Arbiter - Annual Recap - 2024

HAPPY NEW YEAR GAMERS!!! 🗣🗣🗣

I'm not sure how, but it seems we've all survived the hellscape that was 2024. And honestly? Good fucking riddance. It was definitely a rough one (at least for me) but no matter how it went, we all did well to make it this far. From the bottom of my heart, well done gamers. We made it!

The Year of Introspection

I started 2024 by continuing my deep dive into environmental art. We ended the previous year with some solid direction towards an art style, but I was still struggling to settle on the aesthetics of each level. In particular, I spent a good few months making stuff like cliffs, floating islands, and other kinds of environmental assets.

But despite liking the direction we were going, it was still taking me far too long to make actual assets. A few months into the year I started to really notice some nasty habits of mine which were costing me months if not years of development time. On top of that, some personal stuff was starting to chip away at my sense of self, leaving me quite a bit depressed for a good chunk of the year.

As all of this kinda hit me at the same time, it became painfully obvious that I had to make some serious changes—both for Arbiter's development and my personal wellbeing. It was time for some growth!

Arbiter's been in a great spot gameplay wise for a good while now, but the environments have always been an issue for me. Not the actual level design mind you (I love me a good blockout), but the actual creation of the environments themselves. I was treating it like something I could wing my way through without giving it the respect it deserves. Well consider this my apology, environmental art. I was not familiar with your game.

The funny thing is, I really don't treat any other part of the process like this. It was pure unbridled stubbornness. When I create characters for example, I'll always commission concept art first so I have a strong sense of direction going into it. But I just...didn't really do that for environmental art. Pride's one hell of a drug.

Where I found I was wasting the most time wasn't necessarily in building the assets themselves, but in the iteration. Without an experienced artist guiding my hand, I just didn't have the knowledge to make quick and decisive creative decisions easily. It led to me wasting quite a lot of time modeling and texturing different kinds of cliffs, architecture, etc. because I just couldn't decide on their designs—I was trying to iterate on them as I was building them. Given the scope of what I'm trying to make, it just wasn't sustainable anymore. I had to make some changes!

The Character Arc

The first major change was building a new PC! It was nearly a decade since I upgraded my last build and the old guy was starting to really struggle with some of the more modern programs. It took a lot of research, patience, and a few mental breakdowns to get it up and running, but we got there! Special thanks to my good friend Vinnie for the tech support (and for preserving my sanity).

With that, I began using some new tools in my workflow such as the literal god of a program that is Substance Designer. It took a minute to learn but the gains in my workflow have been truly astronomical. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to remake almost all of my environment textures (some of which took multiple days) within a couple weeks. Things were really ramping up!

The next step was to bring on a serious environment artist to design the actual levels. I've worked with a couple here and there over the years, but for one reason or another I've yet to truly lock someone down. But while having concept art for the environments was a good start, there was something I knew would help even more...

...an actual art lead!

Thankfully, I already had someone in mind! My good friend gravity has designed almost all of the game's characters, but I've never fully looped them in on the project. I think part of that is due to the pride I mentioned earlier, but I honestly just think the game didn't have enough of a vision to warrant it. When I started prepping materials for them, that became more and more apparent. I had to lock in.

The Vision

It was only when I started the environmental art that I really began thinking more about the "art" of game development (and storytelling in general). Before, Arbiter felt like a fun little excuse to make an action game with a simple plot driving it forward. But the deeper I got into it, the more I started to see the potential of what it could be. For better or worse, I was cursed with a vision.

At this stage in my life, it wouldn't be creatively satisfying to make something without purpose—especially not this far into the project. I can do better, and honestly, the world deserves better. It doesn't take much to look outside and see how divisive we've become. We need healing. If my little action game can help push us forward in that regard, even just an inch, then it's worth a try.

For a long time, Arbiter has just been something of a vessel for my journey throughout game development. I had a general plan of course, but not really a fully fleshed out vision I could easily and confidently share with people. I really wanted to lock that down by the time I started collaborating, so I put together what I now refer to as the Arbiter Bible—a master document with every relevant piece of information I'd ever need to share.

It took a while, but writing the bible really forced me to sit down and outline my vision for the project. I had written a design document and script some years ago, but they had become outdated over time and no longer really reflected the game's identity. I'd say it's only in the last year or so that I've discovered what the "point" of Arbiter is, and getting all of it down really helped lock in those details and declutter any stray thoughts.

To lock that vision in further, my next goal was to completely redraft the original script, accounting for both the changes I've wanted to make over the years as well as the more fundamental shift in purpose. Unfortunately, it was around this time that those personal woes from earlier started to rear their ugly heads, and to top it off, my art lead wouldn't be able to start until 2025.

Thankfully however, there is no greater cure for depression than writing (at least for me). I've always been deeply in love with storytelling and as someone who consumes way too much media, it's something I probably take a little too seriously. Both my work and personal lives were telling me to take a break, so I took the opportunity to just fully invest myself in the game's script, getting everything down to the finest of details.

I say "script" but it's actually become much more than that. It includes all of the game's story beats and dialogue with highly specific breakdowns of each cutscene as well as full explanations of every encounter and boss fight. It is an absolutely massive document, currently totalling at around 110k words. I have essentially written a novel.

I'm just about done the script, but the goal here is pretty simple. I want us to be in the absolute best possible position when the artists start cooking. I've been jokingly referring to this phase of development as Pre-Production 2.0, but it's pretty accurate. I now have an extremely comprehensive idea of what this game is, how much content will be in it, and everything we'll need in order to build it. And to top it off, I actually like it! I'm genuinely proud of the story I've written and I think it's the sort of thing that'll really resonate with where we are. We just have to finish making the damn thing.

While I wanted to make a lot more progress in 2024, I think doing all of this prep work now will allow us to get our grind on in 2025. I wish I had this sense of vision much earlier, but better late than never!

Arbiter Re:Brand

All that said, I'm gonna be changing up the recaps a bit this year. Last year saw progress slow down as we pulled back to do some planning and onboarding, but I still tried to maintain the monthly updates. The problem is that, simply put, not every month has visible progress. I've never been more creatively locked in than when writing the script, but it's hard to show the value something like that adds to the project. The result kinda ends up being several months without any visuals to show, leaving these updates kinda underwhelming (and somewhat anxiety inducing to put out there).

To help with that, I'm gonna be retiring the monthly format for the foreseeable future, and only writing updates when I have meaningful progress to show. This isn't really a reflection of my motivation or anything; on the contrary, it's quite literally never been higher. But I do think these recaps have become more like personal journals than meaningful development showcases. It's gotten to the point where it's not really worth the stress for me, and I'd rather stick to making these posts when I have more to show for it.

That said, this presents an interesting opportunity! As the game is currently undergoing a pretty major visual overhaul right now, I'd like to take this chance to sort of rebrand and showcase our new vision once it's a little more polished. We'll be giving it a glow up from top to bottom, finalizing details like character designs, enemy designs, and the art style itself. Where we once walked aimlessly without direction, we now march forward with purpose!

The Road Ahead

All in all, I feel pretty good about where we're going. Learning to collaborate has been a bit stressful, but I'm embracing the process and keeping an open mind. It's been pretty isolating keeping all of these details to myself over the years, so finally getting to organize my thoughts, write them down, and share them with other artists has been quite therapeutic. I didn't realize how much I needed it.

Thanks so much for the continued support over the years guys. Life kinda got in the way last year, but I've never been more locked in than I am now. While it can be dangerously easy for me to get upset about how long it's all taking, honestly, I've embraced it. I may have regrettably become the meme of the 10 year passion project, but I'm hoping that by bringing on some extra help we can actually get this thing done. There's still a ways to go, but I feel like I'm making something a lot more meaningful now. We've got this!

Cheers,
Jordy