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To sum up: this is an article about: why i'm writing this article, my own life that hardly someone care about (e.g.: how I came to make this game), a few words about music and british romantic poetry, and a screenshot.

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This is Ann. That's all we know about her.

Why?

Why "Day x²" in the title? Well, first of all because i don't know exactly how much I have been working on this project, so the day number is rather unknown. More than a year at least. And secondly, I'm currently working on an online math class, high school level, just to get back into science a bit after years. I still wish someday I can graduate in physics (dream...). But that's another topic.

I had been wondering if I should write a dev diary about Dreams of Ylina. The question is: what to write? I'm not really fond of people posting every single changing pixel, although I respect this communication choice. On the other hand, it is often said that posting regularly is essential in online communication and marketing, especially for indies.

I'm actually writing this on a whim, and because in the middle of the night I often have many things I suddenly wish to do.

Introducing...

Since it's my first article, let me introduce a few things. I'm a developer, coming from industrial programming (that was my studies) who has moved to web dev (that was more fun), then discovering with amazement Unity3D, a few years later, while unemployed.

And Unity3D was what I had always missed in video game creation. I have to say, I have always sucked at 3D. All the video games I had invented, especially with my cousin, were on paper, at a time when the internet was not popular, and i had almost never touched a computer in my life. In high school I had started programming on a calculator, including games. It was fun. So after high school I said to myself: "hey, I don't own a computer, I have never really tried programming apart from calculators, let's sign up for programming studies!" Stupid (really?) idea, right?

But Unity was the light for me. I had managed to do a game in javascript and HTML5 canvas the year before (Dreams of Ahngar) and I was proud to finally have done until the end a project. It was feeling like a success.

And with Unity: no need to write a physics engine, no need to check collisions manually, etc. etc. I didn't know these things existed. At school we did a local multiplayer first person shooter in a few days (with colored capsules as characters). It was fun. Again.

So here I am, after making 2 little 2D games on Android (called Link Shapes, and Run In Black), I'm working on a more ambitious project: a 3D RPG-like (purists will say it's action/adventure, not RPG) game, with dialogs, quests, and, more important to me: a story/scenario.

Music!

And, yes, there will be music in the game. I am also musician and writer/composer since middle school (rock and acoustic songs, then power metal influenced, and now with "classical" on top of that since i'm studying Film Music Composing currently), and I'm also working on the musics of the game. The revelation about it to me, apart from the themes of my old games (Marble Zone in Sonic, the title screen of Secret of Mana, ...) was Life is Strange. I decided I wanted to write the music so that it underlines the Dream in "Dreams of Ylina". Creating the atmosphere. I'm a big fan of british romantic poetry, and the goal that comes to me in any piece of "art" (or attempt to create art) is: sublime. I want the music to sublimate the game. As much as I can, at least.

For those who are interested, I've recently started to work with EastWest libraries (with Composer Cloud). And Reaper, but that's because it's cheap and yet powerful.

Anyway...

Dreams of Ylina has a Facebook page, and hopefully the game will be out, at least on Steam/Android, before the end of 2017.

Anyway, here is a screenshot of what i'm currently working on (not currently for say since it's almost midnight in France and i'm about to go to bed).
Beside working on NPC behaviour script, I'm planting grass and trees (and rocks) thanks to Adam Goodrich's tool: Gaia. On Unity3D of course.


That's all, folks.

Thanks for reading (if you're not a bot, if you are a bot then, well, nothing).

Pango

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