Arbiter - Monthly Recap - July 2023

Greetings, Bearers!

This month, I return to you a changed man. A better man. After saving the realm of Valisthea, I expected to return a hollow shell of what I once was—a lifeless being devoid of all hope and purpose in this world. But instead, in accepting my own truths, I became something much greater. I became inspired.

Final Fantasy XVI

I finished XVI. It's got problems like anything else, but never in my life have I experienced a piece of media speak to me on such a deep, personal level. I'd rather dive into why that is in a separate post, but to put it simply, I think the game challenged my sense of purpose within this space. It's shown me what it truly means for a developer to put their absolute everything into a project with the unwavering conviction that they know what they're making is good. When I finished the game, I had a resounding (and almost scary) realization deep within my soul that almost felt like fate imposing its will onto me: I need to make a game that makes me feel that same level of conviction. 

Arbiter is a project I'm deeply passionate about and wholly intend to finish as a quality game with a strong sense of identity, but I don't think it'll be my magnum opus. It's fun for sure, but it's also been a long learning experience with plenty of ups and downs (and I'm still not even finished!). I think it'll be a strong step forward in my journey, but I can't confidently say it will make people feel the same way I feel about XVI. I don't really say that with any sense of guilt or dissatisfaction either—on the contrary. I just think that with my inexperience in all this (and the fact that I'm making so much of it on my own), I'll never be able to make it EVERYTHING I want it to be, and that's okay.

Being able to realize an idea to its fullest potential with the confidence you're doing it well, and with a team of people that all feel the same way—that's the feeling I want to spend my life chasing. I see Arbiter as a meaningful step in that direction, but it's not the end of the road. XVI has left me both incredibly humbled and inspired and it has dared me to try harder with all of this stuff.  I think it's those feelings (on top of everything else) that's solidified it as my absolute favourite game of all time. Yippee!

Meanwhile at Arby's

So as I mentioned last month, I took a short break to rest and just fully immerse myself in XVI. During that time, most of the work I did was coordinating the environmental concept art and getting more of the HUD in-game. Both of which are going quite well!

We're still not quite ready to show the concept art off, but the process is going extremely smoothly. The art itself is obviously a huge help that basically sets the stage for each level's art direction, but just having somebody to have a proper back and forth with on that stuff has been a huge help too. It's also forced me to make more concrete decisions on different elements of Arbiter's world which helps a lot with removing a lot of the choice paralysis I had before. All in all, I have no complaints and I'm excited to get back to level design once we're all done!

On the UI front, most of the HUD is pretty much in-game and functional! There's still a few things here and there like general polish, boss health bars, and the minimap, but I'm saving the latter two for when I actually, y'know, have bosses and levels. I don't imagine they'll be too hard to implement once I get there though (knock on wood). 

I'd still really like to do a breakdown of all of my different HUD iterations, but there's still a couple of elements I need to iron out first. I know I have utterly SUCKED with these exclusive posts, so I'm going to try and solve the remaining HUD issues ASAP so I can get that out to you guys sooner than later. At any rate, I appreciate the patience as always!

What's on the Menu?

Next up, I've started working on in-game menus! I only started on them over the last couple weeks, but so far I have been having an absolute BLAST designing them. 

My main inspirations for the menus are a weird hybrid between Square Enix and Nintendo. I've always loved Square's sleek designs and how they organize information, but I love the personality, readability, and accessibility Nintendo tends to offer. Nintendo's focus on consistent shape and colour language to keep the obvious information obvious is a huge deal to me, but I also love being able to show off character and style wherever I can. Finding that balance is always tough, but it's a fun challenge and I think I'm doing decently well so far!

This menu in particular covers equipping abilities. Ashe can equip four (4) abilities to both his light and dark phases, each of which have their own variants based on his current transformation. On the left, you can see the abilities currently equipped (don't worry, they won't all be on L1+X, I'm just lazy). On the right, you can see the ability's information as well as the different forms you've unlocked. 

As of right now I'm leaning towards a somewhat cosmic palette, as I feel it works best with the game's light and dark colours. I also want to experiment with some moving background shapes and just try to get more contrast in the background in general, but I'll likely wait until I move over to Unity to figure that stuff out. All of this is subject to change of course, so please take it with a big fat grain of salt!

My process is usually to sketch everything out in Photoshop until I'm happy with it, then move over to Unity and get it all in-game. I don't expect Arby to have too many menus (not much more than what's implied above at least), but still enough to be a decent chunk of work. I've got about 1.5~ screens designed so far so we've still got a ways to go, but I'm having fun. Feel free to let me know what you think!

Back to Work

Anyways, that's it for me! Kinda funny how these have morphed from basic recaps into being something of a personal dev journal, but fuck it we ball I guess. 

Thanks as always everyone for trudging along with me and continuing to support the game. I know the XVI stuff reads a bit melancholic, but honestly I'm more motivated than I've ever been lately. I feel like I'm getting a lot done despite having taken a break, and I'm getting to bring a lot of different pieces together that's really starting to make the game feel whole. At this rate my catchphrase might as well be "but we've still got a ways to go," but I mean... we've still got a ways to go! 

But hey, who cares! We'll get there when we get there!

Cheers,
Jordy