Lust & Lead – Dev Log 04

Hello everyone! First off, sorry for delaying last week’s Dev Log. The previous couple of weeks were quite chaotic and filled with distractions outside of the game's development. As I was quite exhausted by the time I needed to write up the last post, I decided to give myself another week.
Thankfully, that also means I have a bit more to talk about now. There still isn’t a huge amount of finished character art to show, but that’s mostly because a lot of my attention this month has gone towards writing, casting and getting some of the game’s more foundational content into place.
Character Work
One thing I realized I needed was a male basemesh. Most of the characters in Lust & Lead are female, but there are still enough male characters that I realized having a rigged, reusable base would make things a lot quicker to set up. Nothing too exciting but it'll definitely help down the line.
I’ve also done some work on a new enemy. I actually started work on her a few weeks ago but due to the aforementioned distractions, I ended up shelving the model for a while. I wanted to get her finished this week and have her be the poster-girl for today's post but my focus ended up elsewhere.
Riding in Style
In the story, there is a third main character who drives Richard and Rebby between locations. I wrote those scenes without having much of a visual in mind, but eventually I had to decide what vehicle was used.
Vehicle modelling is completely outside of my comfort zone, but after digging through references I settled on a fancy, ill-fitting car for the wild (dead) west and spent a few days putting it together with a basic interior and working doors. Considering I very rarely model vehicles, I’m pretty happy with it.
For the paint I went with the same matcap approach I used in Sin Spire for certain materials. It’s a pretty old-school way of faking shiny surfaces but fits the game’s visual style considerably better than going with more conventional PBR materials.
The car is also one of the first fairly obvious hints, beyond Richard’s fifty-year stint as a corpse, that Lust & Lead doesn’t actually take place in the 1800s. I still don’t intend to outright state the year, but there will be little clues dotted around here and there.
Around the Saloon
I’ve also been mapping out the area immediately outside the Saloon. Bellemort itself won’t be an open town, but I want the small amount you can explore to tell you something about the place.
The Saloon is surrounded by boarded-up buildings and sits between two guarded gates. On one side, the town seems a bit more lively with chatter and the lights of vehicles and on the other things start looking a lot more desolate. Those guards also gave me an excuse to write more miscellaneous dialogue. 
Tutorial
The tutorial/intro is where most of my focus has gone when it comes to the gameplay side of things. As the tutorial is not part of the wave-based combat, it's designed a lot more like a linear game level rather than a small arena. In terms of the layout and general progression, I'd say the tutorial is pretty close to being done.
At the moment there aren't any tutorial popups or notifications, and a couple of gameplay systems used in the tutorial aren't finished either. That said, I’m trying to rely less on written tutorials and more on level design when teaching the player new mechanics. 
There will still likely be some tutorializing but ultimately, I want to avoid having loads of notes to read just to figure out what to do. Overall, though, I'd say the tutorial is in a fairly good state, it's just missing the cinematics that help weave certain parts of it together. On that note...
Script, Casting and Music
The main script is on what will hopefully be its penultimate draft. There have been some fairly substantial rewrites, particularly towards the ending. At this point, most of what remains is polishing dialogue and making sure individual scenes read well.
The casting call also closes on the 31st. I already have favorites for most of the roles, so once submissions are finished I’ll start making the final decisions and preparing recording scripts. That doesn’t necessarily mean the cast is forever locked in, though. I want Lust & Lead to be relatively easy to add content to, and part of that means leaving myself room to come up with new characters and ideas later rather than rigidly deciding that everything has to exist on day one.
I’ve also officially selected a composer for the game. We’ve been discussing the soundtrack and while there are still plenty of decisions to be made regarding exactly how music will be used, I’m very happy to have someone else properly collaborating on that side of the project.
What’s Next?
Once the cast is finalized and the script is ready, I want to get roughly the first twenty pages recorded. That covers most of what I need for the initial Alpha slice, after which I can start properly animating the relevant cutscenes and getting everything into the game.
I’m also fully aware that I’ve spent a lot of this month focusing on characters and story rather than enemies, weapons and gameplay. I think I got a little over-excited after I started the casting call and focused on trying to get as much written content done as possible in preparation for tomorrow.
So, once the casting side of things is settled, I’m going to shift my attention back towards gameplay and finishing the initial enemy roster.
The October/November Alpha window I mentioned previously is still my target. There’s plenty left to do, but hopefully the next few weeks will involve considerably less writing and considerably more developing.
Anyway, that’s all for today. I’ll see you all next time!