February 2020 Update - New UI and another finished Mission in Chapter 1

Dear Backers,

It's the 100th update, and I want to start by taking a moment to say how much fun the Unsung Story project is right now. January was an amazing month for development, and I feel like the team has found their sweet spot. Thanks to all the backers that made this possible.

Twitter and Facebook Posts

Some of you may have seen our Twitter and Facebook posts mid month showing off new lighting screenshots, because I found them impossible to hold them back. I'll likely be doing more of this as we move forward.

https://twitter.com/mattpscott/status/1217241167181430784

https://twitter.com/UnsungStory/status/1220043782583750656

If you're interested in our Social presence, you can follow us here:

• Twitter: @unsungstory, @littleorbit, or myself @mattpscott
• Facebook: @theunsungstory or @littleorbitstudios
• Reddit: /r/theunsungstory

This is purely optional. I will always put up the latest progress in the month Kickstarter updates.

We put them up to show off the level art polish, so the User Interface is hidden. But the UI was also hidden because that whole system was being upgraded. This month, I'll show off our progress.

General Update on Progress

There was so much progress in January, that I honestly find it difficult today to summarize everything in this update.

• 3 Missions are now at the "final polish" stage. The other 4 missions in Chapter 1 are playable and have finished geometry, but they need their lighting, skybox, and environment effects finished.
• We finished implementing an all new User Interface including dialog, unit placement, movement, and targeting.
• We completed an initial layout for the a couple of the Chapter 1 cutscene locations and the Player Hub. This week the team will be putting together reference and sketches for some of the details, and then we'll hand those off to get concepted.
• In preparation for the Player Hub, we have been wireframing and building out the various functional screens for that location including Recruiting, Quest board, Shop, and more.
• We started overhauling the look of characters and their job outfits to match the more sophisticated look of the missions. All of the character and monster designs will remain similar to their concepts, but a lot of the proportions and details are being tweaked. The plan is finish the Human Male with 2 job outfits, and once we're comfortable with the results, we will start rigging and animating.
• We have also started organizing the Steam page for Unsung, which is nearly ready to launch. We are just updating screenshots and creating a short trailer (which is required).

As part of the General Update, I also want to talk about re-incorporating our backers. I recognize that this has largely been a one-way process so far, and I feel like that was necessary till we got our feet under us. We have a lot of catch up to do in this area. Rest assured, we haven't skipped any critical steps or forgotten about you guys.

With that in mind, we will be opening access to the Unsung Story Discord where all the backers can chat and discuss the game. This wasn't quite ready for the update, but I'll be making a separate post with details soon. After that, we will start contacting individual backers to move forward on their art and design rewards. With three missions now fully playable, I'm also exploring the idea of opening access to our early playable builds. We will likely start with a very small group of backers, and then expand the closer we get to launching Chapter 1.

Lastly, based on backer feedback, we will be starting some developer streams on the Little Orbit Twitch channel to play through missions and preview new features. I'll be posting that schedule here as well.

New User Interface

Tactics style games need to surface lots of information in a relatively small amount of space. During December, we decided the old UI was covering way too much of the level and not doing a good job helping the player make decisions.

This month I want to show off the new UI. These screenshots are all taken from our current internal build, so these are not mock-ups, but they do contain some work in progress effects.

Dialog

During the game, we showcase characters dialog in two different ways.

The first method is called "Conversation" mode. We use it primarily during cut scenes. This method uses the classic alternating portraits with text covering a portion of the 3D scene. It's useful when two or more characters are talking. In Unsung Story, our portraits are 3D, so the character's face can animate and move.

The second method is called "Comment" mode. This is used primarily during missions, when a character makes a comment or gives instructions to the player. This method uses a word balloon attached to the speaking character.

NOTE: All dialog that we showed last month and this month is placeholder. We're waiting for the finished story beats and game play, so our writer can come in and actually write the script.

Dialog "Instruction" Mode Example

Unit Placement

At the beginning of each mission, the player has an opportunity to select and place units from your roster. That UI was entirely placeholder, so we spent some time working on it.

Unit placement

Battle Interface

As I mentioned above, these elements were entirely re-worked to save space on the screen. Your party is displayed on the left with their health and focus. There are now options on the right to toggle the objectives and turn order, and unit specific options are at the bottom.

NOTE: We're still working on making the text more readable.

Battle Interface

Movement

Much of the game involves moving around. After playing the game for the last year, we have been taking notes on changes we wanted to make. This became especially evident in December after we finalized the lighting and look of Mission 1. The old system used 2D overlays that covered up so much of the mission geometry. Instead we decided to incorporate the geometry itself by tinting the possible movement areas in blue and the end location in green with an animating ribbon showing the unit's path to the end location.

NOTE: Players can always back out of movement before they use an ability. We made the design decision not to punish players for under estimating distances or spell ranges.

Movement

Targeting

The last part of the UI displays range and target areas at the same time. We continued with the tinting technique to highlight possible target areas in yellow and the unit's actual target in red. In this case, My Elementalist (placeholder model) can hit five different areas with his Scorch spell, and you can see the estimated damage on the affected enemy units.

Targeting

Here is a video showing all of these elements in action. There are a lot of elements in this video that are being worked on, so please ignore the broken visual effects and other issues that you'll see.

New Mission Preview

We showed off a screenshot of Mission #7 on Twitter and Facebook, but I thought I would finish this update with a preview of another new Unsung Story mission. This is my favorite so far. I wont say where in the story this occurs, but the mission focuses on navigating several hazards that player units must avoid.

From this movie, it's somewhat difficult to tell whether it's just a 2D mock-up. But this is built in full 3D, and while we captured this from Unity outside of the game, it is playable now in the latest internal build.

I'll be back next month for another update.

Sincerely,
Matthew Scott