Salutations! Founder of Broken Hammer here to deliver the monthly update on production of All is Fair in Dust and Air.
October at Broken Hammer was a month of talking to manufacturers and getting physical goods made. As of November 1st I'm happy to say all physical goods have arrived. However, we are currently dealing with an issue on the wall scrolls where the image at the bottom got slightly cropped.
As you can see in the image above, it's slight. In fact it wasn't noticed right away.
Quality of the scroll turned out very good aside from this issue. We hope to report some good news as this error is resolved. Those who did not back for the scroll will be notified when their physical goods ship. We'll be getting those rolling as soon as possible.
Currently every physical piece besides the scroll check out.
Ryan handled the orders and I can concur with his input that they meet or exceed the expectations we had when we selected them for the campaign.
The mousepad has a good feel to it and the size is right where we wanted it. Not too big, not too small.
The scratch pad is what it is, a scratch pad for notes. I've personally found it rather handy to have things like this around to jot quick notes on when needed. It isn't like post it notes, but it is what it is and offers a bit more room to write.
The magnet turned out exactly like expected. We've actually gotten a lot of good feedback from family and friends that have seen it.
However, breaking it apart into it's pieces comes with some risk as it is a bit more delicate than we anticipated.
It's kind of like the perforated edge of a check in a check book, only you have to be careful because it isn't always straight.
I'll be preparing a write up and video to show how to do it. In fact those who backed us on IndieGoGo, I'll be throwing in a bonus one. Same for the scratch pad and mousepad. Consider it as a surprise thank you for backing us and a perk of us having to order a minimum quantity on these orders.
So moving on from campaign talk, lets hit a little on the project itself.
I mentioned the writing team would be beginning the process of transferring the first story arc into engine. As part of that team I'd like to take a moment to go into a bit of what that entails.
Our choice of using TyranoBuilder has overall been a blessing. For those that don't know what it looks like, here's an example:
It's powerful toolset that makes developing Dust and Air much quicker. However, when it comes to transferring dialogue script into the engine, it isn't as simple as drag and drop.
Development of the Neutral Arc has shown us ways to improve our story importing, but it's still a time consuming process. During which the story being imported goes through another refinement edit.
Taking a story from a word processor to a game engine, changes the perception of the text. Seeing it in engine is different than seeing it within a document. Hence where the refinement edit comes in. In a sense this is when we begin the early stages of play testing the story.
So what about the rest of the neutral arc? Why begin the story arcs so soon? Because the remainder of the NA's story is already in engine and is undergoing an edit pass by our editor. Editing takes time as well, so to better utilize talents, the writer moves forward with production. When the editors have finished an edit pass, then we shift back.
During this process, our story arc script gets the proper marks and codes for it to be placed into a scene file of the engine. This is actually something we had to learn as we go. Basically from trial and error as we realized where we made mistakes in the early production.
Ultimately we're in a much better place than we were a year ago in terms of getting production going in engine.
In closing I'll cover both art and music together as it's been a busy month. The art side continues to benefit greatly from Faith's concept work. She's been challenging herself more and more and has even been working on building concepts. Something she admits hasn't been her best area, but it is expanding her abilities.
Work on the decal for Guns of Icarus presses on with Conn taking Faith's concepts to the next level. Sticking an image on an airship is a bit more involved when there is a whole assortment of airships with different image placements that we need to keep in mind.
The music side has been busy lately as our musicians deal with work and college. But we're expecting to get some new schedules going for them during our November team meeting.
Till next time, as the days get a bit colder around here, I'd like to remind everyone to stay safe. Roads get wet, sometimes icy. Temps drop and sniffles happen. But also what comes with it, are the glorious Steam sales! So have fun, play some Guns of Icarus if you haven't, or consider buying it if you haven't.
See you in December!