From burnout to progress... my tactical RPG update
Hello there! I know that I disappeared for quite some time... and with this video, I want to give you a short explanation of what happened during the last few years...
FAQ
1) Most important... Why did you disappear for so long?
Long story short, I got hired again by my old company. I now work full-time as a CTO/Lead Developer, so this project became something I can only work on during my free time.
Besides that, I got heavily blocked by the art side of development. Around 2 years ago, I spent an insane amount of money trying to solve the art issue. A lot of artists told me they could do the job, but very few were actually able to deliver what I needed technically, stylistically, or financially. Some assets broke technically, others became way too expensive to maintain long-term.
At that time I was unemployed, constantly spending money without seeing sustainable progress, so eventually I got pretty discouraged by the "art wall".
2) What changed now?
As part of my full-time job, I'm learning and studying a lot about AI and how to create workflows to solve different kinds of problems... including game assets.
I never seriously tried using AI for this project until recently, and honestly, it blew my mind.. I had this project on stand by for more than a year with the disappointment of art, and now I was able to produce assets much closer to what I originally envisioned while also speeding up parts of development and iteration.
Two years ago I had to do almost everything manually and wait weeks or even months for assets while paying a tremendous amount of money. Now I can create and iterate on things in hours or days instead of using the right tools.
3) Does this mean the game can be finished quickly now?
No. Even though AI helps a lot, there’s still a massive amount of manual work involved.
Tilesets, polishing, consistency, animation, assembling assets into a cohesive world… all of that still takes a huge amount of time.
The difference is that now I can realistically do everything myself without depending on third parties...
4) Why are some characters unanimated in the video?
Because it’s still a prototype.
Originally, I only wanted to show animated characters, but I decided to include more content instead of limiting the showcase too much... for example, Blaze animation looks unpolished.. but yet, I included it... or the chibi version of the healer character doesn't match her clothes... etc... btw, chibi versions of the characters will still have animations eventually.
5) The UI looks unfinished. Is it going to stay like that?
No, not at all. The UI is still very early and mostly a placeholder.
I’m relatively happy with the health/mana bars so far, but most icons and interface elements are still dummy assets.
6) Why do you have the original SF2 music tracks?
I only used them temporarily because I absolutely love the original games and they help motivate me while developing... imagine that I've played this battle a thousand times... I need motivation to keep going...
7) What about the story, progression systems, lore, etc.?
Right now, I’m prioritising gameplay and building a fully playable foundation first.
I’d rather have a solid playable game before going too deep into balancing, story writing, progression systems, and polishing mechanics.
Those things will evolve naturally over time.
8) What are your long-term goals for the project?
Since I already have a stable full-time job, I’m honestly not too worried about monetisation anymore..
Now that I can handle most of the development myself, I can simply focus on improving the game at my own pace. This is basically my passion project, and I want to keep expanding and polishing it for as long as I enjoy working on it.
Maybe I’ll release an early access version someday, maybe a first chapter, maybe something smaller first, I’m keeping things flexible, I don't want to publish anything yet because I have heard horror stories about scammers publishing someone else's work during the testing phase...
The important part is that I want to keep building the world and improving the game instead of rushing it as long as it makes me happy... I really don't care about earning money out of this...
9) What are your short-term goals?
Animation.
I genuinely love animation, even though it’s an extremely tedious process. The monkey character shown in the video was animated entirely by me, and I already think I can do much better with the next characters.
I intentionally started with the simplest character first.
The immediate goal is to have enough animated characters to create proper small battles. After that, I want to continue developing the exploration mode , towns,, NPC interactions, dialogues, etc.
10) Have you done more than what’s shown in the video?
Yes.
There are already more characters implemented, a pretty robust dialogue system that I’m honestly very proud of, and the foundations of the exploration mode are already working as well.
There’s still a lot to do, but the core systems are slowly coming together.
ok, that's it for now.. I hope you like the update as much as I like developing this game, cheers :)
PS: the video was compressed... and it lost a lot of quality and fps, sorry about that