22: Work on environments. Playtesting threw interetsing results in that I probably need to go back to the drawing board to better connect events and change their place in the game’s flow. No rewrites or anything, just better positioning/pacing if that makes any sense. Gotta think in flowcharts instead of linear like a movie script.

23: More work on environments and some writing. Still stuck on what should be done. Might take a while.

24: Mostly environment and shader work. Stress-free comfy work as I’m apparently understanding level design at a deeper level.

Have a great weekend!

Did what I do when I have writer’s block: Environment stuff. Nothing I can show but had lots of fun regardless. Newprogrammer did a quick saving feature so I can debug things without going thru the game again but we have some issues where one of the dialogues will only trigger the last line. We have no idea why that happens only on my side (the suspect so far seems to be Unity collab but who knows).

Back to work after taking a week to heal from some ear issues. Already went to the doctor and everything’s good.

Spent most of the day writing but didn’t get very far. I’m having some serious writer’s block but at least we had an impromptu group playtesting thru stream to play the whole chapter, and things are looking good so far. Combat needs love, and pacing details need to be baked in the game’s flow to automate a bunch of the style choices. I hope I can continue writing tomorrow or at least come up with a better way of approaching this. An anti-writer’s block method? I wonder if sucha thing exists.

Knee deep in writing at the moment. Finished Chapter 5, started Chapter 6 which is the end of the story. Very excited and nervous, not gonna lie.

Tomorrow more writing while newprogrammer wraps up some extra tools.

Things are moving kinda fast!! very nice!!

Spent most of the day writing and that’s pretty much it. I did also draw a bunch in order to explain the map’s flow to newprogrammer so that was fun. He’s knee deep doing what needs to be done in order to make it work and that’s what he’ll probably do the rest of the week. My aim is to finish this script tomorrow and then start a new one pronto.

Things are pretty interesting!

Been a bit out of it with an ear infection but it’s getting better. Today I implemented sound again in the project (this a clean slate we began in like March or April, I forgot) and finally added footsteps, which were missing from the previous project iteration. People just don’t get how much that shit adds to the mood, lol.

For now there’s only one set of sounds for footsteps, later we’ll add bespoke ones for every type of material.

Newprogrammer has been debugging today and tomorrow the dungeon will get implemented into the episode’s flow. Got a bit behind on that one but should be good to go this week.

If there’s not a lot to do regarding that implementation on my side I’d like to write more. It’s pretty funny that I’ve been saying that for like weeks or some shit, but there’s always a pressing issue to take care of.

Finally done with the pending rooms and places, now I can move on for the time being.

Next step is to apply teleports, battle zones, puzzles, etc. in some other scene. Fun shit!

Newprogrammer is gonna handle that at the moment, now I have to make some other props and write a bit. Very exciting stuff.

Some of the places I’ve been working on.

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It’s that time of the year.

Finished two floors from the level, 2 more to go and the boss stage. I should have finished all of that today but got a tad sidetracked with some experiments I shouldn’t be doing at the moment (classic of me, really). Though I might just keep working after I post this and wrap all that up. Not like I have much to do for the rest of the night.

Almost done with the main “dungeon/stage” for this chapter. A rather simple set up that I hope to keep developing as time goes on and I gain more experience. I’m writing this in the middle of work just to have the archive up before I forget. When I go back to it in a bit I’ll wrap up what’s left to do (three more rooms and the stage where you face the boss) then finally go back to writing before I polish the assets on the rest of the scenes.

Newprogrammer hooked a first person bit and we talked about integrating grappling moves (something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time) now that we have a better understanding of this engine. Once the dungeon is hooked into the flow then that would be… roughly three weeks? for a full chapter to be completed in very rough shape with stuff being programmed on the fly, so that’s very good. Means we can actually finish an alpha build by early next year.

Been busy working on the last environment for the chapter for the past 2 days and it was gratifying yesterday after testing a lil workaround with prefabs that allows me to replace textureless blocks with polished assets in one click. Today though it was quite miserable since my mind wasn’t quite there after not sleeping very well. Dunno how many times I’ll stumble upon the same rock! Please get a nice sleep, to anyone working on anything at all.

I don’t have an ETA on when I can have a fun layout going on but I’m close. For now… No More Heroes 3 time. Good thing it’s almost weekend.