Freedom at last!

Well, the wonderful day is upon us now. (Or, it was ten days ago, but still.) We officially have summer break now, which means that the lot of us no longer can blame schoolwork for the extreme delays on updates here. So we're gonna need a new excuse...

But on a more serious note, things are progressing slowly. Things are a little scattered at the moment. Seeing as we have a ten week summer break, the first few weeks at least will be filled with trips to various countries and events, spending time with family and traveling the universe and such.

But things are progressing, just so you don't think we're just faffing about. (Which we aren't!) Our programmers Oscar and Johan are still studying in preparation of the peril that awaits them when AI and such will be made. Anatoli and Rickard have assumed direct control of the level design, that way it's more organized, seeing as the first couple of times ended up with all of us sitting in a room shouting at each other whilst pointing at doodles I made on a whiteboard.

 While I myself haven't seen the full level design yet, we do have maps of the first levels and a preview of the first room. I'd love to show you, but for the time being it's confidential. When asked for a reason for this secrecy, this was Anatoli's response.

So unfortunately you'll have to wait patiently. But we promise that when things calm down a bit we'll all get back to work and make some results.

Oh, and to the dismay of the story lovers, third chapter is still not written. Since the important part is making a demo for the school course, the story is going on the backburner for now!

That's pretty much it for this time, next update will hopefully not be too far away.

Magnus out!

Hello!

Oscar and Anatoli here!
Anatoli has been working his ass of and he has completed some concept art.
As you guys saw in the last post, he has been away for some time but has still been working. Best way to kill time during illness, don't you think?
Hopefully you guys enjoy this one, please give some feedback, any improvements or any visual improvements.
Click the image to see the entire picture, otherwise, here's a link to the image.

Lack of updates

I know some people have been eager for our next update and have been hoping that it would have come by now. Unfortunately, we've run into quite a few roadblocks the past few weeks. At first, it was just a matter of finding time in between schoolwork and other obligations, which turned out to be a quite difficult task, seeing as we've been needing to assemble the group for a while now. We've tried to get the group together so we could get started on level design, but due to exams, essays, reports, and the eventual long days here and there, we haven't been able to get together and do it.

We thought we were gonna get started last week, but unfortunately, disease struck the group. It became more and more difficult when Anatoli got hit very hard with it, seeing as he's one of the key members for the level designing, along with me and Rickard. We don't know when he'll be back to full health, but hopefully soon. Right now he has a nasty infection and hasn't been able to work that much for the last week. Hopefully he'll be back soon.

On the positive side though, whilst at home with his virus, he showed me a little design he managed to make for the monster in our game. Nothing major, but it looks amazing. It really looks like what I had imagined it would, and I hope we can get working on it eventually.

Johan and Oscar have been starting to study C#, and it seems to be going well, the syntax isn't too hard to wrap your head around as it follows similar patterns to Javascript which we've all studied, so hopefully we will get going with the coding in time.

As for the story, I've not yet written anything for the next chapter, I think I'm gonna keep it on hold until things become less stressful. (Which, unfortunately for those of you who want more, could take a while.)

That's pretty much it for this time, we just thought we would tell you why we've been lacking so much in updates, and we hope that you'll understand our hardships right now. We promise to get this going in due time.

//Magnus

(P.S If you're wondering why I'm the one writing all the updates so far, it's because the rest figured that I am better at writing these things, therefore I should deliver the messages.)

Chapter 2 ahoy!

Hello once again, Ayin readers! Just here to give you the second chapter of the Sierra storyline!

Okay, so a little important things to know before you read the chapter. By the idea of a reader who commented the previous chapter, and the support of this idea by Anatoli, a major thing in the first chapter has been changed, which I will edit into that chapter sometime soon. The scientist that Sierra meets is not alive. Instead the lunatic scientist has been replaced by an audio log. We felt that it would give a better sense of dread and loneliness into the story, which is what we're aiming for. So just so you don't read the second chapter with utter confusion, this is a change we made that is now canon for the entire story. There have been a few tweaks here and there, but as I've said before, nothing I publish here is a final draft, so anything in this chapter that contradicts are probably ideas that will be rewritten to work in the future. The general rule  for this is that the latest chapter published is always canon until the next one is published, then any changes there are canon.

Okay, to the second chapter at hand. My personal opinion of this is a little less excited than the first chapter. It was harder to write than the first, particularly the ending and finding clever ways to make the experience more scary. This is my first ever horror story, so making the scary scenes genuinely scary was a challenge to me. But hopefully I managed to pull it off at least a little. It's for you to decide.

Sadly, the third chapter is a bit on hold for a while. Now that I've written the story for the first level of the game, the level design is gonna start. Don't worry, I will continue to write the story, just not in the same speed as before. I have some plans for where the story will go, I even have an idea I'm throwing around for the third chapter that I will experiment with, so hopefully it will see the light of day. Just don't hold your breath. (I hear that's not healthy.)

I'm also hugely surprised that the first chapter got so great reception. So great that I made a meme in it's honor! I'm ever so thankful!

As always, we're still in the early pre-production stage, lots of learning and idea flinging for the months ahead. We'll update more when we have something that we can show you all, so until then, you'll have to live with my amateur writing.

Also, we have a new member of the group who should be acknowledged. We recruited Oscar's friend and fellow band member Pontus who is gonna write the music for our game! He's given us a little preview of what he can do for us, and so far we're very pleased with what he's shown.

Anyways, link to the chapter here! Hope you enjoy it!



Magnus out!

First chapter done!

The first draft of the first chapter is done. Link can be found below. I managed to write up to a little over five pages. The writing is a bit compressed, but the general thread of events is there, so we have a somewhat clear picture of what we're aiming for. This is in no way the final writing for the first level we're doing, this is just my primary idea of the setting and the story, so anything written in the document can be changed later on, depending on reception from the rest of the group and readers of this blog. You're all very welcome to comment, any criticism and tips on how to improve is greatly appreciated!

My main quarrel with the story is how to characterize Sierra. Making the writing act her personality out or giving her hours of painful monologue seems a bit boring, so I'm trying to think of ways to put her character into the mere actions of the game. Hopefully I'll spawn some new ideas for the next chapter! But for now, enjoy my attempt at professional writing!

Link to chapter!

Magnus out!

First day!

Hi!

Welcome to Ayin Productions blog.
We consist of 5 people, Anatoli Khapougine (3-D design), Rickard Lindqvist (3-D design), Magnus Palmstierna (Story-writer and project-manager), Oscar Wennergren (Programming and logic behind blog, e-mail and updates) and Johan Sjöstrand (Programming).

This is the first day of our project, we've decided the set-up and the entire plan until week 52.
We will start off creating and designing our game starting week 24, just after we have finished school.
You guys will be able to see our personal thoughts and contributions to this in our private tabs, marked with our names. We hope to get everything up and ready to go in a couple of weeks, since we've got a lot to work with, learning C# and how to use UDK.

We will get a Paypal if you want to donate and help us to get going on this.

/ Ayin Productions

This pictures inspired this project. All credits goes to the artist.