I mentioned that I would update more frequently and that I would find a more optimal way to write and archive these, but none have come to fruition. Not gonna worry about that, I just find it funny.
Been pretty busy with non-work stuff for the past week and a half too. Just lots of things going on between paperwork and problems in my apartment that needed to be figured out.
Lots of progress, though.
While I can’t list everything, much of what was accomplished has been quite big. The task that took me the longest was writing the game’s lore inside a local Wiki that I can cross-reference while writing. I decided to do this after noticing how much redundant dialogue there is currently, and in order to avoid this I had to find a way to properly order my thoughts and ideas on this world we made. You know, to make sure every piece of dialogue is worth having in the game and that they all provide something different.
I was also able to build the whole “second” level and make it playable relatively quick. A friend tested it and I’m on the right path, I just need to fix the latter half of it with a more interesting backtrack. There’s a new type of enemy already implemented and I’m currently drawing new concept art for things that need to be modeled.
The bulk of work has been what I mentioned about the lore, which took most of the past month (two and a half weeks, I think) and I’m still not done. It felt as if progress suddenly halted but it was needed.
Another thing we needed was to clean the project and do some light refactors, like getting rid of code we don’t need and make elements in the inspector easier to read.
I’m pretty excited since most new features are all small and they don’t require much maintenance. Only issue at the moment is finding a good way to debug gameplay but we’ve already built a bunch of tools for that. I just hope we don’t forget to turn them off for the final build.
There’s this pesky issue that keeps happening where players spawn below the desired geometry and it’s driving me crazy, but it’s so far limited to two rooms. Maybe the fixes haven’t been applied to those.
Here’s hoping I can regain the rhythm I had before the crazy week that happened.
Omake
Gonna post some concept art since it’s all cool stuff you’ll see anyway, or won’t make it to the final product.
This is how the man currently looks like in the game. I tend to model the very essentials such as shape and main colors first, with the final size too in order to iron out details before texturing. The current process takes a couple days from concept art to first playable version. The whole thing involves rigging, some crude animation work and basic particle effects just to get all references right.
Illustration of the main character, Reila.
I had a lot of fun doing this even though it wasn’t part of my plans yesterday. I’m glad I didn’t stop myself from drawing it since it allowed me to find the feel for certain things I was having trouble with. The game is finally acquiring its final form and I love it.
Let this be a reminder: It’s okay to find the soul of your work along the way.