A THUG'S ASCENSION Devblog

First of all, Happy New Year 2020! I wanted to update you guys with some important news regarding the development of A Thug's Ascension . Obviously it's going really well and we've come a real long way with the game, but it's slowed down since November 2019. It will stay like that until the end of January 2020, after it completely stops for February and March 2020. This is because of my and Diwangshu's grade 10 school board examinations, which are very important tests that require a lot of preparation. That is what has been slowing the development down. The good news is, after those examinations are over (March 19, 2020), I will have three whole months  of holidays (March 20 to June 20, 2020) to work on A Thug's Ascension , and I'm gonna dedicate all of those three months, minus some 10 to 15 days of holiday trips, to its development. Obviously development will continue after  those holidays are over as well, but three months of holidays from school is a

On the 31st of July, the first alpha build was readied. After some heavy QA testing by Diwangshu and Aditya, the alpha was distributed among some external playtesters we selected. So we sat down with our playtesters and discussed about their experience with the game! Here's what we talked about with two of them. LightVelox Aditya: Hello LightVelox! Today we're gonna be discussing your experience with the A Thug's Ascension - Alpha! Let's begin! LightVelox: Well, being able to move diagonally would be cool. It makes you move left if you go W+A and right if W+D. Aditya: Noted. Except that, is the movement alright? LightVelox: It has a small problem. When you stop moving (left, right or backwards), he moves a tiny bit more, like he's slipping. Aditya: Yeah, I know about that one. Anything else? Like does it feel frustrating to move or anything? LightVelox: Kinda, sometimes when you follow someone or run at something, you take a bit more time th

The alpha of A Thug's Ascension  has been released to our closed group of external playtesters! Here's the itch.io page and the official webpage . Here's the official Alpha Reveal Video . It reveals the early work-in-progress gameplay of the title, featuring open world exploration, combat, driving, quests, side quests, character progression and helicopters! We at Moonwalk are looking to exit alpha and enter beta phase within one year from now (now = July 31, 2019). Beta means no more placeholder graphics, more SFX, VFX, more details, more animations, better U.I. and fancy stuff we can't afford right now like reload SFX/animation and recoil! We have selected a playtesting squad for testing the alpha and reporting bugs and stuff: LightVelox mefsh TehGM Loading... williamristorp This playtesting squad is headed by our 3D artist, Diwangshu Kakoty, who's also the QA lead. Remember the guys above have no connection with Moonwalk Entertainment an

It has been 2 weeks since the A Thug's Ascension prototype release on March 28 this year. We managed to give away 17 out of our max 20 keys (which is good) and got some honest feedback from our playtesters. So there are 3 keys remaining right now... join our Discord server  to get one if you want to play the game too. We now analyze the feedback and decide whether to continue with A.T.A. or not. Here is a list of the most helpful given reviews. Feedback This is a list of some of the important feedback messages posted by our playtesters in the Moonwalk Entertainment Discord server. Oriki Ofcourse there were a lot of bugs and problems in the games, as it's a prototype after all. But was the game fun? Yes, to an extent. The reward at the end didn't feel like it had any meaning, maybe create those gang initiations as a result of bounties or something like that, either way, I felt the objective requires more meaning, and the fights between gangs and the general should b

The wait is over, people! The prototype of  A Thug's Ascension , our open world game, has been finally released! Now everyone who wants can play the game, and give us direct feedback! A Thug's Ascension has now been released as a closed prototype on itch.io under the itch.io refinery program. All those who have registered as external playtesters in our Discord server will receive a key using which they can get the game. You can join the Moonwalk Entertainment Discord server to register as a playtester before we run out of keys if you want to play the game. Playtesters will be able to give direct feedback to us, which we will compile after 2 weeks, after which we'll look into what is to be done with the project, that is, whether to continue with it or not. Remember that the prototype is an extremely early version of the game and we are years away from the final release (on Steam). For the prototype we have given foremost attention to gameplay, and art has been, to

This month, March 2019, is hopefully the month when we release the prototype of the game to a closed group (in our Discord server , join it to get a chance to playtest!). Anyways, Bandit Mangal Singh's outpost is more or less done. ADITYA CHANDRA   (Lead Developer) I did a lot of bug fixes. A lot  of bug fixes, and it was really boring to be honest; but now that I have that out of the way, I feel awesome. I feel like running a mile. I completed work on the mortar, first of all; and now it's fully functional. DK made an amazing low-poly model for it (it has not been incorporated yet), and I brought in some temporary SFX and VFX as well. It works beautifully, and I'm proud of it (watch the video at the bottom). After many people told me to do so, I decreased the bloom... a lot. The other aspects of Thanyok post-processing were revised too. The game looks good right now (not counting the placeholders). Those people were right. I also made the textures f

We have finally begun with world-building for the game! Also we have started introducing some extremely fun elements like mortars and snipers! Plus, new models! Hype! ADITYA CHANDRA  (Lead Developer ) Hey guys, before I start sharing my progress for the weeks, I have two announcements to make: (1) I moved into a new, much better house! (that's why no devblog post last-to-last week) (2) I participated in my first ever game jam (Brackeys Game Jam #2), and it was a fantastic experience ( that's why no devblog post last week)! I wasn't gonna do it, but after some friends managed to convince me (on the 4th day of the week-long jam) I stopped work on A.T.A.  for some time and put together an extremely simple jump-and-shoot platformer called Valentine's Nightmare . You can check it out here . So first I refactored the vision-calculation of the NPCs (again). This made it better, but I'm sure I'll have to go over it again as it still doesn't feel right re

We are almost done with basic NPC behaviour, and are getting as close as ever with the 3D models which are gonna be required for the prototype city. We have, eh, also reintroduced a thing or two. ADITYA CHANDRA   (Lead Developer) I was crying last week trying to somehow get around the longest and the most badass chain of bugs I had ever encountered, so there wasn't any devblog post last week; but my hardwork, tears and how I slammed my keyboard hard onto my head, bore fruit, and now I know for sure that I'm the only guy in the world who has made an open-world game with blocky blue/orange NPCs with cute animations who can enter, exit, sit in and drive a white dune buggy. So yeah, the NPC+car system is done, and apart from a few bugs which are needed to be fixed I don't want to work on it anymore for the next few weeks. The NPCs can now exit cars and enter as passengers. They will exit the car if the player exits the same car, or if they have reached thei

End of yet another wave of exams, and in return a lot of work on NPCs plus some big decisions that are gonna affect the game a lot in the long run. We made some models for city-building. ADITYA CHANDRA   (Lead Developer) I started out by dividing the equipment into categories... so now you can like no longer 'equip' a heal-item or 'use' an equipment, so now it takes it all into account. That marks the equipment system basically almost done. Then I got right to the NPCs. For now I made friendlies blue and enemies orange (the player is a different shade of blue). Textures coming soon. I incorporated almost all the animations! Firstly they have many 'states' like default, following, attacking, fleeing, driving, etc.. The default state is where they do what they've been specified to do in a different 'deafult state' enum: idle, patrol (around given waypoints) and wander (aimlessly). For patrol, you can specify the position of the way