Riftsletter 5 - Testing round! YOU could play it!

Hi! I'm Vikku, or Mahou Boshi if you prefer to be official. If you stumbled onto this randomly, first, thank god the algorithms are working for me for once, and secondly, welcome! What you're currently seeing is a Devlog/Newsletter for Riftaway, a 3D platformer focused on narrative and exploration of spaces in space, and my love letter to, like, a good half of all 3D Mario games. Learn more about it here!

Now let's get to business!

Welcome everyone! Hey, wait, I know you're in a rush after reading that title, but please gimme a moment to make things the right way... Fine, if you just care about that you can find the info at the last section of this post (The headers(The big bold text)). For everyone else, today I don't have many new news to share, which is, like, the point of news, so instead of doing that today I shall do this more dev-loggy and walk you through my process to make, uhh... Most things! I'll be using as example my good friend Waxtopus, my most recently done boss that you may have seen in the thumbnail.

Sketching - Not this one (This is a header (The big bold text))

Like most good things, every design starts on a notebook you got gifted by your previous job that's oddly empty. I used to have a proper GDD (Game Design Document, it's a Document used to Design the Game and share it around with the rest of the team), but since I don't have a team currently and simply rely on my own efforts and the good will of my closer friends to help out with some stuff here and there, I just end up doodling and writing around everything in the notepad relatively quickly. Here's for example the page for the Waxtopus, though most pages aren't nearly as organized as this one...

Steam post imageI keep telling myself I'll be more organized and detailed once I am working with people. God I hope so...

"But why do you write in English if Spanish is your native tongue" I wish I knew, genuinely, it just comes up naturally like that. Anyways, I try to come up with everything relevant, interesting and/or cool about the thing, plaster it on the paper, and with that as a general loose guide, I step onto Unity next!

The other stuff - Not this one either keep going

Once I have an idea of what I want to do I set up an empty game object and a script, then start writing code. I am particularly fond of this part, since you basically gotta find a way to turn a creature you just made up (Or likewise) into something that works inside a game, and do so while working with the stuff you previously made to save on resources, it's like a big puzzle!

Most things usually need models or sprites, so that comes next. I tend to do this part after coding since I can just use default capsules n'all in the meantime, though this process can and sometimes even has to go before; for example, the tentacle attacks of the Waxtopus require the animations to work out a good chunk of them, so those were done first and then the code was worked around them.

I use Blender and Aseprite for most things, but the actual maps I just create them in Unity with a tool called ProBuilder. It's not the best thing ever for complex stuff but it works really well for low poly and it lets me test out things immediately. Speaking of...

Testing - Here it is!

I have been slacking a bit on this part, as in, I will test things myself extensively and then move to the next thing, but it's been a while since I've actually allowed others to get their hands on the testing build and try things out, so... that's where YOU come in!

In around a couple of weeks (Somewhere mid May) I plan on releasing a test build of the game to gather feedback and iron out any game breaking bugs, so if you want to be a part of that join us over on Discord to be the eligible for this test run! I will also be announcing when the test round happens over on Twitter and Bluesky so it wouldn't hurt to follow there to be extra sure of when it happens...

That's it for April's newsletter! Thank you so much for your attention and I hope to see you for the pre-demo beta!

• Vikku (Mahou Boshi)