Lot and lots of updates...............six so far and it only been going for less than a week.

Couple of the more interesting ones.

Pay What You Want

First we are happy to announce that we are making this Kickstarter campaign 'Pay what you want'. this means that everyone who pledges and selects the £1 reward level or higher will receive a digital DRM free copy of the game for PC.

However as with all things the more you do pledge, the bigger the rewards that you will receive. For example the DRIFTER reward levels will give you Pc, Mac and Linux as well as the game on other platforms such as Steam and Desura etc.

The more you pledge the bigger your rewards will be... With this in mind some of the reward levels have been altered to give you some better rewards for the epic backer levels. Check them all out to decide what you want, also remember we now have the options for physical DVDs as well.

DevDiary #1 - Yuri, Yaoi, Het relationships

Hi everyone my cold finally is on the mend, which means I have been able to record my developer diary. This first developer diary is about several things and is much longer than I thought it would be. I am talking about:

• Character Creation - Gender and personalisation.
• Crew Members - How they effect systems
• Crew Relationships - How they work and what it means

I also go on a few tangents and talk about random other things throughout as my mind naturally wanders to other components of the game. Anyway check it out below, more DevDiaries will be coming in the next few days as the campaign continues and will be regularly posted throughout Starlight Drifters development.

 

 

And

Hi all, a quick update. After careful consideration we have added some additional reward levels to the campaign:

• DVD DRIFTER - £55

  At this reward level you receive the DRIFTER rewards as well as physical DVD copy of the game that is exclusive to kickstarter backers.

   

• DVD VOYAGER - £95

  At this reward level you receive the VOYAGER rewards including beta access as well as a physical DVD copy of the game that is exclusive to kickstarter backers.

   

• ALIENS EVERYWHERE - £300

  At this reward level you will receive all of the VOYAGER rewards including beta access, in addition to which you will design an alien race as well as an npc, their personality and consult with us on creating events and story missions involving them.

Physical DVD Edition

Artwork for the DVD inserts and Disk image will be created and manufactured at it's conclusion. In addition the DVD box sets will include postcards of the main crew members from the ship. Finally please be aware this will be a Kickstarter exclusive, we will only be creating physical editions for the people who back at the reward levels that include the DVDs in this campaign, no further physical edition will be made.

 

Doing plenty of updates for the game. :good:

Hey all another day and another piece of artwork for you to enjoy... Our games first dedicated background is here... The bridge.

This version of the bridge is what we call the final draft, first clean version. It is an almost finished background, great for the demo and then when the campaign ends and we have the bigger budget we can polish it up and make it look super anime sweet.

Demo Coming Soon

We are also working hard on the demo for the game, our aim is to release it next week. But with this demo our plans are not to simply cut out a section at the beginning but to create a little mini story piecing together several events from across the game into one showcase for our backers to try out... The final game will be much larger, more detailed with more polished graphics...

We are currently creating the story using the GUI from Swords of Edo (see above for a mini-animated-preview) while the games dedicated interface and style is being completed. We cant wait to show off both the GUI and allow you all to start downloading the game. More to come soon.

 

Over the half way to their goal now with still 27 days left.

Hi all, thank you to everyone for the continued support, welcome to all the new backers, please feel free if you have any questions to comment on the campaign or send a message.

So I wanted to give you all a bit of a status report, for those who haven't heard the game has been launched on Steam's Greenlight service for voting, it is doing tremendously well and in less than a week it has already gained over 60% of the yes votes needed to get it into the top 100.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=277221648

So please if you haven't already please visit and vote yes to help us succeed, the quicker we are accepted to steam the more likely we will be able to integrate the more advanced features of steams SDK (achievements and trading cards).

And in more immediate news we are very close to 60% funding, with four weeks left to go there is still time to not only reach our goal but also exceed it and reach forward for the greater stretch goals.

Demo Release to Come

Finally I know many of you are eagerly awaiting the release of the demo, we are still working on it, burning away our keyboards writing the code. We have tried out a few different ideas for the demo...

Such as releasing a stand-alone mini story, a prequel to the game, a small section of the game from the middle or some kind of combination of it all. In the end after a range of testing and talking amongst the talking heads of the game we have settled on the idea that the demo will begin around the mid point of the game, you will have a few crew members on board and will have just completed a mission to recover a ' Telusi Relic'.

We are still hopeful to release the demo this weekend. And we hope that once we do you will help us spread the word even further so that more people can try out the demo and help support the kickstarter campaign.

Thank you all.

 

Congrats to the Starlight Drifter team as they have hit their target and still have 23 days to run.

 

Hi everyone, first of all is big news, we have reached our primary goal. This means we have the funding to create the standard game we have in mind. But of course the campaign doesn't end there we don't just want to make the standard game we want to make an exceptional one. And that is where our new stretch goals come in.

After hearing your feedback and ideas we have revised and added to our list of stretch goals to create this new list. So please keep spreading the word so to help us grow. Also if you are part of any forums that you think we should be on and posting about the game let us know and we will stop by...

Just noticed some thing in the description of this game.

 

Be The Captain

Starlight Drifter is a large scale epic space opera, visual novel and dating sim game all rolled into one neat package. You will take over as the new captain of an old derelict starship, it will be up to you to assemble a crew, upgrade the ship systems and then make your own way in the universe.

Have I back a dating sim  😆 😆

I guess we have accomplished the mission of bringing space games back Pinback, we are now getting dating games in space 🙂

Back on track, they definitely have a talented art crew. Interested in how the combat is going to be.

Bit of strange one this one as think the original pitch of the game has had some changes made to it and I am wondering if it will hold together.

Two updates in one day now that's the way to do it.

 

Hi everyone, our first stretch goal (thanks to all of you) is now in sight, the £14,000 goal will ensure we have the funds needed to properly develop achievements for inclusion in the game.

Our plan will be for achievements to be visible inside the game rather than on the main menu, when you complete a mission you will have the option to visit your quarters, sometimes this will lead to bonus epilogues and extra mission info.

But in addition to this you will be able to get stats on your crew, your ship and view any collectables you have found in the game and also view the achievements. Kind of like picards little ships from star trek. Every captain needs a display case of something after all.

Demo

In Demo news I know you are all waiting to see it, and all I can do is apologise for the delay, I just cant bring myself to releasing it until it is as good as it can be. The demo includes placeholder images, music and sound effects as well as the early drafts and so I know it is only a few early alpha demo.

But despite this I still want it to be as good as it can be, I dont want people to play it and think its terrible, I want you all to play it and think, wow this is just the early alpha I cant wait for the full game, please have everything in my wallet...

Anyway so please bare with me for a little while longer and I will get the demo to you all very soon before the campaign ends.

 

Hello everyone, a couple of changes to announce to the add-ons, if you have chosen an add-on or considering choosing one then please read on...

Character Creator Game Add-on

After some careful consideration I have decided not to expand the character creator as much as I had previously disclosed (at least not for the time being) the reason is that Starlight Drifter is getting a lot of interest and I don't want to be split between the character creator and starlight drifter.

I will still be fulfilling my original plans to release a mini-game that will allow you to easily choose different clothes, gender and other parts to create an anime character of your own choosing and then output that as an image. We will also look into Facebook integration as well as releasing to mobile devices.

But the other aspects will be put on hold until after my current main projects are completed. Then if there is enough support for the character creator on the mediums we release to we will take it further. The £10 add-on will get you access to the beta testing coming soon, the game on PC, Mac and Linux and the game on any other platforms we launch to e.g. mobile.

Starlight Drifter Posters

I am happy to announce that Kouson33 will be working on parts for Starlight Drifter such as the DVD covers, inserts and also the posters. (possibly some parts of the game art as well) Our first Starlight Drifter poster will be underway shortly and hopefully will be finished in time for us to announce it before the campaign ends giving another great add-on for our backers.

Many of you will already be familiar with Kouson33's amazing artwork from our Swords of Edo graphic novel covers and the stand alone posters he has designed in the past. As such we look forward to unveiling a new poster for Starlight Drifter and others very soon.

Still 17 days to run.

we are now getting dating games in space 🙂

Been done before, not that surprising. They did it by Kickstarter too.

Been done before, not that surprising. They did it by Kickstarter too.

Remember seeing that IIRC their Kickstarter was very successful.

Game demo is available and has already being updated to version 2.

 

Hi all, we have finally got the demo into some kind of state where we feel you can all play it without there being an errors popping up and still give you a good sense of the game we are building.

That being said this is a very, very early demo of the game, it includes lots and lots of place-holder graphics, some very basic events and a lot of the features of the game have been disabled as they still need more work, but we hope you will be able to see from this basic demo the direction we are going in and what the possibilities could be.

 

Use the link above to download, simply extract the zip and play the appropriate extension for your system (PC, Mac or Linux)... Simples, now for some screenshots:

Nice post on Kickstarter about the evolution of the games art work.

 

As you can imagine the artwork for a game like Starlight Drifter goes through several phases of development. We thought you might be interested in seeing how a scene can evolve and change other time...

Phase one you might guess is the sketch work, an artist or several artists submit their sketches:

We choose the one that is closest to what we have in mind based on the reference material and descriptions and build black & white and colour illustrations:

With the illustration finalised we have a good idea of how the bridge will be done and now have good reference materials, so we pass the illustrations onwards for a new pass to create a higher resolution version. Several different editions are made to help us decide the best possible angle and perspective of the final image:

After playing around with the higher resolution design we have a variety of reference materials showcasing how we want the final design to look like. We then pass those to the main background artist to create the final version for use in the game...

We look forward to showing off more backgrounds as development continues after the campaigns conclusion. Thanks for the continued support.

They have also hit their second stretch goal as well.

 

It is always a good feeling to reach another stretch goal. Even when it looks certain you will actually doing it is great because it means you know you can give all of the backers something better. In this case it ensures those bonus rewards we discussed previously and gives the epic £60 and £100 backers those extra special items.

Pledging at the £60 and higher means backers will get a series of postcards included with their DVDs of the game and the £100 and higher levels will get a special Starlight Drifter poster, designed by Kouson33 it should be amazing.

With five days remaining we still have another two great stretch goals to aim for, each of which is possible to reach and will give the game even more great character. 17.5 will allow us to incorporate voice acting in more scenes whilst 20k will ensure dedicated funds for a bigger unique soundtrack.

Thank you all for your support so far as we continue on in the final five days.

And still have 5 days to run.

Congrats to the team as they made their target, also looks like a few backer drop out at the last moment.

 

Hi everyone, well we did it, its been a massive two month long campaign, there have been ups and in just the last few hours a big down and more ups. But in the end with your support we have not only reached our target but exceeded it.

Stretch Goals The Sadness

So sadly we lost a few backers at the end and missed out on the stretch goals we thought were in the bag. But its not all sadness for I have decided despite us not hitting the stretch goals that some of the rewards will still be on offer, specifically...

• Achievements - These will be included, I don't know exactly how many but I think this is something that will help the game stand out, and who knows if we get into steam, maybe we can add steam achievements to it as well.
• Free DLC - Well I don't really believe in making people pay for DLC, so any DLC that is made will be free for the £20 plus reward level backers in their usual updates. I have at least 1 piece of DLC planned but more will be determined based on how well the actual release goes in 2015.
• Platform Choice - It seems rude of me not to give backers their choice of platform to play the game on, I mean some people don't have a PC so what good will the PC edition do them, so those at the £10 and £1 reward level can choose Pc, Mac or Linux for the final copy of the game.

What Comes Next?

So it is the end of the campaign, but now the real fun starts... I mean work, the real work starts for me that is. To put it simply Kickstarter will start taking payments, and anyone whose payment fails will have 7 days to correct it before they get dropped from the campaign.

While that is going on I will be messaging some people with the design rewards and preparing the surveys so that they an be sent out as soon as the payment processing is finished. A week or so later and the funds should be delivered and then the art commissions will begin.

My focus initially will be on getting the protagonist and crew character designs completed, once those are done we will move on to creating the rooms of the starship (some will happen at the same time) and polishing up the early events of the game.

Hopefully within the next couple of months those sprites will be completed and I will have gathered some more music, videos and the start of the voice acting work to build the first section of the game so that the beta can begin.

Last Friday they made it onto Steam although it might be a while before the keys are sent out.

 

Hi everyone, before my next art update, I thought you might like to know the big news that occurred just a couple of hours ago, I will give you a clue...

Starlight Drifter has been Greenlit

Ok so I have spelt it out, Steam has now greenlit Starlight Drifter so that it can be released on Steam 'officially'. This means everyone at the £20 and higher reward level will when the game is released on steam get a key.

Of course between then and now there are a huge amount of loops to get through as it is not as simple as upload the finish game and release it. There are lots of legal details to sort out, tax issues, national tax issues, coding the integration of the game with steams sdk and seeing what bonus stuff can also be included.

So yes this is great news but there is of course still a long way to go before I can say when it will be released...

An Armory

So until then why don't you enjoy the new location on board the ship, the armory and tactical command. This is the location where lance and any security people will spend their time in between missions and trips to strange alien planets.

In case you wondered Lance has a motto about firepower, though it may be a bit of a cliche... Always be prepared!