Hey everybody.
How has this new year begun? Let me guess... exactly like the last one had ended?
I still find it surprising, and a bit scary, how conditioned we are when it comes to this kind of celebrations. Everyone knows a day it's just a day, no matter if it's a birthday or the New Year's Eve. We're not suddenly one year older when our birthday arrives, and there's no sudden change when the new year does, as well.
And still, it's inevitable to have some expectations, cause we've been educated that way or maybe cause we feel the need to hope in a better future.
What's the future of Forge, anyway? First of all, the download rate has been quite good, but not as much as I expected. We reached 400 downloads in the first 4 days, at an almost steady pace, but after that it started getting slower and slower, and we reached
1.000 downloads only recently. I will never stress this point enough: numbers don't matter that much per se; but the more people try Chapter One, the more likely it is that some of them will contribute to the game's development.
So please help out with that! Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell your pets about Forge!
It's worth repeating that we're still looking for someone to take care of Public Relations, contact Press, forums, blogs, write short articles maybe. Even create (and manage) future social networks' pages.Anyway, some help offers arrived indeed. Someone offered his services as a translator; someone as a programmer; one guy offered to do some basic graphics tasks. And there's been a few donations, too.
Good news is our main composer
Jamison Alderson confirmed his intention to cooperate with us on the rest of the game, with an enthusiasm that pleased me a lot. On a side note, if you have liked his music on Chapter One and you have a job for him, his schedule is open enough at the moment. You can contact him through his website
ubertubamusic.com.
But please let him save some time to work on Forge, also!
Another confirmation has come from one of the concept artists,
Estme. She only worked on
characters' concept art for the following chapters, so far, but there's still a lot to be done.
And now, to the main good news: in the Summer update, I introduced you to a new background artist, the one responsible for the Mine-cart tunnel background and the portraits. He still has a tight schedule, but he also confirmed his will to help us out, and it's eager to begin. I might be partial, but I truly believe he's done a great job so far. Except from what you can see with your own eyes,
Master Pixelmold (this is his Forge nick) is also a very nice guy, which goes far beyond the simple artist. He provided constructive criticism, suggestions, inputs of all sorts.
I truly believe
the game can be completed with its help.
But it's going to take a lot, unless the main artist is supported by one or two cooperators. Someone working on smaller sprites, maybe characters and an animator would be ideal to progress more quickly.
Let's hope the one I'll be "testing" in the next few days proves to be fit for such a role.
Don't be shy, weavers! Isn't there really any of you who could provide some help in the graphics compartment as well? Don't you know anyone who'd like to join the family? If you do, you know what "to do".
As per the plan for the current month, it's still the same as I announced in the last update: do some more promotion, re-organize stuff and resources, do auditions, fix some Forum issues, and begin working on the translations.
That's all, folks!
-Gabriele
