Entry 10
The last publication of my Developer Diary was followed by a long period of low activity, hence the more than 4 months that have elapsed. It has to be said that the loss of Deviantart's audience caused by its change of policy didn't do the overall motivation any good: the problem of having put all our eggs in one basket by letting 80% of our public visibility rest on a single site. I also took a break for a whole month, playing another game (
Hogwarts Legacy, not to mention it) until I platinized it. This also played a role since I was less present in the project.
But the phoenix always rises from its ashes and after these "fangame holidays", we worked on our reconstruction from mid-March.
Diversify our social networks
It's official: Sacred Phoenix has diversified its communication channels and is now active on
Instagram,
Tumblr and
Twitter. The first two sites are still baby dragons with only half a dozen entries, but Twitter is already hitting 200 views per Tweet due to its greater seniority. Proof that it works.
At the same time, SplittingJaws has asked me to take communication under his wing for a while. Knowing that this is a time-consuming activity, any help is welcome.
This allowed us to regain a modicum of motivation and move forward on a small trickle of gas. The Arch-Curate of Darkrai was drawn, while Dracoyan managed to finish the sprites for the ancient Milotic. Meanwhile, the Fakemon Moomoo was finally finished, and I took advantage of some short sessions to make some artworks of new items. For his part, Cataclyptic was able to finish his Blacksmith and understand Eysselia's style thanks to a lot of feedback.
Surfing a wave of motivation since mid-May
But the real spark came from Eysselia. Around mid-May, she decided to get back to making human artworks (new or unfinished) and finished three couples in 4 days. That was the spark we needed to get things moving again!
The snowball effect was not long in coming: Dracoyan and SplittingJaws regained full involvement; Millie made her first significant contribution by finalizing Eysselia's artworks (which earned her a promotion to Phoenix Aspirant); new sprites saw the light of day (Ourobud, Venipede, Ancient Skiddo ...) thanks to the combined work of several people (even Eysselia!); and Fakemon concepts were finalized after remaining a whole year in the sketch state.
Recruitment campaign launched
Taking advantage of these favorable winds, it was the perfect time to launch a recruitment campaign on PokéCommunity and Relic Castle. It has to be said that the campaign launched last year was a fiasco: of the 4 people interested, not a single one gave any sign of life after their application had been accepted. Combined with the natural departures of Pipevanes, Frillecho and KiriariSan (who left with honors and our gratitude), our team fell to ... 6 members! A project as ambitious and long-standing as Sacred Phoenix should have had at least twice as many!
This time, our luck ran out and we had a few successes:
– BlizzardFeather, who was promoted to Phoenix Aspirant, something that hadn't happened since April 2022. It was thanks to her that we were able to carry out the aesthetic modification of Kadabra and Alakazam. She also wants to try her hand at pixel art (our priority).
– East Gamer is basically an artist, but also knows how to make pixel art. There's a good chance he'll become an Aspirant Phoenix.
– one pending application as a musician (no news since).
– two unconvincing proposals, because they had to be paid for (fangames aren't lucrative).
– a special mention for Sipondo, creator of the Ulix Dexflow game engine, who showed interest and would be willing to become a programmer if we migrated to his framework.
Early April also saw the unexpected return ... of Altarax, three years after leaving the project! He hasn't had time to produce anything yet, but I was able to delegate the creation of the crafting menu to him after finalizing all the necessary graphic resources and explaining how the menu would work (game design aspect).
If these arrivals or reappearances bear fruit, our team could potentially grow to 9 members, and even 10 if we migrate to Ulix Dexflow instead of Godot. But 10 is not enough for a project of Sacred Phoenix's stature, so you can guess that applications are still open.
This month's goals
At the moment, a lot of energy is spent on communication. I'm trying to create the Fakemon strategy sheets whose finished concepts have been piling up over the months, because without these sheets, there'll be no official reveal of these new species! Kangasbone is an excellent example of a freshly realized concept! (
Sheet here.)
I'm also working on databases, including the bestiary. By the way, the structure of this data has led me to organize the presentation of movepools differently. In particular, Light and Dark movepools are listed separately from the natural movepool.
My goals are therefore threefold:
• Produce at a regular rate of strategic sheets of Fakemons with the concept already finished (aspect of game design)
• Reveal them publicly (because a lot of completed concepts have accumulated behind the scenes in recent months: artists would like their creations to be revealed).
• And continue to make parallel progress on the databases, a task which I confess I'm least enthusiastic about. So here I go when there's nothing else to do immediately.
In the longer term, it has been agreed that the PSDK demo will be the one active until the Eleanor Shire is complete (around 2 hours 30 of gameplay). This corresponds to the first badge with a post-game equivalence specific to this province. (The first talisman unlocks Cup, and many maps have remote areas that will be unlocked with this secret technique.)
