Thu Oct 24 '19 Announcement
about 5 years ago
– Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 12:01:38 PM
Yesterday’s developer stream had a last minute guest appearance by Spirit Island designer Eric Reuss! Eric hung out with John for about 45 minutes at the top chatting about the game, his inspirations, as well as your questions from the chat.
After the Q+A section, John dove into the dev stream proper. He covered the overall Model-View-Controller architecture and how the Unity UI interacts with the rules engine (detailed by David & Jean-Marc last week). Following that, he dug into building a user interaction for selecting spirit growth options.
Stay tuned for more dev streams in the next couple of weeks! We're planning to feature more UI and graphic design, along with audio & music composition. If there's something you're particularly interested in, let us know in the comments!
Tue Oct 22 '19 Announcement
about 5 years ago
– Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 08:55:02 AM
We’re less than halfway through the campaign and we’re now 2/3rds of the way to our goal. Thanks for your ongoing support, we’re nearly there!
Who Are We?
While we know that many of you come to the campaign from having played our previous games, some of you may not be familiar with Handelabra Games.
Jeremy - Co-founder and President of Handelabra Games. Jeremy keeps things running smoothly, and does much of the marketing and outreach.
John - Co-founder and Lead Developer, John does it all! UI/UX, development, Unity, project management - you name it, John probably does it for some portion of his day.
Jean-Marc - Resident composer and one of our game rules engine programmers. He makes sure our games sound good and the gameplay matches the rulebook.
Jenn - UI/UX, 2D artwork, 3D modeling and design, and Unity work are just a few of the things Jenn does for the team.
David - Engine programmer extraordinaire, David makes our games work. And then he tests and tests and makes them work even better!
Crista - Community management, live streaming, and social media are Crista’s main focus, but she also does video editing and graphic design work, among other things.
Cam - Cam is all about our systems. He’s constantly working to make our processes more efficient while also helping Crista on technical support.
Handelabra Games is a small team, but we’re lucky in that most of us wear multiple hats. As a result, we rarely need to outsource portions of our development process. And speaking of the development process…
Developer Live Stream #2 Tomorrow
Tune into our Twitch channel on Wednesday, October 23rd at 1 PM Eastern for the second Spirit Island development stream. While dev stream 1 was focused on the underlying engine which makes the game work, this dev stream will cover the UI, and how we make the game look good. Join John as he fires up Unity to show you how we’re putting Spirit Island on your screen.
Keep spreading the word!
If you missed the last update, we released a batch of Spirit Island avatars and profile images you can use to show your Spirit Island… well, spirit! Let your friends know that Spirit Island is getting close to funded and that they could be the pledge that puts us over the top! Share this link to help:
https://igg.me/at/spiritislanddigital/reft/3302498/social
Fri Oct 18 '19 Announcement
about 5 years ago
– Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 11:32:34 AM
If you missed the live broadcast of the dev stream on Wednesday, you can now watch at your leisure on our YouTube channel.
Jean-Marc and David give an incredibly deep explanation of how we are architecting our most complex game engine to date. Learn about how we plan and design a project, see how it’s built, then watch the complete implementation of the slow power “Pillar of Living Flame”.
Show Your Spirit Style!
Deck out your profile with Spirit Island avatars and profile images!
Just visit this link to check out and download the avatars. Choose your favorite and update your profile!
Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to share the campaign far and wide! Copy this link:
https://igg.me/at/spiritislanddigital/reft/3302498/social
And send it to anyone you know who enjoys Spirit Island, cooperative games, digital tabletop, or just strategy gaming in general!
Tue Oct 15 '19 Announcement
about 5 years ago
– Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 10:50:08 AM
Spirit Island is approaching 60% funded, and we’re not even a full week into the campaign. Thanks for all your support so far, and let’s keep things moving!
One thing we promised last week was a return of development streams. If you’ve never watched a dev stream, it’s a great way to get a peek behind the curtain to see how we do what we do. There will be a dev stream live on Twitch every Wednesday at 1 PM Eastern throughout the campaign. If you can’t watch live, don’t worry - all our streams are posted to our YouTube channel within a few days of broadcast. So what does this week’s stream have in store?
This week, join David and Jean-Marc to dig into the Spirit Island rules engine. See how the engine is designed, how it works, how it’s implemented, and probably most importantly, how it is tested.
Sentinels of the Multiverse Anniversary
The dev stream this week is part of the Sentinels of the Multiverse 5th Anniversary streaming event. In addition to the dev stream, the Handelabra Stream Team will be playing games all week, plus raising money for a good cause: I Need Diverse Games.
But the best part of this event is that Sentinels of the Multiverse is FREE-TO-TRY on Steam through Monday! If you are on the fence about Spirit Island and want to try out one of our other games totally free, this is a great opportunity! To see the rest of the anniversary schedule, visit SentinelsDigital.com.
Fri Oct 11 '19 Announcement
about 5 years ago
– Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 10:59:51 AM
We had a great first day, raising just over 1/3 of the total we need to make Spirit Island Digital a reality. Thank you for your support so far! We weren't sure exactly what to expect with this campaign being run on Indiegogo, but so far things seem to be going about as expected. We've even had enough traffic to spend some time in the top spots on the Indiegogo homepage!
GDEX
Looking forward in the campaign, we have lots of great things planned to keep enthusiasm high, and the first of those is GDEX this weekend in Columbus, Ohio. GDEX started life back in 2013 as the Ohio Game Developers Expo (ODGE), and it has quickly evolved into the Midwest's premier gaming expo. Crista, Jenn, Jeremy, and Cam will be around the show and at booth #207. Look for our logo and come say hi!
Developer Streams
During previous campaigns, we've pulled back the curtain on our process, and Spirit Island will be no different. Join us Wednesdays at 1 PM Eastern on Twitch to see how the team is developing Spirit Island. What you've seen of the game so far is entirely visual, but we're making amazing progress on the engine that actually plays the game.
In developing our games, we use a design pattern called Model-View-Controller. Without getting too into the weeds, what that means is that we develop the rules engine of the game mostly independent of the UI. It makes it much easier when, for instance, we want to bring a game from tablets to phones. It means we can create a completely (or mostly) different UI layer (view) that can communicate with the same underlying game engine. We create unit tests to make sure the rules work as intended for new and existing content, even when major changes happen in the future. If you want to learn a bit more about how this works, check out our dev streams throughout the campaign.
• Wednesday, October 16th - Rules engine development
• Wednesday, October 23rd - UI development
• Wednesday, October 30th - TBA
• Wednesday, November 6th - TBA
We thought you might be interested in an earlier peek at how the rules engine is coming along. Below is a video showing a couple of spirits making random choices throughout an entire game. Turns out that playing randomly does not often lead to success! However, it can help us find weird bugs and fix them before they ever see the light of day. Note: the capture has been slowed way down so you can follow along; it normally takes about 1 second to run a game in this way.
Help Spread the Word!
A good day 1 is just the first step. We need to keep the energy high, so make sure to share the campaign with anyone you know who enjoys strategy games, tabletop games, or anti-colonialism in general!
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