Welcome to part III! Have you read the previous two? Have you not?  

Let's talk team! Yay TEAM!!! I’ve had an enlightening moment - you can’t get a lot done alone [boom]. Well you can if you try hard right? Right??? Truth is, everything is possible, and every story is different. But one thing we can probably all agree on is that having a good team is a GOOD thing. 

Now the real thing I've come to realise is that ...drumroll... a good team is not the same as a skilled team. Having skill, to some extent is needed but here's the real deal: a highly skilled teammate who lacks passion is worse than a mediocre skilled teammate with a heart on fire. Why? Because mediocrity isn't a personality trait; On the other hand, having "heart on fire" is magical - not something you can easily change. "Either the stars align or they don’t." And if "they don’t." make peace with letting go. No hard feelings. On the positive side when both skill and chemistry team up we get - Valheim, Valorant, Demigod…

Soooo here I am,  strolling about in full daylight with a lamp; when asked what I am doing, I answer, "I am looking for a man". Okay - that actually is Diogenes,  but building a GOOD team feels just about the same.

Let's talk NEWS! 

Over the past two months (and ongoing), we've been collaborating with a number of sketchy individuals across various disciplines: music, animation, development, 3D. We are open to collaboration opportunities,  because you know - “Diogenes” and staff.

⚠️⚠️⚠️ About to spill out some names here. ️

With Dmitry,  we attempted to work on a concept involving 3D cards,  similar to the Marvel Snap concept where upgraded cards become 3D versions (although technically 2.5D). The idea was to have actual 3D cards,  but after some iteration,  we decided to cut the project without finalizing too much. The reality is,  for 3D to surpass 2.5D,  it would require a significantly greater effort,  which,  at the moment,  isn't justified. It's a bit sad but true - yuruse Dmitry, mata kondo da. Hopefully he will still be involved and provide feedback that will eventually contribute to the groundbreaking success of the game and at that point we will call it fate.

Alexander joined the Unity development team, and it's been a bit of a rough ride for him. The prototype we had was working 50/50: part in Unity,  part in my head. I ramped up my efforts to stabilize things and make them "working" so that he could contribute more easily. Currently,  he doesn't have a lot of time to spare, but we'll figure out how to manage that moving forward. One thing is for sure, he totally loves my code, and I'm delighted that he shares the same name as "Alexander the Great", right?

Konstantin is a true wizard when it comes to 2D Animation and VFX. Honestly, it feels like he's a wizard in general, who just happens to specialize in 2D Animation and VFX for various reasons. That's what you'd expect from someone who shares his name with "Constantine." While he's undoubtedly skilled, I've had a bit of trouble seeing that fiery passion so far. Maybe it's still igniting? Who knows, but regardless, the experience working with him has been fantastic. He's already produced a couple of animations that we're very fond of and hopefully you'll like them too!

Now onto the next wave of experiments, this time in the realm of SOUND.

Three people expressed interest during this period, and we sat down to plan how we'd collaborate. That was the last time I heard from the two of them. 

The third individual, however, proved to be a gem thus far. The sound artist I mentioned in part II, Luka, managed to produce 3 OST’s having only art as references, a youtube playlist inside a Google Docs (why? why????) and no gameplay. Below are excerpts from those OSTs:

Also this guy mixed up an interesting short melody loop, likes of which, we got an idea to put inbetween the scene loads, you know alongside game tips ala “Assassin’s Creed” style. We think that’d be a nice touch and reinforce the authenticity feeling we want the game to have.

finito

Funding - Meetup - Gameplay