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The game is coming soon..

Hello Ascenderians!

We would like to announce that the game is in the process of release. More information regarding the game will be published next month.

Here’s the preview for the main menu of the game 🙂

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Can’t wait to share our information regarding the game next month XD

DEVLOG #41 – Trailer Designer!

Long time no see… Hi Ascenderians, Citrine here.­­­­­

As a Sound Designer, I’ll tell you that the sound designing progress on Ascender is almost done. I just have to make some sound effect for ending scene & retouch background music for ending to the credit title. But, over the development process, sometimes the programmer still give me some input related the audio. Because he is the one who plays Ascender every day on his Unity project, so I think he would understand if there something are less cool both in terms of art or audio.

Here some of my todo list :

  • Ending scene
  • Camera moving up
  • Glow SFX
  • Ocean walking, jump & land
  • Ocean transform
  • Charging SFX
  • Audio ending transition

So,  while completing some audio work, Rubi The Producer told me to make a trailer for Ascender. From sound designer to be trailer maker, hmm, Trailer Designer! lol. Well, to be honest, I was not too great in terms of making a trailer but I’ll try my best. 😀

This time, I’ll make a different trailer from the previous one that I made for Steam Greenlight trailer. The previous trailer is telling more about the arrival of Ocean to the GOA civilization. While the new trailer, I would emphasize to the friendship between Ocean and Sky,  so we can understand the motivation of why Sky want to fight for Ocean. Here is my draft for ‘brand new’ trailer.

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Less obvious? lol, it’s just little sneak peak for Ascender’s Trailer. I’m still working on it probably until next week or the end of June. Asap.

Sorry gtg I have to finish this ‘hopefully awesome’ trailer.

Citrine out. 😀

 

nb: Thanks to Moldovite has given me the idea for this trailer & help me make a draft.

DEVLOG #37 – Not so Irritating Implementation of Everything…

Hello there!! This is Kunzite, and this is the second time we’ve met here.
So as I said before, as the junior programmer, I’m in charge to add small feature and implement the game assets into the game engine. As this game development approaching it’s ending, – like the lead programmer’s blog’s title: “Irritating implementation of …” – it’s start to irritates me as well (not as irritated as the main guy). Why? Because the work start to pile up as other staff start to unload their stuff together simultaneously and other tiny little adjustments to the game that can be easily missed yet very important that need to be implemented (and yeah, i sometimes forgot some requirements they gave to me while i was implementing other requirements, sorry guys :3).

So my life near the ending of development is full of requirements that come from others like the sound designer with his extra sound effects and audio filter modifications, the artists with adjusting the color level and a lot of new images that sometimes not fit in the stage design so I have to send it back to them or repair some of the images myself to save time, if it not takes much time for me to do it (and don’t forget about checking the images’ size to prevent the game size become too large). Then come the level designer with the puzzle modifications, and the story writer with the dialog altering.

Not just that, most of them is not easy to satisfied, so they adjust a lot. But let’s fight for it! For the greater good! 😀
Now let me pleased your eyes with some good stuff (not just me babbling about life). If you read the early blog from Ruby, it’s mentioned that there is a district in GOA called RAJUMLA (Energy Area). Our art director imagine the district as a very hot area then he came with idea of a cave with flowing lava inside. So to make it flow smoothly, the job’s given to the programmers. The lead programmer code it for a while and he gave it to me to develop it and implement it to the stage. To make the lava is simple, but to generate it to whole area need patient and precicion.
So, feast your eyes !!

lava

All you need is “lava” 😀

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for checking in and stay tuned for more.

DEVLOG #35 – SO HERE I AM….

Hi hi hi hi it’s the music composer again. Sorry you haven’t seen the last of me yet, but don’t worry. I’ll keep this one brief.

 

Life’s been going in the right direction recently. The game is almost finished by now (well from music perspective anyway lol). I’ve been working on the final song for this game, which is the closing/ending/credit song. This one is easy, since it’s basically just the theme song with lyrics on top. Yeah that’s right, this game has a theme song and you all probably miss it (hint: main menu screen). I’ve already finished the overall structure and the arrangement for the song so now I can sing this song with my trusty guitar. I’ve also sung it to the crew and they loved it. Funny thing is, no one in the crew even knows that we’ve already had the orchestral-instrumental version of the song in the game, and I’ll bet no one who has played it knows it too. And that is one of my favorite songs in the game. Oh well.

 

So anyway, I’ve already had this plan to make JUST one song, a relatively-easy listening song, with lyrics, and just an instrument or maybe two -I don’t know-, for the closing sequence. It’s gonna have the same melody as the theme song (maybe at this point I’ll refer to it as the main menu song since no one has listened to it anyway). You know, the “wrapping-up things” kinda stuff.

 

I also had some pictures on how the lyrics would be, but then the lead artist volunteered himself to write it, and I happily accepted the offer. I told him to make a poem. It didn’t need to rhyme, have a structure, or anything fancy since I’d revise it again anyway. So he sat in his chair for like 30 minutes, and came back with this draft:

 

There is a place
far above the land that we know
far above everything that we ever dreamed
a promising land with magical tales
and there you will be

here I am
incomplete below the land of mist
lost and forgotten in cave of our dream
stranger in an epic community
holding on the promise we’ve whisper
and my journey begins

I Ascend
Through the heart of the universe
Flowing with the wind and light
Catching an electric wave
To push me far away up

I Ascend
Break through every layer of height
Thrusting our heart
Searching our destiny
for us to meet again

So here I am
Ocean In the land of beginning
Hold me, complete me
rejoin with me
Sky of Atlas

 

Which was cool, but I needed to change it a lot so it matched the structure of the song. I also needed to add, remove, and/or replace some words for either rhyming or artistic purpose. Add some instruments, and it’s almost ready.

 

The hardest part is to find a singer. I’ve talked to one of the artist (whose this code-name thingy I don’t even know) to sing. Her voice has the character I had in mind, but she needs to work a little bit on her ability to keep the pitch. She’s not a bad singer per se, but yeah it could do some tweaking. I really want her voice to be in this song to be honest.

 

Everything is almost finished for music. The lyrics for this song are done but they’re not final yet, so the draft is still a secret 😉 I hope you’ll enjoy it when the game is finally released. Until then, see you next time ❤

We did it !!! We are IN.GAME’s Best Game Narrative 2016

 

On 24th April 2016, we were attending one of the biggest Indie Game Festival in Indonesia called IN.GAME. This the second time the event is held in the mystical city of jogjakarta. Only two member of Ascender are going and this is the first time we are going to an event using train.

The Trophy
Receiving the award
With other winner

We would like to thank you for all of your support, Ascender have just received Best Game Narrative Award from IN.GAME Award 2016. At this great event, we were also nominated on other category which are Most Innovative and Best Audio.

To get to know more about the story or behind the scene by the conceptor and writer of Ascender you can check out below post here.

We would also like to thank anyone who’s coming to the booth and try out Ascender‪.

That is all the latest update from Ascender…

A beautiful good bye from Amethyst 🙂

DEVLOG #34 – CREATING THE WORLD: HELION EDITION

Hello Ascenderians, it’s me again, Jade, the artist of this GameChanger Team.

In this post I want to show you guys how to visualize a server city with a super cold sub-zero atmosphere and also a bunch of cables and metals.

 

You must be wondering what the heck it is lol then here it goes!

 

Remember about the Goa Civilization? No? Let me remind you again then. Goa is an underground civilization created by ancient people for living. Then several years ago, Professor Toro came into Goa and built a bunch of technology needed by citizens to live there completely, like artificial sun light, rain, the cooling and heating system, weather system, and so on.

Helion is one of the big cities inside Goa that has a role for cooling the server machines and cables that distributes the energy to the entire city in Goa. It’s actually a smart city tho. Amber, the art director thought that Helion must be a really cold city because a lot of gigantic machines are built there, so he came up with a sketch like this

Peridot had already blocked the stage so what I did was fill them with magic 😀 😀

Firstly I chose the undertone color for the stage. Because this area is really cold and full of metal materials, I decided to use grey-ish dark blue color for the base with multiply mode on the layer option.

Then I used my magic to the crystals first (they are easier to color, that’s why :p) then….I sadly continued to the metals, AND THIS IS SERIOUSLY THE MOST IRRITATING PART T_T

See? All of them is grey. It makes me feel dull because there are not much color and also…looks so bland L I can’t even entirely describe my boredom when doing this at the time. I also have to work more to the value, deciding which will gonna be the frontmost and the backmost, which will be the brightest and the darkest shade of grey (not referring to the 50 shades one lol). The middle shade contains a wide variety of grey shades, and whether the blue undertone will blend perfectly here, also to make the grey shade not entirely pure grey. Here I have to be carefully decide where to put the lighting tho, because….it’s confusing.

After I struggled coloring the grey part, the fun part rises! The third step will be coloring the details with icy texture, bluish white color and adding a pop of non-blue color to give some variation. I also add a little bit of blue lighting here and there.

And now it’s done! 😀

What do you think about Helion? Feeling cold already? ;D

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Until we meet again!

 

Jade