Lust & Lead - Dev Log 08 (Patreon)

Hello everyone! Hoh boy, am I tired. For good reasons, but still. Development has been progressing along, though I don't know if I can say it's been smooth or not. Not a sign of anything bad, but I've been so busy the past two weeks that I'm kind of in that tunnel-vision state where even I'm not sure how everything's going.

All that said, what have I been doing? Well, a bit of everything! A new weapon, a new enemy, cutscenes and... more cutscenes. Well, let's talk about that new weapon first.

Revolver

Finally, a revolver has been added to the game. You'd have thought this would've been the first port of call, and in a way it was. I made this gun quite a while ago, as you might be able to tell from the fact that it's appeared in quite a few renders. Last week, I finally rigged and animated it, properly setting it up in-game as a purchasable weapon. I'm honestly very happy with how the animations turned out.

I've always wanted to animate a proper Single Action Army-type revolver. I've had a few chances to animate something similar, quite a while ago now, but I could never quite wrap my head around it and usually opted to just take the gun off-screen during the reload. This time, I decided to actively show the whole thing and... it's slow. But that's good, that's intentional. Reload speeds can be upgraded after all.

In terms of use, it's like the regular pistol but hits harder, fires slower and needs to be reloaded more often. It fits quite nicely into the current weapon roster and just generally feels good to use. At least, that's how I feel now. Come a couple of months and I might despise it, but that's a problem for future me.

The Warrior

Today's poster girl is the Warrior. This is probably one of the first enemies I had in mind when I started Lust & Lead, but I kept procrastinating due to the relative complexity of the design and my own indecisiveness. My main goal was to create an enemy that would be a direct contrast to the shambling zombies, something more aggressive and purposeful. Sharp teeth, sharp armor, sharp blades and a sharp tongue (figuratively).

She giggles, laughs and actively taunts the player while closing distance fast and not allowing much breathing room. When you purify her, she also sounds like she's enjoying it a little too much.

She can jump higher than the average enemy as well, so sheer drops that enemies can't typically climb are no longer safe havens for you to make your last stand on. If you don't pay attention, you're likely to get two arm blades in the back while being made fun of.

There is a slight issue with her that I need to keep an eye on, however. Because the Warrior is faster than the other enemies, she tends to reach the player first and, as a result, ends up becoming one of the enemies I purify most often.

The intention behind purification in Lust & Lead is that the player shouldn't keep purifying the same enemy over and over unless they're actively trying to. Zombies/Shamblers are there partly as a reliable fallback that's easy to knock into a staggered state, but because of how often you'll be shooting at Warriors right in front of you, you're likely going to ignore the fodder enemies in favor of the immediate cackling psycho.

Calling this an issue might be an overstatement. It could just be how I play and might solve itself as more enemies get added to the game, but it's still something I noticed during testing.

Cutscenes

Now, the real meat of what's been going on the past couple of weeks. I've been working on the game's cutscenes!

It might seem a bit premature since there's plenty of other things to be getting on with, but with the enemy roster complete for the Alpha and all the underlying systems in place, I felt this was one area with too many mysteries involved.

Overall, Lust & Lead has 38 planned cutscenes. For where I want the story to end in the Alpha, we're looking at 10 for the first release. As of writing, I've worked on three of them, amounting to around five minutes' worth of animation. Granted, some of this was already started months ago.

Also, these aren't three polished cutscenes. I've split my workflow into passes. The first pass is a shot blockout with basic animation and voice lines playing. The second is more polished animation, lip sync and better shot timings, maybe with some sound effects, while the third is more of the above but closer to completion with a focus on finer details such as character expressions. Audio, lighting and music are their own passes.

For the Alpha, I want to get those 10 cutscenes to at least their first-pass state, with maybe a second pass for better presentation. I wouldn't expect anything too amazing, and that does highlight something I've realized.

I intend to release an Alpha of the game. That means an unfinished version of it. I probably shouldn't obsess over polish or making things look amazing. Leaving things unfinished is perfectly acceptable and I need to repeat that to myself because otherwise I might spend the next month polishing one or two cutscenes. The goal for now is to just get everything presentable and have the story make narrative sense.

The way I've structured the story also means the cutscenes are front-loaded, middle-loaded and end-loaded, if that makes sense. Essentially, there are three points in the game that are meant to be cutscene-heavy with relatively little overlap with the core gameplay loop. Most of the narrative will be delivered much like in Sin Spire: through dialogue boxes. So ultimately, these first cutscenes in the Alpha might be the only cutscenes you'll be seeing for a while.

What's Next?

So, my task list is looking pretty straightforward right now. In no particular order:

Finish the Graveyard's visual design (might delay until next version)

Create at least two more weapon models along with animations

Finish two of the story character models

7 cutscenes (longest task by far)

Misc dialogue (might get cut for the Alpha)

Finish off the Vampire Queen fight

Bug fixes and optimization (will still release with some issues)

Purification animations

So, with the above in mind, how's that November release looking? Well, if I keep at it at my current pace, it's very possible to have the Alpha ready by late November. But I'm also acutely aware of burnout.

I want to get the Alpha out because I'm very excited to finally share what I've been cooking up, as well as what all the talented people involved have contributed, but I also don't want to phone it in. As I've said numerous times, I want that first impression to be good, but I also don't want to burn myself out getting there.

It's a tricky balance and the past few weeks have involved quite a few 3AM nights and a lot of coffee. I have been taking breaks, but rarely a whole day. Fridays are usually my hangout days, but that's generally only Friday night, and I do sometimes take more time off on Sundays when I'm not writing Dev Logs.

As always, there's other stuff I could talk about, but this Dev Log is already getting pretty long, so for now I'm gonna get back to those cutscenes.

See you all next time!