November Dev Stream

We are now a month after the 26th-Anniversary event, and I think that this is a good time to once again share with you the progress on the project.

 15 November 2020, 5 PM CET at https://www.twitch.tv/coffemonsters 

This is like always, a stressful moment for me because I always feel that there is not a lot to show. This time it is even worse as I needed some recovery time after the last stream. But hey it will be what it will be. I have some new content, some improvement and I think we are another step closer to the final game. So join me on this trip thru my work. 

If you can not be part of this. Don't worry as I plan to make some short summary video for YouTube2.

Cheers,
Greg

Celebration video for 26th Anniversary of LBA 1

Finally, after 3 months of waiting time, I'm able to show you what I worked on: 

There is also a recording of full twitch stream from the event: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/768402424 

Preparation for the whole thing was pretty intense so I will now slow down a little bit and recharge batteries. But don't worry work on the project still continues and like always I will try to make the next video even better than this one :] I don't know about you but I'm hyped by the way this project evolve and perspectives of the future :D 

Well, see you next time, this time with a standard monthly development update.

Cheers

Greg

26th Anniversary Event - One week left

One week left :D



I want to believe that you are as excited as I'm.

Greg

The 26th-Anniversary - 2 weeks countdown

So we are already two weeks before the anniversary stream. And this was an intense week. 

My event T-Shirt arrived (If you like it you can get your own):

Not long ago there was released french interview from Didier Chanfray (English version) who is one of developers behind original game and owner of the right. What is cool about this is that I got recognition and was mentioned there by a name:

[GF] Pour terminer cette première partie de l’interview sur le premier Little Big Adventure… Ce jeu capte à lui seul une grande communauté de fans, et on peut s’émerveiller de voir certains d’entre eux écrire des nouvelles scénaristiques (comme le passé des Dino-Fly), des tentatives de remakes avec les moteurs actuels, d’effectuer des speedruns du jeu… En tant que co-créateur de ce jeu, qu’est-ce que cela te fait de voir que ce jeu, créé il y a 26 ans, génère encore autant de créations et de contenus ?

On ne comprend pas, avec Fred… C’était pas calculé, si tu veux. Au départ, nous avons essayé de mettre tout ce que nous avions en nous, mais après… Tu sais, le processus de création, je l’ai rencontré plein de fois dans ma carrière. Il y a eu de bons produits, de moins bons produits. De bonnes expériences, et d’autres, moins bonnes… Le processus créatif est rarement le même pour chaque projet. Il dépend des personnes, du contexte. Je ne suis pas superstitieux, mais je pense simplement que l’alignement des planètes a été bon. Et je remercie vraiment le Groupe Delphine, qui nous laissait libres et se chargeait du reste à côté. On était une petite équipe aussi, on était proche. Je ne sais pas ce que c’est de travailler dans une équipe de 150 personnes, je ne l’ai jamais fait. Mais quand je vois tous ces fans qui font des remakes, je trouve ça super, même dingue ! Il y a notamment un mec qui s’appelle Greg, qui est en train de faire un truc vraiment super… mais aussi plein d’autres que l’on ne remerciera jamais assez.

English translation: 

[GF] To end this first part of the interview on the first Little Big Adventure… This game, alone, captures a large community of fans, and we can be amazed to see some of them write new scripts (like the past of the Dino-Fly), attempts remakes with current engines, to perform speedruns of the game ... As a co-creator of this game, how do you feel when you see that this game, created 26 years ago, still generates as many creations and content?

We don't understand, with Fred ... It wasn't calculated, honestly. In the beginning, we tried to put everything we had in us, but after that ...
You know, about the process of creation : I've met it a lot of times in my career. There have been good products, and not so good products. Some good experiences, and some, not so good ... The creative process is rarely the same for every project. It depends on the people, on the context. I am not superstitious, but I just think the alignment of the planets has been good. And I really thank the Delphine Group, which left us free and took care of the rest on the side. We were a small team too, we were close. I don't know what it's like to work in a team of 150 people, I never had to. But when I see all these fans doing remakes, I think it's great, even crazy! There's a guy named Greg who's doing a really cool thing ... but also a lot of other guys who can't be thanked enough.

In the project we are right now in super intense development mode. Things changing from one day to another and slowly but steady whole thing start to taking the shape I want it to have. This of course not means that everything going as smoothly as I would like but well this is life. I will try to do as much as I can and we will see what will come with this 14 days left this is still a little bit of time.

Greg

The 26th-Anniversary - 3 weeks countdown

In all production, there is a time where the final countdown starts. We are of course not there, the project is still in preproduction. But in 3 weeks I will be revealing another portion of work that is done, and I promise there is a lot to show. 

That is why if the schedule will not change, Saturday 10th October 2020 at 3:00 PM UTC Time come and join me at the official Coffemonsters channel. This will be right before the 3 hours interview with Fred and Didier the original creators of Little Big Adventure. I also recommend checking out other streamers as there will be a lot of cool content for the celebration of the 26th-Anniversary of Little Big Adventure 1.

Update June-July 2020

Time flys by ... we have already July. This means, time for another update. But before we will move to it I noticed that I forgot to post a link to June update. Let's fix it now:

For this who are not so much into the topic, this update was part of LBA2 anniversary event. This is an event where fans of both games doing some LBA related streams across two days. If you missed it don't be worried you can still watch recordings at  Unofficial Official Little Big Adventure Channel.

There is also good news 10-11 October 2020 there will be another one. This time Little Big Adventure 1 anniversary event (schedule you can find at https://lbabirthdayevent.com/). I would of course not skip this occasion so at 18:00 UTC 10th October I will be streaming the "LBA1 remake Project update stream".

I normally would just do a standard update: Show what I worked on, show game footage, and talk about development. Well, as you may notice I don't like to do stuff a normal way. This time it will not be different and I plan something special. 

Whenever I entering this "special" mode things never go easily. This kind of stuff requires an extra push and what comes with it: extra efforts, focus, mental and physical exhaustion. To limit a little bit burden of this all on me I decided to enter a silent mode. This means more or less no updates from me for the next three months where I will focus on the content for the anniversary stream. 

If this is the right way to do it? I don't know. What I know is that I want to turn this year's anniversary stream into something special. This reason is enough for me to do it.

In this place, I will end this post and return back to doing stuff. Till the next time.

Update March-April 2020

April almost ended which means it is a time for another update.  This one will be a little bit different than the previous ones. There will be no video, no stream, no screenshots, and a little bit of sad news. But let us start where we ended last time ... 

Prolog 

The game was working, I just finished adding sequences to the editor which brought some light in the tunnel. Character design was going forward and I even started talking about a new logo for a project.  Little did I know what grim fate will bring the next few weeks.

Covid-19 hit us pretty hard. Social distancing became a thing, less direct contact with people, no traveling, and working from home. This meant spending in the apartment 24/7 with a small escape for shopping. As a developer who is used to spending long hours in front of a computer, I was used to this but still a little bit annoyed. But well we have done that for a bigger cause.

Everything changed in the middle of March. That day, still half asleep I picked a phone from my sister and learned that my dad died unexpectedly. I was in a different country, with almost no way to return to my family. I found only one way back, which I took without any hesitation. The next day I was already on the way.

Skipping ahead a few weeks till now: I'm still with family and have only stuff that I took with me into this one luggage I packed. I don't have my normal work equipment and sometimes even head to work on the project. 

When we get older we start to think that we see our family too often but if you count how often you have seen them last year and multiply by some large number f.ex. 50. This is the amount of goodbye that you will say to them if you are lucky. In reality, each of them can be the last one.

This is something that I heard from somebody else and now I will leave her for you. 

State of the project

I didn't give up on the project but there were days when it was really hard to do anything to it. When I canceled the last stream I thought that I would be able to do April one by time flown by so fast that I just now realized that update is this weekend. I know that all of you waiting for news about the project that brings some hope that Little Big Adventure Universe will be back.

That is why I decided that you still deserved some explanation and an update about the remake.

I will split this post into 3 parts: Animations, Story and Technology

Animations

In previous update streams, I was showing a game without an animated character. This was purposely done to polish character movement. At the same time now when most of it is done it felt wrong to not bring it back. 

You know me probably enough that you know there should be a twist here and of course, there is. I upgraded the animation system, found some bugs there which resulted in subtle but noticeable (when you know what to search for) artifacts.

I didn't stop there and also redo all animations that I have so far. Thanks to a new experience in animations and a few pieces of advice from a friend I was able to pull new quality. I still think that until the end of the project I will be able to do better but for now, they are good enough.  

Story   

The story for a game was prepared a long time ago but a story in a game is still work in progress. Till now I focused a lot on the tech. This was to allows me to build levels, some gameplay elements, and show to the world that LBA remake is something worth waiting for.

Now, I stand in front of a big challenge: Create a game that will move people. 

This is not an easy task that is why I think a lot about each decision that I make regards level design. I want the whole thing to feel like LBA but at the same time feel modern and just fun. So I play a lot into levels that I have so far, thinking about what I can do better and experimenting with different ideas.

In the background I adding a story to the whole thing in the form of moving between levels and adding placeholders for quests. Sadly while I doing this I encounter bugs and issues in technology. 

Technology

Here we got to the last, standard point of my updates: technology. You know that I like to work on it and truth is that this did not change. What changed is what I do inside it. This is mostly bug fixing, workflows improvements, better error reporting, player controller, and general gameplay improvements.

For a while, there are no more cool features that I would like to improve but mostly a lot of small stuff that needs to work together so I could make a cool game. We will see how long I will be able last in this state ... a particle system would be a nice add-on to the whole engine.  

What next 

I continue my quest for developing remake while you still wait for it. From good news, I just reenabled comments under Little Big Adventure Remake: 2 Years Later Video.  I marked it as for kid and just noticed that because of that YouTube blocked comments. Another good news is that this is the last canceled video update. 

I will be back on 30 May with a new update for 23 year anniversary of LBA2:

Description of the organizer:

"We're organising an LBA2 birthday event for 30th/31st of May. We did this for LBA1 in October last year and it went really well. The basic idea is multiple people streaming LBA one after the other. The current schedule is here: http://lbabirthdayevent.com/ (There's currently an issue accessing it with https). If anybody would like to stream as part of the event there's a dedicated discord: https://discord.gg/F3PMM4G - this is different from the regular LBA discord.

Last time we managed over 24 hours of LBA streaming featuring various things like some races. Some LBA related art work etc. This time we're aiming for 36 hours. So hopefully it'll go well "

I will be streaming a new update at 18:00 UTC this time with some gameplay.

Epilog

That is all regards the project update for this time but from interesting LBA news, Polish YouTuber arth.eu published video: Little Big Adventure 1 + 2 -- Magiczne przygody Twinsena. Underneath there were comments:

BlessedKris:Weźcie wyplusujcie typa, bo to jedyny koleś na świecie, który w pojedynkę robi remake LBA2 i na dodatek to Polak!!!

jfs3:Szkoda tylko , ze troche nie w klimacie LBA robi.

(My English translation)

BlessedKris:Take and plus this guy, he is only guy in the world who alone make remake of LBA2 and on top of that he is Polish!!!

jfs3:It is a pity that he does not doing it in climate of LBA.

What is your look at jfs3 opinion? Do you agree, disagree with it?

And that's all for today. 

To the next time.

Greg

Project update - March 2020 - cancaled

This month supposed to be a bigger milestone for the project. I started to work on a lot of really cool stuff but sadly life does not care about our plans and like to f ... them up.

I slowly recovering from all of that but the intermeddle result is that I need to cancel the project update this month. I know this may sound weird after all my claims that I plan to do it every month but I will explain everything in more detail next time.

For this month, I would like to encourage you to watch a video from Katja Savia that decided to do an interview with me to discuss my motivation behind working on one project for all these years.

Greg

Project update - February 2020

This month was relatively tough on the development of remake. Everything started with this day in a year when you increasing age stats by 1. In my case, this resulted in a really good party with friends. After that came a few busy days, a few lazy weekends, working on the sculptures and a visit from a friend. The only thing I regret would be this one week when I got sick :/ but hey flu from time to time is normal.

So as you can see this was a pretty fun month (at least for me) but a lot of the days were cut from production. If you are curious about what I managed to do with what little time I had you are welcome to join me on this months stream 29 February 2020 at https://www.twitch.tv/coffemonsters:

See you there.

Project update - January 2020

I know that I recently don't write too many posts on the website but this is mostly because I spend a lot of time designing and developing new stuff for the project. I promise that I will write more when I will finally dig out myself from all this work.

I probably could write posts about this right now but I don't want to. There are 2 reasons:

1.  I already split my time between too many things.
2.  I don't like to talk about stuff without anything to support that it works.

So, for now, stick with me and I will try not to disappoint:] Till then I try to do a monthly updates on twitch to show what I working on. One of them will happen next week: 

Come by if you are interested or even if you just want to say hi.

Greg