Welcome back Knights-To-Be!
Wow, can you believe it? Just one more day remains. The day that determines the fate of Talamhel's begins tomorrow. A milestone day for us at Chashu Entertainment. We absolutely can not wait for you all to finally experience Sands of Aura as version 1.0!Sands of Aura - Version 1.0 officially releases tomorrow: October 27, 2023 11 AM CDT | 12 PM EDT | 9 AM PDT | 4 PM GMT!
While we continue counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds till release let us resume our journey together as we remember our second and final year in early access.Year Two
At the start of the second year, early access did not feel much different than at the end of the first. We had just released the Citadel of Steel update, began to analyze the feedback, and planned for the next update to incorporate the feedback. This became our development flow after our first major update, the Twin Thorn. It was going to be more of the same for our next one, the Rotted Throne.
We knew going into the second year it was going to be a little different. We were much more confident, our workflow improved and we strengthened our design principles. We had figured out a system that worked for our team. We got better at what we were doing. As exemplified during our time designing the fight mechanics for the Harshari Princess.
Joking, aside, the one thing that did not change though, was our constant drive to improve combat. The feedback that attributes our combat as floaty never truly stopped. It was a constant reminder that perfecting combat was not simple. Without the feedback and discussions from our players, we would never have been able to move forward. It was during our development of the Rotted Throne patch that we made a breakthrough.
Ah, my shadow!
At this point, we have made numerous changes to combat that moved us in the right direction, but it never quite came together. We added more visual effects, more audio effects, screen shakes, flashes, and added impact on hits. Each of these little improvements pushed combat away from floaty, just not far enough. So we continued iterating, reviewing, and gathering feedback. It was after trying all the possible solutions that we finally landed on one thing we have yet to adjust, shadows.
We came across this revelation by chance as we were developing and testing Black Rot Chasm, the featured level for this next update. The design of this level was dark and filled with mood lighting that required special placements of light sources. While our player character was moving around the level and fighting enemies, we thought we made a breakthrough in combat! It felt solid. It was only through more testing that we realized it was the lighting and shadows that made a significant difference.
The player character had really thin legs and smaller feet in proportion to their other features. This meant that the shadows cast by them were quite small and light. It wasn’t until experiencing the Black Rot Chasm that we began to notice the difference their shadows made to what players see.
Our theory was that the lack of a strong apparent shadow didn’t make the characters feel grounded during their attacks. After tweaking some of the settings for lighting and shadows, we finally felt that we found the missing piece to this puzzle. It was not perfect quite yet but it was the boost we needed.
Along the way, we also developed other mechanics for combat such as dodge attacks and plunge attacks. As well as changing our original dodge animation from a forward dash to a dodge roll. Each of these decisions made along the way was not easy and needed a lot of feedback from our community. Fortunately, they did not disappoint and helped us tremendously along the way.
Seeing is zooming?
In the first week of February, we released the next content update, the Rotted Throne. A few weeks later, we also implemented changes to further enhance the combat feel, such as tightened animation canceling and improved character movement. The most significant change we made for that update was to the camera. The camera has been another area of feedback that required some hard discussions for our studio. There was a design and artistic choice for our camera perspective. The distance and angles were placed deliberately by choice. When creating new animations, islands, etc. they were created with that perspective in mind.
Many players wanted to be able to zoom in and have more control over the camera, to the extent that it would become a third-person camera. We still wanted to stick to our design principle of an isometric top-down view, but we were willing to make adjustments for the betterment of the gameplay experience.
Unfortunately, it was not simple for us to provide that option without first making improvements and adjustments to the pre-existing content. This was a year-long task that our artists worked diligently to complete. Only at this stage did it become acceptable for us to allow players to zoom in and tilt the camera, at a reasonable amount that still aligns with our design principles.
And our players were right, having this feature made a massive difference in our team’s experiences with the game. It changed the way we would explore the world and handle the challenges presented. It was a welcomed feature by us and our players!
Localization
There was another point of pain for the development of Sands of Aura. Localization. Localization is essentially the translation of our game into the language of your choice. When we first released Early Access, we also released a localization patch that included 9 languages. With the Twin Thorn patch, we also localized the content there. However, an issue began to become a problem for us and it would grow with each content update.
The problem with this pattern of localization was that we would make changes and adjustments to previous content based on the feedback from our players. There would be quests or story elements that did not make sense or were not consistent with the rest of the game. So every time we would change the context of a quest, it meant more resources were required to ensure they were properly localized. It would be a lengthy and inefficient process for our development.
The requirement to localize the new content and changes to older content became too much for our small studio to properly maintain. Therefore it was with the Rotted Throne patch that we officially announced that localization would be held off until after we have completed development for version 1.0.
It was also at this point we decided to turn off our previous localization as we found inconsistency there as well due to the changes we made along the way. Dialogue would sometimes jump between English and a different language. It made it an unpleasant experience and we could not justify releasing a knowingly incomplete feature.
After the Rotted Throne
After the update in March, we were deep in the development for our next update, The Festering Veil. We had planned to release this update at the start of summer, and it appeared we were making significant strides. However, things don’t always go as planned.
We have made great efforts to maintain our goals and deadlines, so far we have, but it wasn’t without hurdles along the way. One challenge that awaited us was the increase in content size and the testing required. With each patch, our Quality Assurance time became longer and more extensive. Our main goal for year two was to complete Sands of Aura as version 1.0. And the testing phase required for each update would only serve to further delay the full release.
Our small team, now of size of 11, at Chashu Entertainment made a choice, our choice was to release all remaining content together at version 1.0. And it was not without its challenges.
The time between
Between the release of our last patch and the release of our most recent Pre-1.0 patch, it was quiet. Without updates during this period, also meant we weren’t able to give our players the fixes and adjustments we made to Sands of Aura or receive new feedback on our changes. Our belief in what we were creating needed to be the strongest it has ever been for the next 6 months. It was a mentally tough period for our studio but we pressed on and proceeded to develop with faith in our vision.
We made massive improvements to the combat feedback that consisted of higher-quality visual effects for attacks, more impactful sound effects, a new visual cue that provided more information to the player, lighting adjustments that would better ground the player, updated animations and so many more subtle changes that made significant impacts. We believed that all of these changes were what we needed to solve the looming issue of floaty combat.
We reworked the beginning of the game to better communicate the mechanics of the game to the player and to hopefully eliminate some of the confusion on what they are supposed to do. At the same time, we made improvements to older quests and story elements to better complete the story. Additionally, the script for Sands of Aura was finally completed which allowed us to properly voice all 90+ characters found in Talamhel!
By mid-August, we had reached our final checkpoint. This marked the beginning of post-production and also the beginning of the end. The full release was around the corner. Our date has been set, our goal is in sight, and it is the final stretch until the finish line. Our job now was to pick up our feet and finish with the same energy and passion we had when first set off on this journey.
Reaching the end
As the release date inches closer and closer, all of the emotions a developer would experience during development were intensified to the utmost degree. We felt the panic of things not working, we felt relief when the game progressed the way we wanted it to, we became depressed when objects didn’t appear where they should, we felt proud of the design choices we made, we accepted our fate and just a rollercoaster of emotions.
As we reach the end, regardless of where Sands of Aura stands in the mountain of games today, we are proud of what we have accomplished. We are proud of ourselves and the growth we experienced as individuals and as a studio. We are proud of the connections we made along the way. We are proud to have developed Sands of Aura.
Most importantly, we are proud to have met our community of players. You are the most important element for the development of Sands of Aura. Your feedback, whether brutally honest or wholesome, has allowed us to make Sands of Aura the best game we could. Without you, Sands of Aura would be a shell of what it is for Version 1.0.
No matter what the future holds for us here at Chashu Entertainment, we will always look back on this journey with a great sense of pride. It has been an exceptional experience and one we will treasure forever.
From all of us at Chashu Entertainment, thank you for joining us as we relived the development of Sands of Aura. Thank you for being a part of our journey and guiding us along the way. Thank you for your words of encouragement and motivation. Thank you.
We are extremely excited for you to experience Sands of Aura tomorrow as we release Version 1.0 at 11 AM CDT | 12 PM EDT | 9 AM PDT | 4 PM GMT.
We hope you enjoyed our story as we wait to set sail in Sands of Aura!
Thank you for reading!
- Chashu Entertainment
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
