Sin Spire - Dev Log 28

Hello everyone! It’s been a while – how have you been? This month has flown by for me. Version 0.0.5 was a major milestone, marking the completion of all planned procedural dungeons. To celebrate (and recover from the crunch) I decided to take a break – play some games, relax and return refreshed… But things didn’t go quite as planned.

Video Games and Modding

As I mentioned, I intended to take a break after 0.0.5. The game I picked was the newly released Oblivion Remastered. I’ve always enjoyed Bethesda games, particularly modding them, so I felt that revisiting Oblivion would be a good time.

Upon jumping in, I was met with... hideousness. The original game didn’t exactly have great-looking characters, but my goodness – these remastered ones were something else. Still, knowing the game is moddable – and built in Unreal Engine – I figured I’d have a bit of fun trying to mod it.

And mod it I did. This quickly spiralled into me releasing two mods for the game. They’ve been surprisingly popular (I now have a lifetime supply of Nexus Premium!), but I realized something: I never really took a break. I just burned myself out on something else.

Modding is a different kind of work, but it’s still work (arguably harder than making a game at times). Between managing comments, Discord messages and Nexus feedback, I completely derailed myself from Sin Spire.

So for that, I truly apologize. This was not the intention and I want to be clear: I am back working on Sin Spire now. I still think tinkering with modding was a worthwhile exercise as I might use this information for a future project.

Bug Hell

When I returned, my main goal was tackling the pesky dungeon generation bug. It had only appeared a couple of times in testing before the 0.0.5 release, but after seeing players report it consistently, I knew it needed attention.

However, since then, I haven’t been able to reproduce it once. I tried lowering my framerate, testing edge cases – nothing. And that’s incredibly frustrating.

The procedural generation system in Sin Spire is heavily modified, but not originally built by me. Going forward, for any future projects involving procedural systems, I’ll build them entirely myself. I’ve learned firsthand how awful it feels not knowing why something breaks – whether it’s due to my own work or inherited code.

That said, I’ll continue trying to resolve this bug when possible, but honestly, it might stick around until release – or even beyond. I hate saying that, but I want to be upfront about the limitations. I could spend the next month and a half hunting it down, or I can focus on finishing the game. I’ve decided the latter is more worthwhile for now, and I’ll revisit the bug later.

Unfortunately, this past week has been a bit of a wash in terms of content – no bug fix, no new features. So, I can’t promise a new build by the end of the month.

The Plan

Now that the rough stuff’s out of the way, let’s talk about what’s next.

The story content is nearing completion. Only two boss fights remain, along with a fully hand-crafted environment for the finale. Dialogue has already been recorded (with a few retakes underway), and the immediate aftermath of 0.0.5 is in place. The main focus now is finishing the ending and reaching beta.

But that’s not all I’ll be working on.

There are a few aspects of 0.0.5 that I’m not entirely satisfied with. While I’d love to revisit and refine the final two dungeons, my immediate priorities are:

• Fixing outstanding bugs

• Working on Purification Animations

The lack of new purification animations was one of the biggest criticisms of 0.0.5. They were unfortunately cut due to time constraints, but if I release anything before the end of June, it’ll likely be a bugfix + animation update.

As for the scenes with Savina and Ophelia, they’re still on the to-do list – but they’ll come after the final boss fights are complete.

Conclusion

This month’s been a bit of a bust but that’s just part of what happens when you’ve been developing something for a year. I’ll do my best to post another dev log next week, even if it’s a short one, so I can keep my promise of two logs per month. What I’ll have finished by then is up in the air – but I’ll keep pushing forward.

Thanks again to everyone who played the latest build and offered feedback or kind words. It really does mean a lot. Until next week – enjoy the weather and I’ll see you soon.