Status Report - HERO: Week of 01.03

Kuroto Household Kitchen

Hi travelers! It's 2021. Sasuga Studios has now just turned ten years old. The time really has flown by. I mark January first, 2011 as the start of both Sasuga Studios and HERO. It's been a decade and I'm still working on it. That's a long time for development, particularily a game. A person can spend that much time working on a book, and it will still come out as a book, but in game development a lot can change in a decade's time. The tools, the technology, and so on. I'm still pushing on, though, because getting this done is important to me. I wasn't as focused in the early days of preproduction, but I've gotten a lot better at that.

WABI SABI Home Goods Store

First, the script. I'm on Act 3, with four chapters written and eleven left to go. The target is to be done by September of this year. I started in September of 2017, and it's taken me an average of one month to write a chapter. Since there are forty-nine chapters total, that works out to four years spent writing. I'm currently sitting at 6,500,000 words, and will likely end up with somewhere around eight to nine million total. A single playthrough will see about one million words, and there are seven routes, so the numbers work out there too.

Igarashi Bakery

Next, art assets. Nearly all the 3D work for the backgrounds is complete, with a handful of interiors still left to do. Those will be rendered into finished backgrounds with all the details and lighting and so on. I also need to do 3D for the HERO mecha, which will be similarly rendered. I also have to draw character sprites, which will be made mostly as vector art.

Mugen Museum Hands-on Exhibit

Finally, I need to put all those assets together with code for the game itself. Once i finish the script, I'll be working on the macro that will automatically format it into script code, with a round of tweaking necessary to get it working right.

Mugen Museum Planetarium

Please pay attention to twitter @sasuganick and @sasugastudios for smaller status updates.

There's still a long way to go, but the finish line is closer than the start line was a decade ago. I look forward to the day when I can finally share the story that's been living inside me for so long with you all. You have my thanks!

Nick