Imperial Peach Studios

Welcome to this devlog, for this month we will be using a slightly different format than our regular layout. It’s been one year since we started this project together with our monthly devlogs. We would like to dedicate this devlog to reflect on the project as a whole and share our thoughts and opinions with you.

Since this is a passion project and not a full time job, progress has been slower than we first anticipated. We have embraced this fact as we believed that by doing so the end result will turn out better than if we were to rush the project. It has been on our minds from the very beginning that the game is first and foremost a learning experience for us more than anything else. 

As of now the project has entered a new phase, taking into considerations how the project as well as the group have changed during the last months, we have decided to change the way we will continue working on the game to better suit the group. 

As this is our twelfth devlog a bit of a milestone for us, we would like to dissect the good and the bad in working with monthly updates.Things we liked about a monthly devlog is that first of all, it has given us a good overview of the project each month. Secondly it has also been a good way to regularly show our followers what we are currently working on and how far we have come. However we have also come to realize that working with monthly devlogs has been a bit too ambitious for such a small group as ourselves. Lately the format has become quite straining during some months when some of the different disciplines haven't had as much to show or talk about.

From what we have mentioned there will be some changes for us, this means we won't set a deadline at this point in time for when we believe the project will be finished, since we are going to let it take the time we need. Changes that will affect you as a reader is that there are not going to be monthly devlog going forward. Instead we will focus on giving you smaller and less formal updates.

We believe that the changes we are making will be better for us in the team and the game, we hope these changes will be better for you as a reader as well. As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting us and we hope you will continue supporting us through these new changes.<3

In between enjoying the summer heat we have been working on some fun things we would like to share with you all in this months devlog.  

And as always, our monthly reminder that the game is still a work in progress and everything shown in the devlogs might not appear in the finished game.

We are on fire… no I mean literally Sweden is hot as hell right now, but that has not stopped us from working!  As mentioned in June we have produced almost all of our outdoor objects and also completed the outdoor tiles. Here is an example for how the game environment will look in the game.

Some object we would like to talk a little more about are bushes, fences and cars. We struggled a lot with the style of our greenery. The bushes for example went through three or four versions before we ended up with our final one. We went back and forth with the level of detail for the greenery to match our other objects and in the end we decided to scale back on the detail for a less busy bush. For the cars in our game we found it surprisingly easy to make the side of the car but the front and back side were more challenging. We used the game crossing souls and their cars as a reference for ours since the perspective is similar. The last object we like to talk about are the fences since we are implementing them a little differently than our other objects. For them we are using unity's grid map to place them in their own layer because we found that they would be easier to place.

This month has been quite busy for me and because of that, I haven't been able to work on the game. I do have a few more things coming up in August, but I will still try my best to work on the game. Right now I’m also waiting eagerly for art to implement all the assets they have so far.

Hello! 

Apart from trying to stay alive in this heat and moving, I’ve had some technical issues due to me forgetting my sound card for my PC in my old apartment. So work has been a bit slow due to me not being able to mix or master my sound effects. However I did get my sound card back a couple of days ago and since then I’ve been able to almost finalize some of the sounds. But now that I have all my stuff ready I will aim to finalize pretty much all the sounds for level 1 in august. Before signing off I got some sounds that I want to show you. 

Crowbar

One of the impact sounds from the crowbar.

Drinking

One of the sounds for drinking

Eating

One of the eating sounds

That’s it for me folks, bubye! 

Thank you to everyone that takes time out of your day to stay updated with our little game. And thank you for your continued support.♡ 

This has been an exciting month for the team. After celebrating midsummer (a swedish holiday), the team meet up for a productive work week. In today's devlog we are going to tell you what we worked on during it.    

Friendly reminder, the game is still a work in progress and everything shown in the devlogs might not appear in the finished game.

Another month has passed us by so let's just jump right into it! Currently we don't have all that much to show you all without spoiling the game. What we have been working on is the level design for our first level as well as finishing our tileset as well as the outdoors objects. Right now the layout is built with contemporary tiles which we plan to update with the finished art overtime.

One thing we can show you is the enemies walking animation! We haven't added all the light source shadows yet however the animation itself is something we are pleased with. As mentioned in the enemy's first devlog appernes its appeal is how fragile yet frightening this monsters is and we took this into consideration when making their movement. We also worked on Kies attack animation but it will need a little more time before it’s completed.         

As for the programming I’ve had a productive month where I managed to work on a lot of new stuff. You can now attack enemies with your weapons and kill them. The enemies can kill you and when you die the game loads the last save you did. There are now safe places where the enemy can’t get to you and where you can save the game. 

I am also going to rework some of the scripts, to make them more readable and with less unwanted code, to make them more clear. Performance is something I looked into, to make sure that the game doesn’t drop frames this early in development. All and all this was a really good month, where many important mechanics finally came to life.

Hello, this month I've been working on more sound effects for the game. Now I only have a few effects left to make and then I will be done with my first draft for all the effects in the game. I had some trouble with creating the enemy sounds but after sitting alone in a poorly lit room screaming into the microphone I actually got some sounds that I liked! 

None of the sounds are finalized yet so I will keep myself from showing them to you peeps for now, but in the next devlog you will definitely have something to listen to!

Bubye!

That’s it for this time, thank you for reading our devlog and stay tuned for next month!

Hi! 

This have been a busy month for all of us and we had to prioritize other responsibilities! But we still have some nice stuff to put on display.

Hope you’ll enjoy.

This month the art team have been working on creating the house guidelines for the game. We faced some tough challenges when it came to making the houses look correct from the perspective but still keeping them functional for the games layout.

This was our first attempt at creating a house base. We thought that you might enjoy seeing it ;)

This is currently how the houses in the game will look but with completed decor and overall larger layouts. To make the house look good both on the inside and the outside while keeping a believable perspective, took a lot of patient and tweaking until we were overall happy with the result.

I unfortunately don't have much to show in this months devlog, because I’ve been quite busy with school now that exams are closing in. But I am hopeful that next month, I will have more to share about the game which might involve combat and combat animations.

Hey folks, this month has been super busy for me but I managed to do a little bit of work on some SFX(sound effects) for the game. In June I will have a lot more time to work on the project and I will try to finalize the concept for all the SFX in the game :)

Peace out!

Thanks for reading this months devlog, we will be back again like usual next month!

This month compared to the last one have been really productive and we have worked on many different parts of the game. Monster designs have been completed, animations is starting to pop up, programming is finalizing systems and the monsters have been getting some sound effects.

And we also have a name to the game that we would like to reveal..

Welcome to Sugar Bunkers

Hopefully this will excite you as much as we are excited to finish the game!

It has been a productive month for us in the art team. Our two main focus have been on completing the enemy design and beginning with some animations!

Let us begin with this exciting revel of the finalised enemy design! This enemy took quite a turn from our previous monster ideas (which we have shared in February's devlog). Our monster is both powerful jet vulnerable with its brains spilling out from the cracked skull to its frail stature however you would not wanna meet this fellow in the dark of night!

The difference when creating this enemy design from our previous ideas was that we took inspiration from nature such as parasites and ocean creatures while dialing down the alien theme in order to fit the story and feel of the game better.

Here we also have Kie Walking/jogging away from all her problems! It is quite a pleasant challenge to get the perspective just right and a great learning experience for us. We are using 8 frames for this animation and later on we'll be adding shadows and light over the animation.

 For our next challenge we have the exterior and interior design of the buildings for level one, which is incredibly fun as it marks the beginning of our world being put together!

This month I have worked on finalizing the systems I already have. The reason for the changes are so that anyone in the team will be able to make changes to the game without my help. Making the system easy to understand is important to me but it also means it will take longer to finish, but I believe it will be worth it in the end. 

With that being said, that’s what I have been focused on this month when it comes to the both the enemy, the player and also the inventory systems. When this is all optimized I will then start on some new stuff!

Hello, this month I made the last track for level 1 and started working on some of the sound effects in the game, mainly the weapons and a concept for how the enemies will sound like. This has been a bit of a challenge for me as I am quite new to the sound effects department, however, it has been very fun and great learning experience. Here are some of the sounds I’ve been working on!

Growl 1

Growl 2

Growl 3

That is all from me for this month, bubye! 

That’s it for this time, thank you for reading our devlog!

Hello and welcome to the March devlog! This month we are changing the format a bit to be able to have a more in depth text about the project as a whole. We are so grateful that we are able to work on this projekt in our spare time even if this means that the project at times have been slower than expected. At the moment we are working on a lot of cool stuff however it is not ready to be showcased as of yet, this includes the enemy design and animations among other things, so stay tuned.

The first level in the game is planned to be ready for beta-released sometime this summer and we are hoping for some valuable feedback on the level however an exact release date is not certain for the moment.The finished game is planned to have four levels in total and about 2-3 hours worth of gameplay and is going to be released (hopefully) within the year. We are so thankful for all of you who joins us for our monthly devlogs and/or follow us on our social media. We just reached 85 followers on Imperial peaches facebook page and 100 likes on our older page for the game Softa Med Oss who has of now over 100 downloads on our Gamejolt which is beyond incredible!

Thank you all for your support and we'll see you next month!  

Link to our game Softa med oss - the last assignment: https://gamejolt.com/games/softamedoss/261499?fbclid=IwAR1d0ZjlzxMIgKMSQ3wihBO3nJgrf8MxfFjkn15xsnYB-3gLZjBiU3Eh4QQ  

Another month has passed and another devlog is released.

For this devlog we reveal old monster designs and our thoughts behind them, before we reveal some of the cool official ones in future devlogs.

If you read until the end of this devlog, you will also find a sneak peek of one of the tracks to level one!

A quick monthly reminder! The game is still in progress and changes can still be made. What you see in this devlog, might not end up in the final product.

For this month we in super squad art team have been cooking up the finalized monster design but before we reveal it, we would like to share our multiple old enemy designs and talk a little about the process in creating them.   

The first ever monster we created was the dark/green shadow boi.                  Our approach in the monster creations was inspired by “the Alien” from “Alien”, but in a more human feminine form. But we did not find this version that scary so we tried for a more gory design which turned into the red and purple design. For a while we planned to have a big boss fight but this idea is now scrapped. HOWEVER, we still made some potential boss designs. 

The monster queen was a concept we created in the beginning when we had a different story. In the short version of the old story-line you got to the end and then had the choice between trying to save the queen or kill her.

A bit in to the project we revamped the whole story and as a result she didn't fit into the new plot.

For the last enemy design we will show in this devlog, we have the lumpy tentacle monster. This was the first ever boss design when the premise for the boss fight was only, “we should have a cool boss fight in the game”. The concept here was pretty advanced, it was lumpy bits being held up by tentacles and sassy legs. This monster shared the same fate as the others about getting comfy and snuggly in the deepest depths of our hard drives never to see the light of day again.

Hoped you enjoyed seeing a little bit of footage from behind the scenes in the monster creating process and look forward to seeing the finalized monster version next month!    

This month there was not a lot made for the programming, mostly because I’ve been occupied with school, which has taken up alot of my time.

I did manage to clean up and split most of the players code into smaller pieces/files such as the movement, dash, animations & other mechanics.

Since the files haven't been updated in a long time, all the functions listed above were in one file, which made it difficult to understand how the player and the other mechanics worked. I figured this was about time to fix them. This is something that will help us in the long run, it will make it easier for us to make changes and it will also make each separated file easier to read and understand what it does and how it works.

But hopefully next month I will have more time to work on the project.

I’ve been finishing up the 3 songs for the first level this month. All of the composing is done but I still have to mix and master them before putting my seal of approval on them. It’s been a bit hard finding the right sound for the first levels background music, I tried a sad approach, a more lonesome approach but finally settled on a more horror/lonesome approach, which turned out to be quite nice.

Next month I will begin recording and creating the sound effects for the game which will be fun. I will leave you with this sneak peek of one of the new tracks.

Click here for song!

Bubye!

  Thank you for reading this months devlog! Hopefully we will see you in next one!

If you didn’t get too creeped out from all the epic monster designs… hihi

We would also like to say a quick thank you to all the OG-followers, this month we reached a hundred likes on our old facebook-page which we made for our first game, Softa Med Oss! Thank you for still supporting us and our work!

Hello and welcome back to the first devlog of 2019!

We are starting it off real strong by showing you some amazing progress in our programming as well as art! The team have really worked hard this first month of the year, and will continue to do so!

Remember, the game is still work in progress and everything shown in the devlogs might not appear in the finished game. Sit back, relax & enjoy!

After the holidays the art team is back in action. For this month we have something exciting to show you. Starting things off with our main character Kie in her correct perspective. We were working on creating a “in between perspective”, due to our first design being in a more side view perspective for our top down environment.

While one of us was working on Kie, the other one began working with the scenes such as the tiles and objects. As our game is set in the late 80’s, Nevada's desert-area, we did some research which we have base our environment designs after.   

The Scrapted Dialogue System

Hello it is Christos once again, back with some more programming. This month I was very excited to start working on a dialogue system. But after asking my programming teachers for some advice, they recommended me a Plug-in called Fungus. After testing Fungus I decided to scrap my own dialogue system and just use Fungus instead. If you don't know, Fungus is a dialogue system and is free to use. I haven't tested the full capability of the program yet but I believe this will be an amazing tool we should use for our game.

Unexpected Stuff In Januari 

After scraping my own dialogue system, I started working on something I didn’t expect to work on this month. Like creating a smooth transition when going in and out of houses. What I mean with a “smooth transition” is that when the player goes inside a house, a black background appears and covers the whole camera view. Then the roof of the house vanishes and you are then left with a house with no roof on top, which is then surrounded by a black background. The same thing happens if the player goes out of the house but the effect is just inverted.

I also worked on an interaction system so that the player can interact with various stuff like picking up objects from the ground (like you’ve seen in some of the other devlogs) or looting inside of houses. The player can also interact with NPCs, which brings up a dialogue box. The NPCs in the other hand can now interact with the player, either by the player going in their field of view or by the player being inside a invisible detection-box which the player can’t see (can’t see a invisible box? Surprise that's how science works! I think?).

This is what I have worked on this month and I am very happy of the progress so far. See you next month!

This month I have been working on improving my Fmod skillset to be able to create more fun solution to dynamic sound design and music. Meaning that depending on what you as the player do, my music while react to it and change depending on the situation. 

I have also been working a bit on getting better at creating synth patches for the music so I can create more interesting soundscapes. This is part of the mixing/mastering stage of the music to create a more uniform style for the soundtrack.

That’s it for now, bubye!

Thank you for reading january’s devlog! Continue following our progress by tuning in next month!

You can also follow our facebook & twitter for more updates.

https://twitter.com/imperialpeaches https://www.facebook.com/ImperialPeaches/

From all of us to all of you, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

Now December is almost over and we are starting to count down hours until 2019.  It has been a busy month with a lot going on for everyone, so the focus has been on having fun and enjoying all the festivities with family and friends. The thing we have been working on the most this month have been the story, and that, sadly, we can’t share with you in the devlogs. 

Enjoy what's coming and appreciate the gifs!

The last month of the year is a busy one for everyone and we didn’t get as far as we had hoped. We in the art team have continued working on tiles, environment and finalizing our perspective for the game. Alongside the art, much energy has gone towards finishing and finalizing the story for the game which we have done together with Josefin in the writing department. 

Due to all the christmas hustling, we don't have that much to show however we leave you with this cute little gif.

A lot of things to take care of this month, therefore I didn't want to start on any new mechanic or system for the game that I knew I could not complete without having other things being in the way. I instead moved it to the next month when I will with no doubt have a lot more time to dive deeper into the more complex new systems and mechanics for the game!

December has been busy for me as well, lots of different school projects going on. But I’ve been working on another ambient track and doing some sound-design work on that. During the holidays I will be working on giving the different tracks a homogenous sound when I’m not stuffing my face with food. Piz out. 

With this devlog we want to wish you all an amazing new years! Stay tuned until the next one!

People! Welcome back for yet another monthly update from us working on Project: Ripley! Fall have quickly passed us by and we are now slowly crawling into the comfy month full of christmas!

Like last devlog, this one will have a bunch of new exciting progress to share with you!

Remember that you can always sneak back to our older devlogs to refresh your memory.

If you for some reason happened to miss our October devlog about pre-art animations and item showcase, I strongly recommend you to click this link: https://imperialpeachstudios.tumblr.com/post/179617581914/october-devlog-a-spooky-update

Remember! This is a game in the middle of its making and stuff can change over time! What you see here (animations, programming, sound) are all work in progress.

Get some popcorn and enjoy what’s coming!

During the month of November we in the Art team have been working on the environment. We have chosen to use Unitys Tilemap-function to make the levels using tilesets which we are currently in the process of creating. Below us we have a few of the more or less completed tiles that we will be using to create the ground on our first level.

But we have also been working on our main character Kie and how she will look in the in-game perspective. The design for her is pretty much done already but we noticed that in her current form she is in too much of a side view perspective from what we want in the game.

In the moment she is still going through changes and is not ready to be shown yet. But, hopefully we will get her completed soon enough. In the meanwhile the Art team will continue our journey with the environment and will have more fun things to show you in the next coming devlog. Jenny and Kate out!

Hello everyone, this is Christos from programming, for November I put a lot of effort into visualizing the inventory and being able to use the items from the inventory so that you can pick up items, drop them, switch and actually be able to use all the items you pick up.

Here is a small introduction for our inventory system!

Pick Up & Drop 

To pick up items you simply stand next to it and press the pick up button when the text pops up to pick it up. The item will be placed into the inventory bar that is currently empty. You can also place the item exactly where you want it in the inventory, by hovering over your mouse on one of the inventory bars and pressing the pick up button when you are next to the item. That will place the item you want to pick up into the inventory slot that you are hovering over. If an item already is in that inventory bar, the items will instead change places. The item you´re picking up will be placed into the inventory bar and the item that was in the inventory bar will be moved outside your inventory, out in front of your player. You can also drop items you have equipped by pressing the drop button.

If you want to drop something else that you don't have equipped you can hover over with your mouse at one of the inventory slots that has an item and press the drop button to drop that specific item. You can't drop items on top of each other, since each item requires a certain amount of space to be placed on the ground.

watch Pick up & Drop gif here

Equip/Switch Items

To equip your items from the inventory you simply hover over with your mouse on one of the inventory slots that contains an item and press “1” to place it into the first toolbar, or “2” for the second toolbar. The item you assigned to either toolbar 1 or 2, will be highlighted on your inventory bar to show you which item you have equipped.

If you try to assign an item from the inventory bar to an already existing toolbar space you will instead swap the items, so the item from the inventory bar will move to the toolbar and the item from the toolbar will move to the inventory bar.

watch Equip/ Switch Iteams gif here 

I am pretty happy with how the inventory turned out and I hope you also liked some of the features we added to the inventory. We wanted to make a inventory system that was easy to use and easy to understand, so that anybody could pick it up and be able to use it effectively. Other than that i will see you next time!

Hey folks, since the last devlog I have been mostly working on one new track and experimenting with the direction of the sound effects. Should they be more ‘realistic’? Should they be more 8-bit? Should there be no sound effects? Should there be a constant tinnitus sound going through the game to mimic my daily life? So many questions and I have only answered a few of them. 

Everything is still in a quite early stage for the sound effects so I’m not going to show any of that today and instead leave you with two additional sneak peeks from the soundtrack, hope you enjoy them!

Song 1

Song 2

Bubye for now, Simon.

Thank you for reading this month’s devlog, hopefully we made you more hyped over the final product! Don’t forget to check in next month for a new devlog, which will be the last one for this year.. Sadly. 31/12!

o-|-<]:  (guy on skateboard)

Welcome back! This months devlog is a bit shorter and instead of having a theme as last month's, this will be a short summary of all the things we have been working on over this month.

If there are any new people tuning in, this is our second monthly Devlog for Project Ripley. In last months update we presented our game concept in more detail and showcased some pre-art, our Main character Kie as well as some short music teasers for the project. If you haven’t read it you can find it further down on our tumblr or by pressing the link below which will take you straight to it. https://imperialpeachstudios.tumblr.com/post/178598332054/september-devlog-the-beginning-of-the-journey

Kate and Jenny back with the art update. For october our mission was to finishing all the pre-art animation for both the main character and the enemy. The animations we have created for the main character pre-art ranges from dying, dashing to sneaking and attacking with different kinds of weapons. While working on the pre-art we have tried to figure out how to best animate the attack and aiming animation when holding a firearm. For the moment we’re testing to rotate the arms and weapons separately from the body however it will need a lot of work before we’re happy with it.

We also started with the HUD (Heads Up Display) and GUI (Graphical User Interface). Another thing we worked on was  the inventory space in addition to first draft of the items such as weapons, food and medical aid etc.

For November the plan is to start working on environment and hopefully we’ll have something fun to show you all in the next devlog!

Hello! Christos here and for the programming this month, I have mostly implemented some new animations like the sneak animation:

and also changed the old UI with some new fresh UI (User Interface) for our game for both the health bar and the inventory space.

We also added some new UI weapon Icons

That's it for programming this devlog. Next up is Simon with the sound and music.

Since the last devlog I have mostly been working on mixing and mastering some of the existing tracks, as well as researching different soundtracks to come up with inspiration for the rest of the music. A big part of this research have been trying to figure out how to make different kinds of synth patches and also learning about some classic synthesis and FM synthesis.

I have also been working on a list of what sfx (sound effects) are needed in the game. So when it comes to recording it will be way easier, Because then I don’t have to think in what priority the sfx should be recorded in.

Bubye, Simon.

This wrap up our Octobers devlog, thanks for reading and we wish you all a very spoooooky Halloween!!!