of the limelight for a while, so we could all have some breathing room to get the project off the ground. I think this was the right decision. But I also think it’s been long enough keeping the backers in the dark on this. So,
The name of the developer is The Odd Gentlemen. It is a solid outfit, and I’ve enjoyed working with them so far. A lot of good stuff is happening behind the scenes. Expect to hear more from them about this project in the future.
Before I go, I think I heard some people in the back of the room shout some FAQs.
“Ok, I take your word for it that is a good developer, but why didn’t you go with *MY FAVORITE* developer? See, there’s this cool company called Valve which…"
Ok, wait. Stop right there. I must help you into the real world to answer this question. Game studios have busy production schedules, even small ones. Even if you had a couple million to spend on a game you wanted to make right now, and made a list of all the companies you wanted to ask, if you called them all you would find most of them are booked up with projects already for the immediate future. If there is a "better” company on your list, it most likely was never a possibility. Odd Gentlemen had the right combination of availability in their schedule, and the fact that I liked the people there and felt like they could deliver a good product. I am still confident this will be the case.
“I thought you said the game would be done in 2014? It’s been 2014 since like… JANUARY! Why am I not playing the game right now?"
2014 was the year we were shooting for release. Note there was no target month given, because I really didn’t know what the timeframe was down to that level of specificity. I expected there would be bumps in the road, because there always are for big projects like this. When the Kickstarter ended, that is not really when development began in earnest. That’s when we began getting a lot of boring legal stuff in order, which took a while. Probably around six months I’d say. After that, planning began for real. So if we are behind schedule (which may not even be technically true), I guess it could be by that amount of time. But I’m anticipating a major surge in development in the latter half of 2014. So we’ll see where we are as we approach the end of the year.
Thanks for the patience!!!