- Update Notes for Sep 7 - 7 September 2024
Fixed credits scrolling background Fixed credits fading to transparency instead of black
- Update Notes for Aug 4 - 4 August 2023
Extras menu bugs fixed
- Update Notes for Aug 3 - 3 August 2023
Added Steam Achievements to the game!
- Update For Feb 9 - 9 February 2023
End credits had a bug where it was not showing character images correctly. This has been fixed
- Update Notes for Nov 9 - 9 November 2022
Small update that fixes an issue with Ren'Py's "vpgrid" which was causing an error when looking at the extras and scene selection screens
- Update Notes for Jul 2 - 2 July 2022
Typo fix in "Masks"
- Update Notes for Feb 23 - 24 February 2022
Fixed Grimalkin's eye colors in the Blackguard flashback scene
- Update Notes for Feb 11 - 11 February 2022
Fixed small details in various CGs: - Grimalkin's eye color was blue instead of yellow - Mistslayer had an extra finger (?!!) - Sabbatical's eye colors were wrong
- Update Notes for Feb 10 - 10 February 2022
Forgot to update the transition to the new main menu in "RECAP" — now fixed.
- Catalyst Wake Released! - 10 February 2022
Hello! Catalyst Wake has finally been released on Steam! Hopefully the wait is worth it. To celebrate the occasion, I've changed the main menu — one of the very few things on my list of "potential future updates". I will continue to support Catalyst Wake with bug fixes and additional features after release. Be sure to let me know if you run into any issues. I know some Mac users were having difficulties — my hope was that by upgrading my computer to Catalina, it would fix that issue, and the game runs fine for me, but I do not know yet if it was resolved for anyone experiencing those problems. I hope you enjoy the game! — LockedOn. You can visit www.lockedongames.com to see more about upcoming games.
- Catalyst Wake Finished! - 1 January 2022
Catalyst Wake has been finished, and is now available to play on itch.io! It will be coming to Steam on February 10th. Obviously I can't link to the itch page from Steam, since it's against Steam's policies. But I suspect that doesn't matter, since if you're reading this progress update here, you probably prefer to to wait to play it on Steam anyway. Now that The Evolving World and Pageturner are done, it really feels like the proper end to my Scratch era. But I'll be making one final Games Update on Scratch to truly cap it off — and I just might sneak a few exclusive surprises in there! Until next time! — LockedOn. You can visit www.lockedongames.com to see a backlog of progress updates.
- Tomorrow - 29 December 2021
We're one day away from Catalyst Wake's release!! Just in case you didn't know this already, the game will be coming to Steam on February 10th next year, but is releasing on itch.io tomorrow. This is because the end of the year is a bad time to release games on Steam. The past week has been a lot of work. It took me about three full days to compose the music, two full days to do all the sound effects... and I'm still working on putting in the voices. Hoping to finish that up tomorrow morning at the latest. But yes, things are getting very tight as I reach the end here. I will go into more detail about what I'm going to patch in after release — it's nothing monumental, but you know me, I like to have tons of behind the scenes and other extra content. Well, I've got to get back to work now... you'll hear from me again tomorrow! Until next time! — LockedOn. You can visit www.lockedongames.…
- All CGs Complete - 23 December 2021
I completed 115 CGs this week, bringing the total CGs in Masks to 558. And with that, every CG in Catalyst Wake has been completed!! Even though I won't have time to extend the Summit fight sequence, I do want to go back in and revise some CGs I made. And I haven't post-processed or implemented them yet. But I'm planning to finish all of that today. So even though I'm TECHNICALLY still not done with the CGs, I'm like 99.9% done, so good enough, right? I think I've made 115 CGs in a week before, however this time I set all the scenes up beforehand, and then cranked out 30 CGs per day for three days, on the 19th, 20th and 22nd. It's the most CGs I've made within a four day period, which is a bit of a stretch for a personal record but whatever. I'm so relieved I won't have to do that again, my hand definitely started to hurt a bit. Even though Masks has so many CGs, I'm very curious to fin…
- 15 Days - 15 December 2021
I completed 48 CGs this week, bringing the total CGs in Masks to 399! However, 27 of those CGs were only used on one particular shot. It's so many frames it's practically an animation, and took me about four days to complete. Once the game is out, you'll see why all that effort was needed, but it definitely slowed me down this week. It's why I was calling it the most difficult scene I had left. I don't have much time before my deadline — only 15 days. It's also a super busy time of the year. That's why I'm going into Turbo Mode™. I have four scenes left to complete, and though they each have their individual challenges, I'm hoping to finish them this week. I've created this helpful Venn diagram. As it illustrates, Set-Ups are the "true bottleneck" — the most difficult and time-consuming part of the CG-making process. "Set-Ups" are the catch-all term I use to describe the process of posi…
- Pretty Soon - 8 December 2021
Ahhh the end is in sight!! I can feel it! This past week, I concentrated on the hardest scenes first. I'm currently halfway through what I've determined is the most difficult scene. I have four scenes left to complete after this one!! I completed 37 CGs this week, bringing the total CGs in Masks to 351. I can definitely finish all the CGs this month. The question will be, can I implement the music, sound effects, voices, and extra content in the remaining time? It's true that the bottleneck is the CGs and mostly everything else takes less time, but it will probably involve some crunch. At least I'm not exploiting any employees of mine... right...? haha ha ha...... What I'm really looking forward to is the week after I release it, where I'll feel a huge rush of motivation. I'm hoping to put in all the stuff I couldn't get to before release into that week. If worse comes to worst, I will…
- Scene By Scene - 1 December 2021
Well after last week's somewhat depressing post, here's a much more exciting one! I completed 54 CGs this week, bringing the total CGs in Masks to 314. Of course, because I did the action scenes first, it doesn't take nearly as long to play as the other two yet, despite having almost as many CGs. I will be continuing to work on the trickiest scenes first, and saving the easy scenes for the end of the month. These next two weeks will be super busy, because I'm going to really try to get the rest of the CGs done with a 2 week buffer for my release date. In other news, I have switched from Buy Me a Coffee to Patreon. Posting on BMC every week was a good exercise, and now I'm confident I'll be able to consistently upload stuff. I'm also launching the official LockedOn Games discord tomorrow. I've gotten requests for one for a while, and I was hesitant because I didn't want it to take up too…
- Sabotaging My Own Game?? - 25 November 2021
This past week, I had a somewhat sobering conversation with a marketing professional about Catalyst Wake. But it was also really helpful. I've thought about some things, and I'm going to make some adjustments to the release schedule — more on that later. First of all, I'm pretty surprised to have been approached by any marketing people at all, and they did so because they liked the look of the game, so that's very flattering. But of course, the amount of wishlists this game has (around 500) makes marketing it a super risky move. Wishlists are the most reliable way to determine if a game will do well on Steam, and the more you have, the better. I launched my store page early for precisely that reason, it's a common indie dev tactic because theoretically the longer it's up, the more wishlists you accumulate. But when it comes to other things, I'm not so savvy. For example, they pointed ou…
- 1000 CGs - 18 November 2021
This past week, I finally reached the 1000 CG milestone. To be more specific, there are now 1012 CGs in Catalyst Wake. Now, quantity isn't an indication of quality by any means. However, when I started this project, I wanted to make a rather high number of CGs, and in the back of my mind, the 1000 CG goal was always something I wanted to hit. Mist contains 385 CGs, Summit contains 346 CGs, and so far Masks contains 267 CGs. I would've reached it sooner, but I've been procrastinating a lot ever since completing the Final Battle scene. We're less than 12 days away from December. I haven't stayed on task, but I'm really hoping that will change in the last stretch — and it probably will! If I know anything about myself it's that the beginning and end of a project are always the most productive. It's that middle slog — which is ALWAYS longer than you think it will be — that's the tricky part…
- Waking Up - 10 November 2021
Hello again! I'm back at it with the CGs again, currently working on the first scene in Masks. It's a big relief that I already finished the biggest scene, as the other scenes aren't nearly as long, and as I complete more and more of them, I'm hoping that will create a "motivation snowball" effect as each one becomes easier to make. There are some particularly interesting scenes in Masks that I can't wait to make, but this first scene is a "walking and talking" scene. Talking scenes are usually a bit tedious to make, but at least they're easy. "Walking and talking" scenes are tedious and difficult, because you have to move the characters through the environment as they're talking — so reposing legs, and moving cameras. Fortunately, I'm almost done with this first scene, which will be 53 CGs — sending me over my 1000 CG goal! After lots of procrastinating, I'm finally "waking up" and get…
- Back to Backgrounds - 28 October 2021
Well, I'm about halfway through creating all the backgrounds I need. I also spent some time in the first part of the week working on another scene, which means Masks now has three scenes complete, out of twelve. The longest scene may be done, but I suspect it will take at least a month to draw the remaining CGs, even if all the backgrounds were done. It's a good thing I moved that release date! In other news, I recently decided to enroll in a 15-week online course that starts next year. I joined it totally on a whim, but I think it will be an extremely helpful experience. The course mostly focuses on boarding and storytelling. As I continue to make more projects like Catalyst Wake, which is basically just a super polished storyboard, boarding will become much more of a major part of my workflow. In future projects, I'll need to improve on the acting and expressions, since the characters…
