Forest in the (Dragon) Valley

“Added a ton of new trees and foliage to DV based on feedback from the trailer. Looks like a proper forest now.”SDiDuro on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/SDiDuro/status/814705696138792960

 

// Commentary Corner: 

“[…] looks like a proper forest now.”

Okay, that’s actually pretty interesting. Freedom Planet 1’s Dragon Valley did have some greenery in the later parts of the level, but the heavy increase in greenery suggests that something’s been going on in-world to heavily encourage the plant growth during the two years since the first game. I wouldn’t blame anyone for mistaking it for Jade Creek, which also had a lot of greenery and water (and a lot more bamboo and falling rocks). Incidentally, it also reminds me of how Borderlands 1 prominently started with orange tones, and how it’s very common in games like Shovel Knight, Sonic the Hedgehog, Shantae, Banjo-Kazooie, and Kirby to start with a green grassy level.

Welcome to Avalice, Dragon Forest!

Freedom Planet 2 All Voice Acting Complete!

(Note: ‘Gifs’ were omitted as they are in a video format on Twitter, and those don’t crossover to this blog very well.)

“Today marks Freedom Planet 2’s final recording session. It’s been an adventure these past three months. We can’t wait to share it with you!”

DawnMBennettVA

 

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Thats the face of a girl who just finished recording # ! TY for the BBQ @  & @ 

– Ashlyn_Selich

“Just finished directing Freedom Planet 2! That’s it!! All actors have been recorded 😊❤️

KaggyFilms

 

“Creator/Executive Director: @  Voice Director: @  Actor: @  (Neera) Go follow ’em! ✨

– DawnMBennettVA

 

“Also, @  and @  were our fantastically magical engineers these past three months. Go tell them they’re awesome. Please.”
DawnMBennettVA

// Commentary Corner:

Woooooohooo! Congrats on completing all of the recording, you all! Very much looking forward to hearing them, in the game! 😀 Three months of recording sessions! Wild stuff!

 

Going roughly by Freedom Planet 1’s timeline, we have maybe two years to go until FP2 is complete then, but the plan is to have a playable prototype constructed by the end of this year, or sometime next year. However, there’s plenty of signs that the ball on FP2 has been silently rolling in the pipes for some time now and the release of the game might by closer to Christmas 2017. However, that’s the speculation. No way to know for sure, at this point. But production getting this far along is still a good milestone, and we don’t have to worry about any VA’s getting mysteriously replaced on short notice or anything of that nature. Cool stuff!

 

(On the other hand, this very likely means that any hopes of an audio drama / audiobook / radio play / etc is probably off the table until after FP2 is completed and released. Oh well, one can dream!)

Behind the scenes information on FP, information about Galaxy Trail’s cast, some information on FP2. Fun, fun! A good number of laughs and background on the cast members.

State of the DLC

risingslash:

Hello everyone! I’ve been quiet on here for a while so I thought I would swing by and let everyone know that I’m still breathing. My crew and I have been making some good progress on FP2 behind the curtain, and we’ve just started to fly our voice actors down to Texas to record the dialog. I haven’t been showing off much of the game because I really want it to feel like something near-complete when I record gameplay footage. What I can say though is that I genuinely feel like FP2 is leaps and bounds ahead of FP1 at this point in its development.

Of course I have something else I wanted to talk about instead – the DLC for Freedom Planet 1.

I plan on making a more public announcement about this soon when I have solid dates, but I’m postponing DLC work indefinitely while I work on ports to additional consoles. The good news? Freedom Planet is coming to a new console in the future. Which one it is shall remain a mystery for the time being.

The bad news? At this point, Freedom Planet’s engine is in a state where I worry about what adding extra content would do to the original experience. With that in mind, I have an idea I wanted to run by the Kickstarter backers who may be floating around here.

I am considering breaking off the DLC characters into their own standalone games that are more simplistic than Freedom Planet but better suited for their unique abilities and story perspective. There’s a couple reasons for this.

The first reason is that our initial contract with MP2 Games has been fulfilled, so if we want to update the game any further from this point, we’ll need create a new contract which involves paying out extra money. It makes sense of course; MP2 has moved on to other projects and they need to be fairly compensated for taking up extra time to come back and help us. It does of course bring an economic factor into all of this which complicates my ability to keep adding content to FP1.

The second reason is that I’m not happy with how Torque plays in the existing stages. He feels wonderful in his intro stage because it’s designed specifically for his abilities and weapons, but he feels unwieldy elsewhere. This is one of the reasons why I planned for him to have a lot more schmup segments than the other characters, but that doesn’t mask the less-than-ideal experience of his platforming stages. It’s less of a problem for Spade but he still has a few trouble spots, and I would also have to give him new bosses in many of the existing stages since it doesn’t make sense for him to have to fight some of them.

Putting the characters into new games would allow me to use a new engine so I wouldn’t have to rely on a third party for ports, and I can comfortably switch to text-based dialog so I don’t have to worry about the availability of the voice actors. I can also reuse art assets from FP1 to cut down on development time.

Again, this is just something that’s been on my mind and I don’t know if I’ll go through with it yet. It might be better to just keep working with Spade and Torque as FP1 DLC, but I figured I’d put my thoughts out there so that our backers know where things stand right now.

Cheers~

– Stephen

http://www.galaxytrail.com/forum/index.php/topic,1018.msg27889.html#msg27889

Addtional relevant links: 

Freedom Planet is coming to a new console (can’t confirm which one yet) but at the expense of the DLC. My thoughts:

https://twitter.com/SDiDuro/status/739933262273904640

In short, I am considering breaking off Torque and Spade into their own games instead of trying to make them work with FP1’s level design.

https://twitter.com/SDiDuro/status/739934657681055745

I have reservations about editing the layout of FP1’s stages to accommodate the DLC characters. A spinoff game would give more freedom.

https://twitter.com/SDiDuro/status/739935152009322496

Lunchtime Reblog.