today most of the work on n1rvanna has been trying to build as much nodes as possible in the content editor in order to have the tools done as soon as possible. ran into a few issues that made the process slower but hopefully this will be over soon and ship a demo. I also began grayboxing new stages for project D that are gonna be used for cutscenes only or with limited exploration. These are my favorites because baking lighting is comfy and looks great.
In that order of ideas, I do have to look into portals so i can make chunks of the big levels their own thing so lighting isn’t a nightmare. That way i can keep things seamless, but we’ll see, since a classic survival horror fade-to-black transition can help with the pacing. It’s one of those cool videogame things i really like.
Not a whole lot of visual progress since most of the work has been code and planning. The planning right now is regarding the level for the project D demo. Been having issues with what i want to accomplish with this map and general outline of the story and it’s been kind of my hurdle at the moment. The models for the enemies and boss battle are almost done too and can’t wait for their implementation.
There might be a bit of a creative block too, but nothing that a little fiddling can’t solve. I’m getting to the point where i have to take some important decisions about the scope since i don’t want this to be a long term thing.
On the n1rvanna front it’s been just code. The game has already been ported over to the new engine and now we are developing the tools to create the content. It’s gonna be a cool node editor that’s gonna make creating responses for any case we want a breeze, and with the new features we implemented it’s a very necessary thing to actually see where things are heading.
here’s a gif of the cocktail creation i talked about the other day. You can give it a name, a description and an icon. It will then be saved to the recipe book.
i’m always careful with not revealing too many features from n1rvana, but fuck it, we (almost) finished these today.
So what you’re seeing here is something we’ve been meaning to do for a long time, which is basically giving players freedom to just serve whatever and have characters react to that whatever. Once you mix your ingredients, a confirmation window will show up and if it’s not a cocktail in the recipe book it will just generate a template that you can name and give a description to, even choose which icon it’s going to display, then it will be added to the recipe book for future reference. Essentially, you’re no longer locked to just serve or mix stuff from the calicomp terminal – we going open world, in a manner of speaking.
It’s not 100% done yet, we have to test it more in depth along with the game’s flow but it’s almost there. Tomorrow is a big playtesting day so let’s cross fingers.
Still working on the mixer parts of the framework and adjusting the shaking minigame you probably saw on some gameplay over at youtube. ran into some issues since, well, new engine and some things are a bit obscure and/or lack the same amount of resources as more popular software but we managed to fix it and we are now spearing ahead with the rest of things. Tomorrow we’ll likely playtest the shit out of the flow, include one last feature and begin the work on the node editor.
Went back to the previous dungeon and did a massive overhail to the assets. Nothing drastic, but allowed me to quickly decorate the walls.
For a brief explanation: i might be mentally challenged, because i already take advantage of these tools and whatnot. the thing is that i previously would sketch out the level using polyshape in probuilder, and then painstakingly decorate everything, wall by wall… with the small adjustment i made, i did the simplest trick know to mankind: wall modules using prefabs. I know, i know, a seasoned unity dev would surely say that this is the obvious way, but i’m slow and didn’t occur to me despite this exact same process being key to larger levels, like the favela-looking one.
with this work flow i was able to turn hallways from this
to this
please don’t point out the different lighting, i know it’s a drastic change and the lighting is not the point, but rather how quickly i added detail to the walls by using prefab modules. i’ll adjust the lighting later. What i appreciate the most about this is that i no longer have to go placing lamps, lights and other details wall by wall around the level, and now i’m going to use this for future levels. This also incidentally allows for procedural generated levels…
on n1rvanna we went over what needs to be done for the mixer and work is already under way, some first tests are expected to be done today. not much to say other than that. yeah i know, n1rvanna is in a tricky space when it comes to project relevancy and has more secrets that need to be kept secret for a while longer, but bear with me – a vague update is better than nothing.
for X i continued doing the sprite, which is taking longer due to lack of a good reference for the materials and color palettes i want to use, but it’s looking good none the less.
reminder to go over the preliminary geo sent by the 3d team and point out quirks, and design two important characters for the favela-looking level.
Been debugging the dialogue system in n1rvanna before proceeding with adding the mixer. First bump in the road but wasn’t too big, still on schedule. Finished some other screens such as the mysterious game mode i mentioned and now i need to do the hub and some others, but those will take longer as i have to draw new graphics for it thanks to some ideas i got.
on X i’m almost done with the new sprite, reminder to export ui elements and watch some sci fi films to get even harder in the groove. Planning stages for the next level in D are still underway, currently waiting on new models to start polishing stuff for a public demo(!)
One of the things of having a log about progress on all the announced and unannounced projects i’m working on is that i can’t freely talk about them without giving the impression that i’m spreading myself too thin. I’m not! I just really really like to make games, so please don’t think the wrong way if i start writing down progress on what i’ve dubbed Project X, which began a couple months ago and of which i made some progress today by sketching out the sprite for another of the characters.
finished the main bar ui in n1rvanna and adjusted the templates for the characters, and new programmer is still going deep into building all systems. It’s a bit of work since it’s a new engine with its own language so that involves a lot of googling for the small things, but even with all of that work has been steady and we might even make that self-imposed deadline i talked about yesterday. Next would be to finish other screens in n1rvanna, namely the hub, chapter selection and the new game mode i can’t talk about just yet. The assets are done already, i just need to put them together inside their respective scenes.
still getting used to the new engine, but the good news is that i’ve laid out most of the ui and will probably finish it tomorrow. new programmer was able to get stuff going and do some tests by running content using the new workflow. It’s possible that this whole process of porting the game will take roughly one or two weeks depending on the issues that arise. If i finish early tomorrow i’ll go back to some pending stuff on project D, mainly fixes in one of the environments and start laying out a set piece i’ve had in mind for a while. The proyect is moving, finally.
So the next updates are going to be really fuckin’ weird. Thing is, a lot of time has passed since n1rvanna was announced, it’s the signature project and i don’t want people to speculate on things i can’t spill details on. In short, i can’t be as transparent as I am with project D.
What I can say right now is that the development environment changed and we are currently porting the whole project to another engine. This won’t affect the content made, visuals or anything you can see on the outside that’s already out there (the game is not being remade from zero), but it does definitely mean the game will actually ship within our lifetimes as things will move ahead in a more consistent basis, even though i’ll give the impression that we are doing work that musta been done like two years ago.
So the progress in this front is development of some tools, and how long it takes depends on today’s work. It’s likely that the week ahead will be dedicated to n1rvanna for this very reason, as we want to leave the game in a state where we just write nice stories, make pretty pictures and great music.
I know I said I wasn’t gonna show this area but fuck it, i finished it today since i didn’t have anything to distract me from it.
still working on the cutscene editor, after that is polishing menus since they look hella ugly, and integrate the fmod behaviors.
went back to the favela scene to polish a bit more as well and settle on a lighting model. looks like i reached a sweet spot and just need to start placing the artificial lights around the level.
