Post by GeoBirb on Jun 4, 2017 5:37:26 GMT
Yet another Newsletter -
Welcome back yet again to the Overtale Birb Newsletter! To all of you who are new to this segment, you may call me Geo, or GeoBirb. I am a concept artist on Overtale as well as the resident journalist on the team. You get some fun tidbits on occasion which you won’t find anywhere else as well as some updates that you may or may not be aware of, do yourself a favor and check them out whenever you can, yes?
Not me :c
An essay by Adam -
Recently, our lead developer ‘Adameme’ posted a lengthy post regarding the state of the game, why we have gone dark for so long and how we plan to get things back in shape. You can find all these nitty gritty truths on Gamejolt.
A Story by Adameme
..Oh and we fired the Bear.
For realz this time.
Box with Text -
Along with team revision of our internal affairs, we are also changing up the look of our dialogue box. In early builds of the game, we went for a sort of parchment style ancient scroll art direction. But we decided to scale it back to a plain black box, to something more readable and close to the classic style that is Undertale.
Early UI
Let us know what you think of it!
Meet the Dan himself -
Behind the works of Overtale, there are people who work countless hours to make it a reality. Today we yet again talk with one of those brave souls. You may not know him personally but at this point, many of you may have seen his handiwork.
Tell everyone who you are, introduce yourself! What do you do on the team?
Hey there, the name’s Dan Belisle(pronounced like the Darksiders Demon, in case anyone is having trouble, which I know they are), put I mostly go by Dann. Regarding my job, I basically serve as what Adam calls “the team Bandaid” which translates to a more ‘jack of all trades’ position regarding the Dev team and their duties, that mostly being Programming, 3D modelling, etc.
How did you first find yourself in the Overtale Dev Team?
Initially, I first came across Undertale by word of mouth, pretty early into it’s fame, in fact. A friend, who I barely knew at the time, told me that I should play it. Not thinking much of it, I put the thought in the back of my mind and moved on with my life. A month later, I finally decided to play it. 6 months later, I ended up making a music box that plays the tune of “Memory.” The tale of how I got into the dev team followed shortly after. Basically, I do a lot of hobby-type content with the Unity Engine in my spare time. When I heard that Overtale was being made with it, I figured, “why not, I like Undertale, I’ll see what they need.” About a year later, here I am being the virtual crux of the project currently.
You were the brainchild behind the...unconventional videos like Tems raining from the sky and quite recently, a dabbing birdman. Both of which make fans both enjoy and question our sanity and the state of the game as a whole. What gave you the idea to create those?
Honestly, I guess that more or less spawned from the desire to try and out-meme Mojo. After a while, however, I never ACTUALLY thought that Adam would be crazy enough to send my jokes out into the wild of the public eye. I suppose now I’ll be forever known as the guy who made a dabbing birdman. I wonder if this is how Oppenheimer felt…
I can never see these characters the same way ever again, thanks for that. Your work covers both spectrums of art and programming, are there any tips you wish to share with other aspiring artists and programmers?
My drive to do… whatever the hell I do…mostly came from trying to figure out how other people do things. I would always play a game, notice a certain feature or gameplay mechanic and think, “I wonder if I can do that too.” Frankly, the best tip that I can give is to learn through observation, look hard to find what makes something tick.
Finding that sweet spot that makes everything click is always difficult to explain, but I think we all know felt that and know what that is! Thanks for dropping by, Dan!
Misc Game Systems -
As I have mentioned earlier, the team has undergone a massive overhaul in how we conduct our work and the systems in place. Dan also helped us with a more refined character player controller as well as implementing a Day-Night cycle with his fellow capsule test buddy “Gregg”. Don’t forget to thank them for their work, especially Gregg. He gets paid more than I do.
We are also working hard on the alpha phase of the game, Golden Heights. This is essentially like a tech demo, consisting of all the very basic structures of gameplay functionalities as well as a game performance test. We have shown off quite a bit of it in the past, but due to some development turmoil, we decided to rebuild it from scratch. I can’t share much of it today, but here are some of the NPCs and their animations you will someday encounter in the alpha demo.
Look at them, lined up waiting to be included in the game! Birdmerch hasn’t gotten his animation yet.
Birby Likes -
This here is the segment where I post things I find that I like, and I think you should like it too! If you would like your content posted here, either hope that it catches my eye or feel free to send them my way (geojjx@gmail.com) and who knows? Maybe you might see them appear here someday!
hamodebu50's fan art of Gregg is spot on!
In many ways, we are just getting started. We are still recruiting fresh faces to the team to help pave the path to a bright but uncertain future. Artists are getting warmed up once more, the Writers are quietly adding detail to the many locations we have planned and pulling my heartstrings with emotional set pieces, Musicians are churning out more memorable tracks than I can count and Programmers in the basement are plotting something diabolical I am sure. Files are being reorganized and tasks are being made. Many underestimate the effort to work on a game of this scale, sometimes ourselves included. It’s a scary yet exciting venture. But we are confident enough to push forward and hopefully one day, you too will get to experience this labour of love. Until we meet again!
Come back soon!