Hello 2016! We hope everyone had a lovely holiday break! Each of us took off a short amount of time for a well-needed break, in preparation for the hectic months to come! We already started back on schedule yesterday with a running start: strategizing, planning for this year and working late into the night.
This may or not be what we looked like:
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| Bonfire on Iztali Point |
With Spring 2016 just around the corner, we have A TON of work to do. Some of these things include:
- Finishing all asset creation
- Content, mechanic and level-lock
- Finishing music composition and putting it into the game
- Finishing sound-design
- Finalizing a menu design that will work for both VR and non-VR players
- Marketing
- Testing and paying for Quality Assurance (and fixing all the bugs for a month or two)
- Lots of Polish!!
- Organizing all of our Kickstarter backers' rewards and sending them out on time
- And, you know, releasing the actual game.
There's a lot more than just that list, but it's a pretty basic rundown of what we are looking at. Wish us luck and continue to share our posts/Facebook page/Twitter/screenshots with friends :)
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| Temple ruins in Nahele Rain |
If we make all of our goals, it will not be a miracle. It will be the result of determination, hard work and most likely a lack of sleep.
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| The nights in XING become more mysterious. |
Thank goodness we love what we do! Even now, there are days when we all feel a wave of excitement about something we just made work, or a concept we get to see finally brought to life. Personally, I love designing and refining environments around gameplay, and vice versa. The two are closely interconnected in XING: The Land Beyond, so it's important that they both influence each other.
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| The Desert of Naar |
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| Temple view in Hyaku Lake |
Lastly, here are some catch-up photos from IndieCade and the PlayStation Experience:
IndieCade 2015
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| The Setup |
PlayStation Experience 2015
Day 0
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| John and James competing in a speed run after setting up on day 0 |
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| The booth setup :) |
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| We love how our home screen looks (shots of whichever level you are in now play in the background) |
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| Us :) |
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| Posing behind the decorations. |
Day 1
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| John talking to some players |
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| Outside the booth |
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| James and John |
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| Only one of us stayed inside the booth while the others stayed around the outside and talked to people. |
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| Happy that the booth is going so well! |
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| Eating Chipotle at 8:30pm. The show floor was open till 10! |
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| Dinner Break |
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| Dinner break. The booth pretty much ran itself this time :) |
Day 2
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| Lots of people played in pairs! |
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| John doing an interview. |
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| This might be one of my favorite moments from the Experience. These 2 pairs were playing the game and talking to each other to figure out how the other team solved things. John was watching in the middle. |
Thanks for reading, now back to work!
Koriel, James and John: Thank you for constantly posting updates about your progress. It is so great to see that you still love what you do, that you don't give up improving your project and that you are still the lovely persons you were in the beginning.
ReplyDeleteFor me it's by far more than waiting for a game. It is like getting involved in the process, and in the evolution of your small company. I'm a bit in fear of the point in time when XING gets released; I will really miss your updates, exhibition reports, journeys, and the photos of you smiling like you won the world.
I know it's too early to ask if you are planning to create another game, but no matter what the future brings, could we please stay in touch after XING is done? <3
Hi Rainer! Thank you so much for your kind words and encouragement. It means a lot to all of us, as we continue working, to hear that our updates are meaningful :)
DeleteHi Guys,
ReplyDeleteIt's really inspiring to read about your adventures during XING development and your trips. It's really amazing how much determination and conviction from just you three can achieve.
Thank you so much for all the hard work and I'm definitely waiting for you guys to release the game and be able to play it on the commercial Rift. If I could add a request for your VR related development. I know it has to remain low priority because of the limited Omni market. But, would it be possible to use Omni API which if I remember correctly would contain the necessary UE4 libraries to allow decoupled looking and walking direction as well as analog walking? I would really love to be transported to the Land Beyond. My only quibble would be, if I'm already there Virtually, how could the game controls and mechanics blend with that experience. I'm a backer of the STEM system from Sixense. And even though they haven't delivered yet, I believe that XING needs to have this types of controls in places. Be it the STEM, the Move, or Vive's own motion controls; I really wish for you guys to have the time to cook this into your game. If you have a Razer Hydra, there's already an SDK to start with. I'll have to apologize, I'm just too excited about your creation and all the possibilities with VR.
I look forward on reading about the rest of your development activities and other adventures up to the final release... and beyond.
Hi And thanks for your updates.
ReplyDeleteI am a professional software tester and happen to love games. What can I do to be a beta tester? My family and I are really looking forward to playing the game but if we can make it even better for others by adding our quality control hats, then that would be great.
Hi guys, how about a new update with all the stuff that has been going on between January and now?
ReplyDeleteGood idea! We've been so busy that we haven't taken the time to make a post about everything recently. I'll do that this week - thanks! :)
DeleteHi. Can anyone tell me what the min and max system requirements will be for Xing: The Land Beyond for the Windows 7 PC platform?? They do not seem to be published anywhere. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI would like to know that too. I can't find that information anywhere. I would hate to order it and it wouldn't run on my computer.
ReplyDelete