Just another update.

I initially planned to write something new for the blog, but the FB post came out so well that I think we will go with it:

This was a long time of silence :( As you know I'm always struggling with finding topics that I think are interesting. The last six months were interesting ones. They were full of surprises, tough decisions, and some easy ones but in the last 19 years, the project is still pretty much a constant in my life. I'm also one of the lucky ones whose family supports me in what I do even if sometimes I do not understand my motivation behind this project. I'm also happy that I do not need to work on this project alone and some people still follow it even if sometimes I'm lazy with posting new stuff.

The project like always moving forward but at the same time not moving as fast as I would want it to move. Still, there is some stuff that we managed to do. Created SDF text built into the engine that will give us nicer UI, decal support, text in the scene support, improvement for lighting in the level, and improvements in the animation system (this one came with some funny screenshots, guess which ones :D), tools improvements, and a lot more things that I not necessarily remember.

 

There is sadly one common theme in all of this work. There is some "deposit" that we need to put before we would be able to work on some new stuff. Currently, we are trying to use some resources from other people NatureManufacture, and Rokoko to make them usable in our technology. To achieve this we need to make importers, add shaders, and make some changes and fixes in our pipeline. This will save us time later but for now, pay the price in time and changes in technology (which is not necessarily bad).

So we put the visual part of the work on the game for now on hold and focused on the way Twinsen will behave in the game and the tooling that will allow us to make it the best we can. We also still following our quest to bring the new Twinsen model to the game in all its glory.

As you can see there is a lot of stuff happening and even more will be coming soon. We just need some more time.

Doubts

We always forget how time flies by. Here we are in the second month of 2025 and there is no update regards Tribute. For this worrying that we gave up, we can guarantee that we did not. There is still a lot of progress in the project even if doubts are sneaking into our minds.

We mostly dig through code and try to make something usable from what we have but it is not easy. Balancing life and work on this personal project is challenging at times. This is not only because of lack of time but also because of motivation.

These days more and more we catch ourselves being lost in what we do, and that is why we started writing down the final version of the story with dialog and all the events. This is to gain more focus on what we do. The whole thing starts with:

Every story has a beginning and the good ones hardly ever start in the prison. That is why ours starts at home with the warm sound of cracking wood in the fireplace. In the background, a TV set plays on some news channel reporting on a lively speech given by the Fun Frock. He speaks about people who call themselves "the rebels" and are a threat to the peace on the planet. (...)

 L.B.A. : Tribute - story

While writing down the stuff we try to catch thoughts that sneak around our heads. This is not always easy as they sometimes hard well. There are days when things look like TV series about making games and there are these other days when nothing goes right. 

Still, we preserve and try to do what we can. We switch to different tasks, trying to approach things from different angles but this is not always helpful. We are just humans and humans are flawed. This is also what is so impressive about us. We are flawed but at the same time, we can reforge these flaws into our strengths and create impressive creations.

We want to believe that this will be the case with Tribute. What we learn by resolving our current problems will become the foundation that will make the final product better. In this place, we want to congratulate the team of the official remake of L.B.A. for succeeding in shipping the game. This is not an easy task.

And this is all for now, We are getting back to working on the project as the game will not make itself.