Step into the arcade!

Marsescent: Dragon’s Lair is about Owen Stone, old detective on a case where 5 children have gone missing in an arcade. He has to navigate his way through the strange arcade with only one of the employees helping guide him through and giving out information. Eventually, his search leads him to the basement, where he must play through one of the VR games stashed away and defeat the creature that’s taken hold of it. 

Welcome into our thirteenth build release!

To give you some context, our studio was created for our college's Game Simulation class where we have ONE semester to create an entire game! This is our thirteenth week of working and we are still going strong! Let’s take a look into our weeks:

In general…

I apologize for missing last week's devlog! As you can guess, things are getting pretty hectic on our side. This is our second to last week of development and there have been a ton of changes made and a lot added! Let’s catch up on what has been happening these past two weeks.

On the programming side…

They got a ton done! The minigame they’ve been working on has been fully implemented! It still glitches out from time to time, but it’s definitely way better than before! The boss battle has also been greatly improved! They’ve also added a ton of sound effects to give our game more life. The issue with the sticky platforms has been resolved! Shout out to our programmer Aaron who said he’s spent around 40 hours trying to fix this! 

In all this greatness, though, some problems have arrived. One of our enemies in the platformer portion of our game has suddenly not been spawning right, causing it not to be able to get harmed by the player! There also was an issue with the final boss where if you got hit a certain way it would completely take you out of bounds! 

On the art side…

The artists have been working non-stop! A ton of textures were being made for everything that was missing a texture, or even if it could just use a better one! There’s also been a lot of work on cinematics for our game as well as a credits page, and a trailer! The trailer is almost done so keep your eyes peeled!

Another major thing that happened was…. Artists getting into unity! While it seems scary at first, it really isn’t so bad! Having the artists in unity allows the programmers to get more technical stuff done while the artists do more of the busy work. One of the main things being done in unity by artists is getting their own textures in and making materials! Set dressing was also done by artists to make our game feel more lived in… Like if this was an actual arcade, or if this level had actual beings in it. 

The main problem for artists right now is still getting textures in. While easy, it still is a little tedious, so someone has to sit down and have it as their main goal to get done. 

What’s next?

For EVERYONE, the next thing to do is POLISH, POLISH, AND POLISH! We are almost at the finish line, and now we just need to put all the finishing touches. Everyone will be locating any issues, big or small, and try to fix those! There’s been a lot more communication this week, so practically everyone knows everything that needs to happen.

In Conclusion…

There was a moment when I really felt that this class was almost over. I’m an artist and I helped edit the final credits video in our game… Having to write my name in the credits page made me feel a genuine sense of pride. Our game has come so very far. We will make the last of our days together really count. We created something that didn’t exist just a couple of weeks ago, and we want to show everyone what we’re capable of!

If you’ve read this far, why not follow us here, twitter, and instagram! We will post a devlog once a week describing the what happenings of the past couple days.

Thanks for tuning in, and here’s to more updates,

RetroCyber Studios (PS: Our team isn’t the only team in our class! Check out the other team’s game here )