that’s what it felt like today, a hecking battlefield, cause we did nothing but fight against bugs, glitches and awful code. Things got so bad the transitions stopped working altogether and if you ask me i’d come up with a blank.
this is the main reason i only made one cutscene in the “generic mode” that’s similar to how cutscenes in yakuza are handled. Many of the features that make this possible were outright broken and its effects were felt across many aspects of the game. At least battles work again and the setpiece came out pretty fine.
Sophie finished the outline for project X so i have to review that. I also somehow managed to squeeze time to do more sprites for it.
Tomorrow i hope we either come up with a new system for simple conversations or fix the one we have so i can continue with content generation.
all i did today was playtest newprogrammer’s progress and finish up concept art, then began doing sprites for project X. Again, doesn’t feel like much when i write it like this, but the act of drawing simply doesn’t sound complex or exciting, i just grab my wacom and listen random youtube stuff as i do work.
reiko is a cutie
What a week this has been, i was frankly at my limit yesterday after all the shit we did so i’m glad i get to do jackshit the next two days. See you all monday.
so there’s many issues that just came outta nowhere, like the player jumping and changing positions when shooting destructibles (and only happens with those..), enemy behavior being all erratic (bullets stuck in the air, grenades going through the floor) among other annoying stuff. No idea why everything’s suddenly acting weird and it’s worrying me plenty. Aside from the playtesting where i saw all of this i worked on a couple props and tidying up the scene replacing some of the placeholders, improving the lighting in some of the areas to start building the other section. I managed to play without stuff breaking (aside from what i mentioned) and it felt incredibly satisfying, so while that’s being fixed i’ll work on the rest of the level and its puzzles, for which i’m very optimistic since the tools we have for the game’s flow are proving to be solid as hell. it’s the combat where most of my headaches reside.
On project X I worked on some of the characters and began exploring some alternatives for the main layout. X is an adventure game, a classic genre where everything has been said and done, but i want to strike the perfect balance between it looking amazing from any shot and keeping things comfy and fast to produce, so i’d like to think this one through. right now i settled with small portraits while we get a feel for everything and then we’ll see where it takes us.
Lots of exciting work lately, if only D’s combat wasn’t such a clusterfuck below the hood.
more grind, including a return to project x now that its writer can work on it again, so i sketched part of the UI inside the engine and made a lot of new elements. tomorrow i’ll probably do some sprites for it (there’s very few characters, so this is gonna be comfy) and some concepts.
on project D i did more playtesting and will likely keep doing that after this post as newprogrammer fixes and adds things. right now battles for some reason refuse to end, and we gotta find out why. the destructibles i mentioned yesterday are done, and i finished work on new particle effects for bullet impacts that need a lot of tweaking but look certainly more flashy than the previous ones. sound also needs to be adjusted in that department. There’s some props i need to make and texture sets to be finished, but if i do everything today my brain will likely shut down. I haven’t crunched in a long ass while and won’t go back to those pesky habits anytime soon.
worked on more environments in project D, but i’m reaching a bit of a burnout phase with that project where i still wanna move forward but i know that if i push it too much i’ll end up hating life, so i’ll focus solely on n1rvanna and project x for the remainder of the week and go back to it with a fresh mind probably over the weekend or monday.
also did some minor graphical work on X and n1rvanna today, mostly exploring some workflows and ideas i had for some of the screens. i already had a design done for n1rvanna’s equivalent of jill’s room, but i discovered some cool things in n1rvanna’s engine that could possibly change what i had in mind, so tomorrow i’ll get on that some more and finish other pending things. the tool is basically done and we are in the middle of giving it the final touch ups to enter in the beta phase of that program, which took a surprisingly short amount of time to be made. I could swear we began the story editor last month but apparently work only really started on the 7th of this month. Crazy shit, but i’m happy nonetheless.
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.
