Godus: Kickstarter updates

Update 42 - 28/03/2013



Rejoice!

This week Peter and Jack are in a better mood following last week's inability to play Godus. Now that the game is up and running in the new engine, the designers have been able to start implementing different experiments with the GUI (Graphical User Interface). This concerns all of the buttons and other information on screen to help the player interact with the world.



Peter leads an exploration of the art department to catch up with Dictator of Art, Paul McLaughlin, on the challenges of making a beautiful, intuitive, and clean GUI theme for a god game. We also catch a couple of glimpses of the game in action as well as a brief look at the VFX. Put your feet up and enjoy another visit to the 22cans studio with video update #13

Update 44 - 12/04/2013



Sitting down with James Leach

One of our stretch goals back in December last year, was bringing the fabulous writer James Leach on board to help write the story of Godus. In this week's video update, Peter and Jack meet up with him. Obviously they'd like to stay clear of spoilers and so the discussion is more about the bigger picture and they talk about stories in games and films in general, picking their favourites. Jack cops out on every question...

Finally, the guys discuss the perils of the infamous writer's block and how to solve it, with an impromptu solution to the problem; a little booklet.

Update 46 - 24/04/2013



Navigation, Scrum and Sprints

Hello backers,

On Monday the team sat down to go through their plans and workload for Sprint 7. We are now streaming live from the studio, which may be mildly and ironically NSFW but you can find us here (password is godusbackers). People who were logged into the stream were treated to some additional insights into the meeting on Monday and for those who missed the stream (from Monday 22nd April) we have a transcript below, which you can also find on the forums here should you want to discuss any of these topics further.

The alpha should be released during or soon after after Sprint 8 (mid-May timeframe) - if all goes according to plan. A sprint generally is a two week cycle, during which a daily scrum is done in the morning by members of the team to talk through their individual work items for that day and week (read more about scrum development here). If everything goes to plan this style of reporting will continue for every sprint meeting in the future, which will be an extra update every two weeks.

Sprint 7 Meeting Paraphrased Transcript;

First part is with the programmers
Peter opens meeting;
Compliments coders on job well done.
Minor swearing (reason unknown)
Notification that Sprint 7 is to add playability and polish, for the Alpha.

Topic turns to sculpting;
Minecraft is mentioned, laughing what they ended up doing in that game. (Minecraft is one of Peter's favorites)
Audio is very important to sculpting, so much that people will almost do it with their eyes closed.

Topic turns to GUI / UI;
What needs to be done for the Alpha release of Godus?
Taking the art and designs that have been done so far, and implementing that into the game.

Balancing is discussed as it is.

Audio is very important for the Alpha

Beautification of a god power is mentioned as equally important.

Topic turns to the sea level in the current version,
Some stuff that is currently secret is discussed,
Topic turns to implementation of 'scorched land.'

There is some talk about going back to the design table for abodes.
Mud Hut is mentioned



While not technically a mud hut (this is a tent) we presume this what they were referring to.

Some more secret stuff.

And finally, point#22 is about a visual distinction between followers and town life followers.



These are the explorer followers which have to look very different from normal followers.

From here the meeting goes off deeper into the individual items, not repeated because 'too much boring technical detail' is involved.

The talk moves on to Dimiti's navigation.
What is important is that players understand what the villagers are doing and the why of that navigation
(rocks are used as an example)

And with that, this part of the sprint meeting is done...
The programmers are now excused to leave the meeting, knowing what they need to do this coming sprint, sprint #7.

Next group will be the artists

Peter does the main bit of talking in this kind of meeting;
"We're here to talk about the next sprint", says Peter.
He tells them everyone did fantastically well.
A lot of it is a repeat of what the programmers got told, so it is not repeated for us.

The same list of 22 items as was discussed with the programmers is went through.

Sculpting needs particle effects for Alpha.

The coders loved all the GUI concepts the new GUI artists did, and so they are going to be put into the game this sprint.
Very important for the Alpha
Still a lot of work on the in-game GUI.

This sprint is going to be a focus on audio, including the GUI audio and also start working on 'wrapper screens'.
(Start up screens, ect...)

Another item is mentioned, though this is held secret.
To keep it a surprise for when [you] play the alpha.

Animation of the little followers will need to be implemented by Pavle.

A helicopter is mentioned, but is likely not relevant to Godus.

The sea needs a surface. (again an effect) which might be pushed out.



While technically not a sea (this is a river) it does show the visual quality of the water that the team aims to achieve. It looks rather good doesn’t it?

Mud Hut is mentioned again.

Balance files are briefly mentioned.
With no further detail or discussion

Peter says; "And if you haven't got enough work, I'd like to throw in an extra for you artists..."
(Undisclosed what)

Finally Peter reminds everyone about the gauntlet he put down in regards to the framerate of the game.

The conversation between Peter and the artists is great, very detailed. Even though it doesn't seem like it, their questions do affect gameplay.

Belief is mentioned, and if you can see it as a prayer.
Someone asks "What does belief look like?"
Someone mentions purple.

People in the meeting cross reference the original Black&White and the popping activation sound of the 'miracle seeds'.
Thinking now turns in a different direction.

The meeting returns to rocks and trees.
Peter uses lego to illustrate what he's saying

And with that the meeting is over!
The artists are excused and can now leave the meeting room as well.

But they stay.

Finally, the design team (consisting of Peter and Jack) have a new member on their team: Jamie! For this week’s video update, Peter and Jack introduce their newest member of the team, we have a mano-to-mano stand off between Dimitri and Pavle on coding group behaviour and take a brief look at the latest iteration of the GUI.



22cans

Update 48 - 08/05/2013



Watch us play Godus live NOW

Hello everyone,

This is a little late notice (we weren't sure if we'd be able to make the stream happen) but tonight we have a few (quite random) strangers visiting 22cans and playing the first play test of Godus. If you want to see the 'action' then please make your way to Twitch (password: godusbackers) and join us on the chat.

Kindest,
22cans

Update 50 - 18/05/2013



Video update with Peter, Jack and Jamie #19

Hello backers,

This is our 50th update, in just under six months since we had a successful Kickstarter campaign. As always we want to repeat our heartfelt thanks to all our backers.

Our designers Peter, Jack and Jamie have been busy playing Godus and so this week's video update is a little mash-up of clips we recorded over the last week. Peter has been staying up late playing GODUS, trying to get enough belief for the Beautify god power.



We'd also like to remind all of you to complete the survey you received on Kickstarter here (especially if you want to get the Alpha etc...) plus register on our forums on www.22cans.com/forum. If you have but haven't been activated yet then please leave a comment with your username. It will be really useful for everyone to be on the forums as it will be a way to give feedback on the Alpha and later the Beta too.

We'll be back early next week with another update!

22cans

Update 52 - 25/05/2013



Godus Update Weekly update with Peter and Jack

Peter and Jack run us all through what's been going on this week, talk about the topics that have been going on within the community regarding Godus and obviously talk at length about the alpha which is almost upon us! You'll see in the video that everyone is super excited about the Godus alpha and Jack isn't really bothered about the next Xbox...



Have a good weekend everyone!

Update 54 - 07/06/2013



Godus update with Peter and Jack #22

Hello backers,

In today's video update for our backers, Peter and Jack talk about what's been concerning our community and specifically the Godus Alpha players on our forums. They also catch up with the developers on what's next for the game and the upcoming Godus Alpha Update. Finally they also bring up a question for our existing Alpha players, we've started a poll on the forums to seek your input.



As always you can find the video on our YouTube channel (don't forget to subscribe) on this page.

Have a good weekend everyone, next week we will be back with a video update from E3 with our God of Gods backers!

-22cans

Update 56 - 22/06/2013



Player Motivation in Godus

Hello everyone,

With E3 finished we're back to a full team at 22cans! Peter and Jack expose the new game concepts that will drive motivation for players... Jack feels the musical vibes, Peter refuses to Jam. Several new game features are discussed in this week's update, which we will start seeing in future updates to the Alpha and Beta versions but we wanted to get the word out as no doubt this will spark debate and ideas within our community!



In other news, remember that our Kickstarter survey will be closing this Monday! Pretty much everyone has now filled out their survey but there's a handful of people still missing. Everything is in motion to start sending out physical rewards such as teeshirts and posters and everything else! It was only yesterday (Friday) that we took delivery of the tubes that will ship the poster add-ons, there's quite a lot of them as you can see in the following picture...we'll keep posting pictures as things happen!



We're catching up with your emails about forum access, so please have a little more patience. All emails about forum access should be dealt with by Monday (especially true for our Late Believers). If after Monday your account hasn't been activated then please drop us an email (but feel free to leave a comment on this update as well posting your username).

Take care everyone!

22cans

Update 58 - 07/07/2013



Godus Update with Peter and Jack #25

Dear Backers,

The sun is out in England (it's warm, really really warm) and so the smell of barbecue fills the air. Not only that, there's also quite a lot of pollen going around.

The team have been quite busy developing the discoveries and civilisation features that we discussed in recent weeks. The designers have been shacked up in our boardroom throwing all sorts of paper around getting to the core of some ideas which we hope to shed light on in the coming weeks.

Peter and Jack are a little under the weather this week with hay-fever (barbecue or pollen) although it may be something far worse. Only time will tell. That doesn't get in the way of our passion for Godus however. God powers are coming together nicely and we show you a sneak peak in this weeks video below. You also get a glimpse of concepts for day and night in homeworld.

Peter, Jamie and Jack have been giving multiplayer a good bash but finding that it's not quite ready to show yet. Hopefully Fabs will have some fixes in soon so that we can bring you all up to speed there.

We've been getting some of the pledge reward stuff through as well, which is exciting. Amongst all of the tasks we have in line for release, Gary has finally had a chance to get his claws into dynamic water. Peter literally dreams of that dynamic water. It's wet.

Rather than going on we shall leave you with this video update. Our 22canner Becky seems to have a little bit of a fan base on some of our youtube comments section so we give her arms a rest from holding the camera this time to squeeze in a short interview at the end.



Peace and love,

22cans