A thorough development history would take too long to write, but here's a brief outline, followed by our inspirations.
My thoughts on production is it went extremely well, surprisingly so given I was working part-time!
Although little 'happened' over 2017-08 to 12, I think those were important to let the initial ideas of the game stew. Pre-production was relatively short because 3D was very simple and 2D was relying on experience with Anodyne 1's 2D.
Length
- Blue Skies Ideation: 1-2 Weeks + 3-4 Months rest
- Focused Ideation/Plotting: ~1 Month
- Prototyping, Main Story: ~3 Months (some overlap with pre-prod)
- Pre-Production, Main Story: ~4 Months (some overlap with prod)
- Production: ~11 Months
- Bugtesting: ~1 Month (split over multiple phases: Halfway thru production, then end of production)
- Console release lagged behind main release by 1.5 years
- Main story dialogue was generally done first, followed by the specific areas. The lag time between specific area dialogue (e.g. Geof) and the implementation in-game was much smaller (days to weeks) than that of the main story I think.
- I don't specify it but usually the music for an area was done a while after finishing that area and having some of the art
- After Even the Ocean dev
- Hiatus (Melos teaching, working on All Our Asias)
- Initial e-mail brainstorming, going for lo-fi 3D. Vacuum ideas. NPCs are the cards, final fight uses them. Humanistic themes. Sage reappears.
- Marina Character sketches
- Melos makes some Unity intro material for Marina
- At some point Marina makes a 2D platformer prototype where you swap between three sizes
- Ideation, but more focused. Multiple sizes ideas. Story ideas (based on "Ano1 mythology"), "New Theland", world structure (concentric rings)
- Structure of game decided, most plot points, dust carrying mechanics
- Ideation -> Prototyping phase.
- Melos ports some All Our Asias code over. Preliminary 2D/3D infrastructure, dialogue, etc.
- Work is still pretty part-time on the game.
- Initial story writing?
- 3D Area prototyping (much of what you see in postgame), camera code, movement code, CCC prototypes, making Dust Drops work, other misc stuff (Albumenium)
- Prototyping -> Pre-production
- Marina art tests, nova tests
- Marina: Basic story probably done?
- Work gradually becoming more full time
- Released the teaser trailer
- pre-production -> Production phase
- 2D Art Infra, 2D controls polish, art tech,
- CCC NPCs, text, CCC Design, CCC 2D Levels, SFX,
- Marina does some useful playtesting
- Full production
- Finish up CCC, more work on 3D. Music work (like CCC's song)
- CCC NPC Art, Ridescale art, CCC art
- Work on Center Sanctuary/Pollen area
- Dust assassin fight, Prism Reinforcement
- Event Scripting Engine work, UI/Menus, Dimension Diving art/code
- Misc music, Wormholes
- Handfruit Haven art, work on Geof, CCC level music, SFX
- Minimaps..
- beta testing of CCC stuff
- Dustbound, Blue Vale Car Wash, other Blue Vale NPCs
- Blue Vale Art
- More Blue Vale work, music
- Early on: Orb Sector level, Nexus, New Theeland, Pastel Horizon, Skeligum level,
- Later on: Final design passes/art implementation
- Desert Spire, Dust wall
- Finish up weeding minigames in Dustbound
- No Such Scene appears out of the ether
- Work on the Prism-entry ending scene
- Desert 3D areas
- Pico levels
- 3D Area transition art, Blue Vale Highway stuff
- Area Title Cards
- More beta testing
- End of June: Start on Zera
- Trylock Chests
- Finish Zera, Nexus to 3D connections
- Desert art polish
- Metacoins/metapoints
- Dimension dive desert graphics
- Melos visits Japan LOL
- C Visionary Art (lmaoo we are so down to the wire what the heck)
- Finish Zera
- Wormhole art, Desert level fixes, Desert 2D level visual polish
- Cutscene anims, Endings, Credits, final metapoint stuff, final card texts
- Last songs
- Various bugfixes and polish
- Middle/End of month: start final testing
- Final testing, tweak speed of nova's hurt-mode walking, metacoins..
- 2019/8/12: Release!!
- A few patches.
- Melos moves to Japan for real.
- Ideation on Sephonie begins.
- Occasional localization programming for Chinese, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, as console port progresses
- Sephonie Pre-production
- Spanish, Japanese
- Finishing Japanese
- Russian, Chinese/Japanese fixes
- Content locked for Consoles
- Finish Russian
- Console release in February 2021
- Limit scripted cutscenes
- Use Floating characters (Palisade/C Psalmist)
- Limit levels to 2 or so new entities to save coding time
- Use visual-novel style scenes sometimes
- Avoid too much 3D levels to save modeling time
- Avoid complex 3D art maps
- Avoid re-doing much/graphical polish
- Use 2D gameplay which we've done before
- Use Unity for efficient everything
- Walking away from 3d npcs to end the dialogue
- Dreams, sleeping, another character, Roselle, presumably would parallel Briar (I think this became the Glandilock?)
- Roselle arcade and crazy visual novel interface thing
- 3D Dustbound
- Cut this heatmap with settable icons, path drawing, reference colors, used for more complex 3D Exploration
First, my (Melos's) musical influences.
- Panzer Dragoon Saga: environment texturing/shaping
- Final Fantasy 7,9: model shaping
- Jak and Daxter?
- Hieronymus Bosch
- Pokemon (via Pinzy Pokemon)
- Playstation games broadly
- Crypt Underworlds
- Dragon Quest
- Survival Kids
- Roller Coaster Tycoon and old pc isometric games (horror)
- Various OHR games (wandering hamster)
- So You Wanna Be...
- Microscopic/nature/medical imagery
- Radiolaria
- ZZT games
- Bitsy games
- Nanatsu Kaze, Lucah: Screen overlay text
- Kid Icarus: Palutena dynamic
- Steven Universe
- Episodic surreal childhood stuff
- Alice
- Phantom Tollbooth
- The Little Prince
- GLOW: wrestling arc
- Magic School Bus, Anna + Tommy, educational games/tv: biological stuff
- Ocarina of Time: Chalaza character
- Live a live--lofi horror
- My life
- Spyro, SotC, Kirby + zelda
- My Life/social groups/reading groups, Teaching at SAIC, japan/taiwan travels
- Dragon Quest XI's towns, episodic feel
- Spyro, Banjo Kazooie early levels, Jak and Daxter connectivity
- panzer dragoon saga visuals, nanatsu kaze
- SotC - Sense of lostness, Uurnog, Rain World, Starseed Pilgrim, vaguely exploring, no world map
- Love de Lic - Strange NPCs, varying gameplay,
- BoF Dragon quarter
- Zanki zero
- Sticky zeitgeist
- KRZ /un pueblo de nada
- Sacrament IV
- FFX, Yakuza 6
- 9 9 9
- Subserial Network
- Gravity Rush 2
- Zelda - OoS, LA, OoT
- Silver Case 25th Ward
- LUCAH
- Nier structure, Drakengard 3
- Bell hooks books – masculinity/women/love
- Best of times
- Kaili blues
- happy hour
- long days journey into night + hua hua ...
- kaiba anime
- Campaign / Peace / Inland Sea documentaries
- Paranoia agent, perfect blue