Профиль

The timeline of Automata lines up in a kinda cool way. In that world, Frankenstein could be a non-fiction book about the creation of the first automaton.

Nobody dropping that amount of money just says "yeah, cool." They want all kinds of milestones and assurances. I've had clients spend that much and they hassle my teams over every dime.

Like... did they request 25 codes from hundreds of games and just turn around and re-sell them, and then vanish into the night? What happened, there?

Polycules are in right now

This feels like classic era PA. Love it.

The goal should always be clarity. Always assume nobody can see your vision.

It is appropriate to use clipped art at any stage, when explaining something.

Just Google, you'll be able to find it there. Decide ahead of time if you want some NYC artisinal version or the simpler junk food version. Very different experiences.

Any diner in the south, and plenty in the north, too. But in the south the maple butter will maybe have some hot sauce, too

My books on FFVI, VII and Diablo 2 are a little more systems-focused, while the CT book is almost exclusively about narrative design. Yes, they are expensive; the publisher is targeting the college textbook market. But they are on sale right now.

You can also sketch things if you have any ability at that. I tend to sketch *over* sample art to show changes in the silhouette, because I'm bad at drawing.

Yes, that is precisely what you should do. Sometimes you can clip several examples and circle the parts that you want to combine. This guy's head and face, but in these other clothes, and his staff should look like this third picture.

A lot of the key location art you started, we didn't finish--or we were extending it in small ways--for the next two years.

Oh, yeah, we definitely changed things as we went. But we were always within the 80%-20% guideline. And I don't think you necessarily have to *finish* every asset before production begins. You just need to get started. Especially with locations. Early on, I had many scenes with 4-8 Junas in them.

We had 80% of assets on our list for Quartet before we started chapter 1. It helped that we had a full game outline. And it's definitely difficult to do that, but if you're making a commercial JRPG, you should hire someone who can make that happen for you. (The document is not for hobbyists.)

I completely agree with you that most people are not going to understand just how ESSENTIAL that suggestion is. But I'm not sure that I can convince them. I've basically never been able to convince a client to do a full script and asset list ahead of production.

I think my only advice on engines would be "Don't use Unreal 5 unless you're going full 3D." Other than that, Unity, Godot, RPGMaker, GameMaker, I've seen them all work just fine. For bottlenecks, I did say to get the asset list finished before production, and start the artists.

It was mostly luck, TBH

I once beat it on easy, AMA.