Entry 4 After a month of well-deserved rest following the first harvest, it’s time to get back on the road. But first, let’s contemplate the long way we have already come. Retrospective of downloads One thing I never looked at was the number of downloads of the game. Probably because the fangame had very little public visibility for two whole years. So, I consulted my statistics to make a retrospective. A disastrous beginning During my public coming-out, I wanted to give maximum visibility to the project. After an honorable start for a first public demo of 15 minutes (99 downloads between December 23 and 31, 2019), events will force me to stop the promotion and make the Discord private. These same events will cause the team to drop from 9 to 4 members for a long period of time, resulting in a drastic loss of productivity over the long term. As for downloads, they will stagnate around 55 per month for two whole years (for a total of 696 in 2020 and 670 in 2021), mainly driven by the only media where I maintain a public presence: Deviantart. If I have learned one thing from this, it is to avoid promoting a project too early and not to depend on alliances between makers. As a result, Sacred Phoenix will definitely become an independent project, even if it means moving forward without outside help. The good thing about this experience is that it taught us to be totally autonomous. The rebirth The end of the summer of 2021 marked the return of favorable winds after 18 months of crossing the desert. – An interview dedicated to Sacred Phoenix and the creation of a fangame was published on Nuzlocke France, offering a peak of 107 downloads for September. – Cataclyptic proposed me his spontaneous application on Deviantart and joined the project. – Dracoyan told me that he wanted to be a part of the project for the long term and earned his stripes as a team member with his pixel art. – And finally, a former team member, SplittingJaws, returned to us! This is a strong symbolism! Thanks to these three arrivals, the glass ceiling of 4 members has finally been broken: we are now 7 to officially work on Sacred Phoenix! As a team motivates each other, it allowed to find levels of productivity forgotten since 2019 (despite the release of two big games in a row by Game Freak, because yes, it interferes with our development time!); and for me, to resume writing the dev diary. The flight The sky being clear, our goal was to make a coming-out in the English community and thus reap the fruits of 3 years of work. After a first date planned in July which was postponed to September 3rd, then to October 31st, then to December 23rd … it will finally be January 26th 2022, 2 days with the release of Pokémon Legends Arceus! Indeed, we wanted to take our time and release a perfect demo, without any bug, accompanied by an exhaustive documentation. Successful take-off! The game was downloaded 2,482 times between January 26 and 31, far ahead of the audience that the French community could bring. For February and March, the game will stabilize between 15 and 30 downloads per day. The 5,000 downloads mark (cumulative since 2019) was reached on March 24. Turnover (but not for the wrong reasons) The English coming-out brought an honorable visibility to the project … but no spontaneous application! So, I took the bull by the horns and tried a few recruitments. Arrivals Let’s start with the best: Frillecho – whom I’ve known for 1 year and who I had already invited at that time – finally made the swan dive by joining our ranks. She fell in love with the project having made the complete sprites of 4 Fakemons in one week. A blessing knowing that pixel art is currently the bottleneck. (Before her arrival, out of 40 Fakemons who have artwork … only 9 had their sprites! Not even a quarter!) She has just been officially enshrined as a member of the team. Second point: I tried to recruit several musicians. One of them answered me: Galax. There is a very good probability that he will join the team. About a week ago, I also missed the recruitment of Skara, a former musician of the team, but who converted from music to pixel art and artworks. (He had advertised to be recruited on PokéCommunity). But he came back on the Discord, excited to discover how the project looks like 3 years later. Finally, I’m eyeing a medievalist who draws in the medieval style and has a gift for storytelling, but he has a curse on his free time. It remains to be seen if the trial will turn into a promising new member. Last point: I have (theoretically) 4 newbie programmers in my team who have the goal to migrate to Godot (they have no skills for RPG Maker XP and have little chance to help me on it). More or less inactive, they are not counted in the team yet. However, the day the development of Godot becomes real, it could be something nice if they are all available and work together. Departures We forget it, but almost 4 years have passed since the beginning of the project. Time passes, faces change with the evolution in the IRL of each one. So, we have the official departure of Pipevanes who has given his notice of resignation. IRL, he has found a new full-time job and will therefore hardly have time to devote to music. However, he thinks he can continue to contribute symbolically at the rate of one music per quarter. Finally, Thunungu, the longest serving member of the team (he joined in September 2018), told me about his uncertain future: he doesn’t think he has time to devote to pixel art anymore and will only be able to fulfill his role as a Discord moderator. A boost in productivity These new arrivals have caused a renewed motivation within the team. A significant progress has been made on the Fakemons sprites and a complete roadmap of what will be drawn has been planned. The Pokémons needed for the future Tintignac demo have all been completed. On the human creation side, we were at 11 missing artworks and 23 missing overworlds 2 months ago. These numbers have dropped to 7 and 11 respectively. If productivity is maintained, we can estimate that the Tintignac resources will be finished by mid-June. Finally, the team has just decided on the game format for the migration to Godot: it will be 960×540 with most of the pixel art in standard resolution upscaled ×2. This will allow us to switch our sprites to HD if we wish, while offering a very large FOV in map (30×16,875 tiles). This month’s goals The objectives are simple: finish the Tintignac demo. This will require … – Finish the pixel art and human artworks needed for Tintignac – Code the crafting menu and spell casting in map. – Write the scenario related to Tintignac – Map the interiors of Tintignac – Make the event-making of Tintignac The music is changing, as Pipevanes will pass the baton to Galax. Although they both do orchestral remixes, Galar has a much more “powerful” style and uses more modern instruments, which contrasts significantly with Pipevanes’ style. So, there is a period of breaking in with the search for a middle ground in order to limit the contrast of style, while leaving enough freedom to the artist to find his pleasure. Finally, programmers and an illustrator for artworks may become necessary, as the move to Godot will significantly increase the ambition of the project, raising it to the original Ideal. Speaking of Godot’s migration (which will amount to a reboot of the project), the ultra-wide FOV will require remaking the maps with a more appropriate scale for the scenery elements. But that’s for the long haul. So, let’s stay focused on the short-term goals: the Tintignac demo on PSDK with one hour of playable content.
