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This week I fixed the issues uncovered by alpha test. 

As I expected one of the problems was in navigation. If you have some location where player can walk here and there you need something that will tell him or her: "Walk here and not there!". In my case they were notes, records and player's speeches. 

As a developer you would never rely on a long text if you want to navigate your player. At the end of reading the player mostly wouldn't remember navigation hints you put into the text. Also you'd never rely on something that was spoken one time and wasn't written down somewhere. In my game big texts and speeches were the biggest sources of the navigation information. Notes were additional one. 

Alpha test presented me that notes were really important. They could have all important info in a short form. Moreover player could hide and show them when he or she want. Well I had no choice but making notes the main navigator for the player.

The next problem was illumination. Testers said it's too dark in the school at night. I'm not sure if dark school must glow from inside or something like that but who am I to argue with testers? I made some ambient light using post-process effects and now interior isn't absolutely dark. At least on the 1-st and 2-nd floors. 

And the last big problem testers didn't even see: environment. The school was places among the terrain and had only few props at the front side for intro cinematics cutscene. If someone would look into the window with ambient light on he or she would watch a green plane with nothing on it. 

I hate making low poly trees but I did some fake trees to fill that lonely place. Then I added some glowing houses in Russian style. I'm not sure they are cool in the close look but when you look from the far they give a nice illusion of the town existance.   That's all for now. I hope the next alpha test will be smooth and nice and I could finally work on my promotion and Kickstarter campaigns.

Every single step in game development is hard as an elephant's butt. I thought creating Windows package will be one day adventure . Ha-ha.

Unreal Engine 4 is an amazing tool but sometimes it goes  crazy and produces weird errors you would never fix without forums. Imagine you get an error with a long trace. BUT! Every single line refers to UnknownFunction. How can you fix a problem if even your debuger have no idea where it comes from. 

I spent 12 hours to find the solution. And the solution were weird too. At first we need to download 3Gb of debug symbols. Then we need to attach Visual Studio to the editor process. Then launch the game and catch an error. With symbols installed we can finally open C++ code in VisualStudio. In this code we need to watch a data that now stored in function parameter, and it will be a blueprint's varuable name. Then we trace back and find blueprint's name in the same way. But it's not the end. After all this investigation we need to open blueprint the error comes from, manually delete variable and all it's references, create new one with another name and then... OMG. It's over. 

I was so happy when packaging finally was done. But when I launched the game bugs attacked me again. My music visualizer, character's flashlight and localization systems were broken. My butt was on fire. I think I could fly to the Mars before Elon Musk just on the butt explosion force. I came too far and had no choice but fixing all that horrible bugs. 

As I found my visualizer system was built on plugin that doesn't work in packaged games. Idk why someone made a plugin just for editor but whatever. I used another approach and built my music vis on the submix analysis system that works in packaged games. 

Another problem with localization for my Russian comrades came from project's settings where we need to manualy add localization support for languages we use. This option was hidden in advanced settings part and I didn't notice it before. 

And finally flashlight didn't appear in packaged game because for some reasons this option was disabled in it's point light's settings. 

All fixes took me a while to do. So only yesterday, in Sunday, I started the alpha test among my friends. I know that if game works fine on my PC it can be absolutely broken on another PCs. When alpha testing  will be finished I'm going to make an open beta-testing and then start Kickstarter campaign. 

One of the problems with funding: Kickstarter doesn't work with Russian banks. I can't just create a fancy page  on KS and work on taking backers attraction. I need some reliable agent who lives in USA or Europe. I must know that he or she will not run with game money when I get funded. Oh... I hope there are organizations that could help. 

Today I made a footage of the second quest in Storoj. Fraps can capture packaged game and that's why it was possible. Quality is not good because I set a low resolution to have more FPS. Next time I'll film in 1440x900. 

Thank you! It's my goal for this week

Last week was very intensive. I've finished my save system, finished game settings and menus. Also in Sunday I wrote subtitles for character's speeches. Now I almost finished the demo and can release it at the end of this week. 

My current main task is localization. In Unreal localizing a text is not a big problem because the engine has built-in localization system. Thank God it has. Anyway I have a lot of text there and this work will take hours.

Then I'm gonna fix all bugs I'll find in the game and make some visual improvements. 

Here are some screenshots.

That's how subtitles look in game. Text has white color with black outline so it must be visible on both black and white background.

 And on the second picture we have a settings window with graphics tab opened. For testing purposes I left all the settings to minimal values. Honestly my PC is old and I have performance problems on epic settings. Although I tried to make this game super optimised it show 15 fps with high settings. On modern systems it must run pretty fast. 

And here is the last screen I'd like to present. Saved games list. Above there is a drop list with players' names. 

When player starts a new game he also creates a new player with unique name. All his progress will be stored for this name so different people can play Storoj on one PC. 

Game automatically saves progress at the start of every episode. Player can replay any episode he opened. Maybe later I will add some branches and different endings. This save system allows player easily check another path. 

I think that's all I wanted to tell about my weekly development progress. Hope at the end of the next week I'll represent first Storoj footage in normal quality. 

It took 8 months but now I can say: I'm close to the finish.

 Today I worked on the menu logic and that means that only couple of jobs stay between me and demo release. This week I'm going to make a menu and settings.  Next week I'm going to make promo media for Kickstarter campaign . Well I have only 10 dollars for living. 

When you see a game menu it looks like pretty easy thing to do. Especially with UnrealEngine4. But it's an illusion. 

Usually you do some things from menu: continue the last game you played, start a new game, load saved games, open settings window, exit the game... All this stuff need to have some logic. And more stuff you have in the menu - more complex logic will be implemented there.

In Storoj I have an original (though not brand new) save / load system when player don't need to worry about saving game progress. Every episode (quest) saves automatically when it starts. If you want to replay some episode you can load it from the main menu. I find this system is very convenient for players.

When you start a new game you need to enter some name for it. Why? For example you want to play Storoj and your brother/sister want to play it too. Of course you can get another copy but what if you have only one PC? Then you create new game with another name and all his/her saves will be stored separately. 

Unreal Engine widgets are very cool for creating UI but also they need some research work. That's the reason I can't work fast. I'm not an experience UE4 user and have to study everytime I try to create something complex. 

But the most complicated thing for me now is Kickstarter campaign. If I will not get funding there I will never finish this game (( I will have to work as a street cleaner or something like that because my dream will crush and most likely I will never work as a game developer. I'll be honest: gamedev is not funny 95% of time. Some fun you get from the features creating and storymaking but then you sit on a chair and code and code and then model things and then place them around and then get some light issues and then fix it and then brainstorm and then make prototypes and then code and so on... 12 hours per day. 5 days per week. 

I have no life that's why I can work this way. No girlfriend, no friends and no kids. What I want to say - game development is not something like everlasting fun. But even if so. I don't want to do something except making my games. I want to make a good game and then make a better game. And that's why Storoj fail will be my own biggest fail. 

But I want to believe in success :^) 

This week I have no screenshots to show so just place this Rubik cube here 

Hi! Thank you but now I have no money to hire people.

Wow! Last update was 20 days ago. Such a shame. At least I have something to show now. 

At first I'd like to say something about cheap Internet routers. I bought one last year and it died two weeks ago. I went to the shop and the seller changed it. And guess what? My new router have problems too. Sometimes it just breaks Internet connection. But as long as it's under the fan it works okay. 

Router problems made me lose three days. That's why I didn't post anything. 

These 2 weeks I worked on the school basement. The basement had one big issue: it looked like someone made a good renovation inside. Walls, floor and ceiling were fresh and clean. Now it looks like there was a student party there:

Of course I add some new details, doors and corners. Doors were changed too and now they look old too. 

Also on the image we can see a new notepad UI design (bottom-left) and in the top-right corner there is a prototype of the flashlight mode indicator. Idk what design this indicator will have. It must be solved this week. 

The storage room in the basement had a lack of things inside so I added some.

Here is the cardbox with books 

And here is a puzzle game I spent a couple of weeks on. Not sure players will be happy to read instructions on the back plate of this machine but... I tried to make it not hardcore. Yes. If someone would not find a big red button on the left side it's MY fault. That's why I made a notepad hints in addition o this instructions sheet.  

It couldn't be a basement without a rusty pipes. In my researches on YouTube every basement had kilometers of pipes. I have no time and performance to add so much decorative elements but pipes exist in Storoj and I like how they look. 

Well let's finish with underground school parts and go upstairs. Here we can see a part of Physics class. School staff made renovation here and left some tools on the desks. 

That's all for now. I'm tired and  want to sleep. z-z-Z

A new portion of updates for Storoj horror game. I want to sleep so it must be short.

1. Actually I've finished creating all the quests for demo and all I have to do now is checking them for bugs. So 3 of 12 were done last week.

2. My character can talk and I record speeches for him by myself. Some of them are good some are bad. I must make them all good and it takes time. 

3. My school location has a stuff for quests but it still looks poor now. Last week I made some models and placed them in the director's room and geography class. Now director's room looks like this: 

And this:

Books in the shelves have no titles. That was a technical decision to increase performance. Some books have titles but have no authors. That was a logical decision to remove copyrights.  I'm not sure someone would strike me for using super old Soviet textbooks as a design reference but it's possible 🐱‍👤

Another new feature: I made a top part  of the hints notepad visible as UI element. I'd like to add flashlight mode indicators to this peace of paper so player could know when he or she uses normal light of UV light and when it on or off. The notepad can be summoned by pressing J key.

 On the picture above the notepad was summoned in the geography classroom.

 And on this picture we can see a plastic pointer stick and the duster I've modelled last Sunday. 

That's all for now. As long as I model new stuff I'll share more pictures with rooms filled with new models. It's pretty satisfying for eyes 🐱‍🏍

Last week was productive.

At first I've setup footsteps sounds for my character. Now he can step on different materials and get  different sounds. It wasn't very hard to implement because I found a way to do the trick watching tutorial on YouTube. 

Then I added jump animations and that was not easy. The problem with jump was in the real life we never jump immediately. But in the game we should do it in a moment. So the start and the end part of jump animation must be very very short. Usually I use Mixamo animations but for the jump I had to make animations in Blender manually.  After some hours of work jump animations were ready. OBS capture with low quality is here 😖 

The next task was subtitles system. And here I was happy: UE4 has built-in subtitles. But very soon my happiness gone because built-in subtitles works only for short audio files which content can be converted in a single string. Timing pacing for long files doesn't work. So I decided to make my  own subtitles system. I think my way to take  subtitles from the single data table asset is even better than built-in system when I need to open every sound file to add subtitles in there. Moreover now I have control on the subtitles text and can change the system if I need. 

When subtitles work was over I decided to fix lightmaps issues. The problem was in my modular walls. After light baking they got a strange shading on every piece of wall. BUT... when we weld all planar pieces in one big planar mesh shading problems go away and the walls lit properly. As long as my floor and ceiling use the same modular approach I have to remake them all. Oh...

Replacing one asset with another was so exciting I redesigned the stairs. They were made of stone and now they are made of wood. 

Also I added some ceiling lamps in the halls. 

 Revising my first quest I changed some speeches. Revising my second quest I decided to add a radio in it. I modelled this radio for 12 hours and finally it's finished. 

The cool thing is it has a highlight on the front side. So in the darkness it looks like: 

Actually it's a real USSR receiver VEF-202. 

Well, that's all for now. I hope on this week I'll finish quests polishing and on the next week I will release the demo. Anyway I need financial support from kickstarter as soon as possible because my own money is running out... 

I post the new record here in Monday because I've finished my work on game only in the Sunday evening. 

The last week progress was big enough. I could be proud but I'm not. Because my money goes away faster than I'm working on the Storoj demo.

Anyway the game makes better every week and that's cool. On the last week:

1.  I've finished the credits screen. Naoya Sakamata didn't answer me in PM but I think she'll not be upset if I take some of her music for the credits and for  the main menu... Yes I love her piano play and this music is perfect for Storoj sad cutscenes. I'd pay Naoya Sakamata if I could. 

2. I remastered the intro scene.  At first I replaced my old track with Naoya-san music. Then I changed camera path to more appropriate for the story. Now it looks like we come to the school step by step as we would be lost  Lisa.  At the final part of the cutscene Lisa sais: "Dad?" and Romanov wakes up in the security room.  And here I've met another problem: none of my friends agreed to say this little phrase!

That problem did not look very big but it actually was. At the end I found novice VTuber Rina and asked her for help. Wow and she agreed! I hope on this week she will record the phrase so I can finally finish the intro.

Meanwhile I made cutscenes skipable. Of course no one want to skip them on the first time he or she play the game. But in some parts of the game the player can die and respawn and watch the same things again and again will not be a cool experience. 

3. I added some models in the game.  To fill the security room I've made new models because CC0 models are often have too much triangles or bad mesh. I have no time to create something amazing but I still can do stuff for interior composition. Reusing models helps a lot. Yes it's a cheap trick but I'm an indie solodev and it's my only tool to make the demo before my money ran out.

4. I've fixed light problems and improved the doors. Lightmass importance volume fixed the problem when my movable door was more dark than the static environment. Placing this volume in the UE4 scene was fast and easy solution but I spent some time to find it. 

Doors' handles overlapped with jambs so I changed jamb's mesh in Blender and also made some changes to the door's mesh. Also I made metal material more realistic adding a matte parts to it. I wish I have Substance Painter but I can use only GIMP to do all that materials changes. 

And that's how the security room looks now. Not perfect. I would add some details but I have no much time. I have less than 100 dollars for living and it makes me work faster and optimize all that can be optimized. 

I really hope I will finish the second pass (second quests quality revision) on this week but I'm not sure I will.  Thanks for all people who help me. Solodev actually is never solo.  

Here we go. I created a page for my game but it was ignored. Expectable. 

By the way on this week I've finished a little green place in the front of the school, made gates, fence and street light as they were 

some years ago in my school. Now my real school looks different. 

Also I've finished a final cuscene for the bad ending. 

Maybe it's not smart to make a bad ending in a short demo but... the story needs it to be there. Moreover I'm proud of this work. I like how it feels. 

It feels amazing because of the music made by  Naoya Sakamata . Actually I'm not sure she will let me use her music although it's published on SoundCloud 

by CC-BY license. I asked her in pm but she's offline now. I REALLY hope she'll get permission because this music and my cutscene are ideally combined. 

Also today I've started to work at the credits reader blueprint. Damn asthma tortured me all the day but I've reached some progress with the credits scene. 

I need more time to finish the demo... So much work here and there. But kickstarter campaign is vital for me. 

No money - no game. No game - no life. It's my second try in gamedev and if it will fail... Whatever.   

Here are the old gate and the fence from my real school as they looked in 80-s. This fence is unique. I've never saw something similar elsewhere in my town. 

Here are the vegetations I've made in Blender.  Yes there is a Pepe frog normal map applied on the grass (it's a secret) so the grass have eyes 👽

And the window of the security room. These windows break my heard. Refraction produces weird effects on windows. I'd reduce or even off it. 

Finally the last quest is finished! Almost finished. 

I've modelled the cellar monster for this quest, rigged and coded it. This morning I've done the basic killing sequence for it. 

Also a very important problem was solved: when the main hero came closer to objects with his flashlight, the objects got too much light and all text / pictures became white. I added autotune for light  intensity to prevent this effect. 

Here is the monster hole (I know it sounds funny). I can't show a full monster body because it will ruin experience for those who read it. This creature will appear in free demo 🎃

Here is a short story from the quest. We probably will not meet Vasily in this game but his deed will always be in our hearts ❤

And finally a hole in the wall blocked with metal bar.  It's not very representative but I needed a third picture.

Well I wish I could record some footage from the game but the only tool we have to do it in UE4 is Sequnce Recorder. For some reasons it rotates my character on 90 degrees so he flies feet first. It needs some hours to fix. 

I think this week was pretty productive and hope I'll work well next week too. 

This week started with remaking "EvoLight" puzzle game. My friends said it was hard to understand. I struggled with making it less complicated.

Well, now we have "Simple Receiver" puzzle where the player needs to pass a signal through the radio modules. Start from antenna and go through amplifiers and  detector to the speaker. Short descriptions on the info board will help to make it right. 

I think I've done with this great mini-game and can go further. The next thing to do is coding the last two quests. One of them I've coded this week and the next would be done on the next week. 

The cellar still looks like it was painted yesterday but I'll fix it on the polishing step. I have a lot of work on modelling and adding assets to the game. The next week will be dedicated to the monster model and it's animations

I have a place to use as monster's lair and some side story. This week I've coded some part of the last quest logic. Uuuuhuuu! Maybe I'll not die from starvation working on this demo 🥴

The most scarry thing would be if you play with your friends and walk in the house together and then you notice that your internet connection was lost all this time

New puzzle in the test place (Watchman's room)

Evo-Light close

The hole in the cellar wall

The abandoned room in the school cellar

Sunday updates! 

Athough I planned to finish the last quest to the end of the week I didn't and that's why: 

1. The last quest was too long and had a deadly monster so you can die in the end and start from the control point in the watchman's room. Annoying thing. 

So I decided to split the quest on two quests and add a control point before a monster part. It took some time. Also I redesigned the cellar to make it more realistic. 

2. In the first part player had a simple pick item task. It was boring. So I added a brand new supercool minigame Evo-Light where the player need to spin rings and pass a light of evolution from one figure to another. 

On Monday I'll probably will get a day to take a breath and the next week (this week) will be the last quest week. Sadly I'm still out of time and should work every day 

Hi, I'm Alex Fate and my total experience in gamedev is 13 years. My first game was Tic Tac Toe written on Turbo Pascal. It was a hard way to the game engines because for a long time I wanted to work without them using only code libraries and frameworks. For last 5 years I was not very productive and released only one horror game, "No Escape". But now I'm working full time on the new one called "Storoj". It should be good because I'm working hard on it) 

That's all for now. On the next week I'll be working on the cellar, the last monster for demo and quest blueprinting. I'm planning to finish this quest to the end of the week. See if I can do it. 

Almost all was done by me, all modelling work, 90% of textures and voice acting. Thanks to UE4 for all it's amazing systems that helped me to build the level so quick. I'm working 12 hours everyday and 6 in the weekend. Unfortunately without successful Kickstarter campaign I will starve to death and this game will never be released( 

So demo must come in this spring

Math class with some dragable desks

Cellar entrance

Old Rusty Mistery Cellar Door That Hides Something Behind... 😮

Literature class 

Some shadow you don't want to face close

Code lock

Art class

Picture board

Geography class in UV light

I've decided to have a devlog before I create a game page with some graphics. 

What did I do for this time: 

- School building (the  environment for quests). It still needs some exterior work, some interior work and decoration props to be honest

- 30% of all quests the game will have at the basic plan (now I'm working on the last quest for the demo)

- 3 monsters of 4 that will be in demo 

- Ultraviolet light game mechanic that allows to find invisible hints

- 9 quests of 10 that will be in demo

Storoj is a horror game about a man whose young daughter has gone missed in the school building when she and her friends sneaked there at night. The main character decides to get a job of a night watchman in this school to find any information about this incident. By coincidence or not but the previous watchman has gone missed too. 

This game is fun but it has no final screen