Hey guys!
So I’m rescheduling once again to restart on development of Dark Zeta project (Project DB) once again. The Last 4 years since the teaser trailer was started has been really challenging to keep moral and motivation up to work on this project. Ultimately what made me stop all together was getting stuck in funding the project and finding help to continue with it. So I’ve shifted into different focuses throughout the years to find something that can help me funnel the money to fund this life long dream. Trying to make it real is the most hardest thing I ever set out to do in my entire life.
This is why I scheduled this project to work on it by three different pieces. The first piece is the Trilogy Foundation of the spirit, 2nd is the Chronicles of the brotherhood of unity and peace, and third final part is The Grand Tour and revelation of all existence. The rolls in which I will push to make for each part is what the gameplay and story will focus in the Dark Zeta series going forward as a whole. The Trilogy foundation was first started in 2011 after I dropped out of College to focus on making the arcade version of Dark Ball as an HTML5 game first. Then I renamed it to Dark Zeta after consideration to evolve from my original plans. The new design of the main character Dark Alpha was all set and ready in November of 2011. I was going to focus on developing the story before of what I created pre-college as I left the story panels and notebook at home in boston.
Developing a new spiritual quest also resulted in me to recreate Dark Zeta completely from the ground up and using my original source material I have made before as a roadmap. This redevelopment has set a new tone to my approach with Dark Alpha. The name picking and rebranding also connects to spiritual concepts that I brought new to the works that was previously absent before. I researched on sacred geometry and different spectrum terminologies to add to the story. I then created a database to assemble everything together as I went throughout the years. With all of that time I haven’t been able to get to the different forms that Dark would take up in-game yet – as that process would be reserved to gameplay ideas through research and development testing in game. I’m taking the Miyamoto approach in which the power ups have to feel natural in game so for it to exist than be solely story driven. From gameplay then I make up something to connect that feature to the story after. This is why I haven’t been able to design anything new after just trying to perfect the main character’s form.
Also this is my excuse why I haven’t redesign some of the supporting characters yet too at this time. Previously Dark has his brotherhood of unifying heroes out to save the world together and for I to design each character I need to find mechanical purpose for them in game – thus I need to first R&D – trial and error the gameplay feel to each character to make them unique and less generic and just once again not just solely focused on story. The skeleton of game foundation first has to be established then I can connect the lore to them. Profiling is easy though, that stuff I have already premade but remaking it for the project. I started profiling and story writing this in 1998 – long ago when I was really really bad at writing in english. So the revisions and sharing it with other folks who can do better writing helps me a whole bunch in raising the quality of the story overall.
I hope to share with you guys some more later – This was just an update since I haven’t done so in such a long while.
So now I’m rescheduling the project to start again with a new group of folks who are interested in collaborating with me on this journey. The project won’t no longer be just me alone anymore. I’ll have programmers and graphic artist in my team who believe in my stuff. This is good! But still though from the base I’ll be the lone guy making the significant moves in this project until I can find synergy with my new group of friends.
So dev should start in the next 6 months again. Estimated guess to when the project will finish is another 8 years away if everything falls in the right places at most – at least if things go fast and I get a vertical slice with funding – 4 years! But that’s the least because last time I did the say the same estimate and I still have nothing but the 2013 demo.
So we will see!