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[Jasper Byrne]

Thanks man!  It's going well so far - I've just uploaded a new blog post about it and XOR, the other title I'm working on.  I'm a bit concerned I won't make it to the early deadline, and my budget doesn't really stretch to the late entry fee - but we'll see... If I feel it has a chance, I might put in the extra time.

Edit: eye candy



Also, as this is the most official devlog still standing since thegamescollective.org folded a while back, I will list out some specific progress!

- Finalised the title screen and save game system.
- Wrote and remixed a bunch of tunes / ambience tracks, including the big intro music which has about 48 tracks of guitars and pianos and so on.  Tried to do a Silent Hill-esque number (not in style, but in feeling.)  Dying to share this tune, but will have to show restraint!
- Re-did all the sound effects and added about 3x more, puzzles have special sounds and so on.
- Created a new enemy and bunch of new locations, have a final design for the puzzles / rooms in the apartment world (1 of 3 main ones).
- Started damage and exhaustion filters to show the player's condition.
- Added an intro (got rid of the old one.)
- Wrote new 'HQ' grain effect which requires a bit faster machine, but looks great in fullscreen.
- Improved a lot of the backend and general handling of scripts, hotspots and so on.

Still to do in the near future:

- Finish painting the rooms in the apartment and its final section.
- Lay out the rooms in the editor, add their hotspots.
- Script the events in the final sequence and ending.
- Add a couple more puzzles to break up the action.
- Add map system.
- Add flashlight battery system, food / sleep system & GUI / filters.
- Add a game over / retry screen.

[Jasper Byrne]

Ok small progress update:

- Fixed some small bugs in the parser.
- Added a skip button to cutscenes.
- Added a couple of new puzzles (one of which is so nasty I think I might have to self-censor. )*
- Added two or three new rooms.

Next I'm looking at:

- The survival aspects.
- Game over screen.
- Apartment 1F rooms / cutscenes.

Progress is slower than hoped, so I'm now not sure if I can get it in for Indiecade.

* I'm not going for gore with this game, although it has some.  I'm trying to make it psychological horror, rather than physical.  This is one of the reasons I prefer SHII & 4 to SH & SH3, and also applies to the horror movies I enjoy.  That said, when it comes, it should be shocking and brief, so I'm kinda on the fence here.

[Ichigo Jam]

Not really on topic for this thread, but in case you didn't know: there was already a game called XOR on the speccy/C64. (Not that this should stop you calling your game that too if you want to!)

[Jasper Byrne]

Hey Ichigo Jam.  Definitely aware of the Speccy game, but I figure that's old enough to not really be an issue (if anything it kinda adds something!)

[Jasper Byrne]

It's getting close, but I'm going to need the extra fortnight I reckon.  If I feel it's strong enough by then, I'll bite the bullet and pay the 75 clams for Indiecade entrance.

Here are some new screenshots for you guys...

Always kinda dig it when you hear the movie / book / game title in a movie / book / game, so here is that moment.



Wait is he not the Lone Survivor?  What's going on?

[MaloEspada]

all those filters applied to the pixel art look amazing

[Jasper Byrne]

Thanks man - I think it's more exciting in motion because you get all the dither patterns overlapping with different colours, the moving fog and the noise and so on.

The way it's done is quite convoluted - it's probably a 8 pass process or something...  

- First comes the fog.  It's a simple Pixel Bender shader (so it runs on its own thread) which scrolls three copies of the same semi-transparent texture at different speeds  It always goes R-L, but nobody's noticed that so I'm fine with it!

- First lighting process is to prepare the virtual lights (the Pixel Bender shader I wrote supports three, one of which is used for the flashlight.)  The scene supports infinite virtual lights, but it wall only render the three nearest the camera, so this bit of code just assigns the properties of the two nearest virtual lights to their two spare shader brethren. This means setting up their colours and attenuation as well as the bitmap mask that's used to draw them, and nice things like glows, flickers and fades.  

- The light shader does its thing and is applied to the main buffer.

- Next is the warp shader, which is in use in the top screen, but probably not doing that much.  It's used to convey general fucked-up-ness.  This has four main parameters - the scratch texture in use (and its position) for old-movie type effects, a desaturation parameter, a blur parameter and TV+magnet-like sin-wave displacement thing.  A lot of the work is done code-side to get an interesting spread of parameters, and not have everything fuck up at once.

- That's then applied on top of the fog/light pass.

- In hi-fi mode (there's two modes, these shots are hi-fi,) two grain textures are applied, but updated at a slower framerate than the game (around 24fps which gives a nice filmy feel without sacrificing the smoothness of the game which is meant to go at 60fps.)  One grain texture runs at the same resolution as the background image, one runs in native resolution.  In this way you get both the individual 4x pixels flickering, as well as the more realistic per-pixel film grain.

- The very last process is to apply the vignette / special texture.  This texture took about two days to get right!  It has a very subtle set of four overlays which are more pronounced towards the edge...  First is a simulation of an RGB CRT, so each 4x pixel is split into a reg, green, blue and 'gap' pixel.  Then there's the scanlines, which are very subtle indeed in this one (don't want to hammer them in every game I make.)  The next step is a vignette, just a general darkening towards the edges, and finally my favourite, which is the weird 'outlined pixel' thing, which you can spot towards the edge- the pixels become more like individual spot of light, like a faulty CRT or something.  Didn't want it all over the image, as it's too strong and distracts from flat areas of colour such as the player's shirt, but I ike the way it breaks up towards the edge.

[Jasper Byrne]

Just a quick progress update here:

- Got inventory tallies appearing.
- Got the downward (leg) shot working, it makes the enemies retreat a bit, but doesn't do much damage.  Very useful when in packs.
- Made the headshot easier.
- Got gun reloading, automatically and via the menu.  The menu's realtime ala Demon's Souls in this game, so you can't reload while paused as in most RE / SH games.
- Added the ability to turn on and off the flashlight via the inventory menu.
- Added three or four new rooms.
- Completely redid the 'Thin Man' sound set, about 16 zombie noises and footsteps in all.
- Reduced enemy damage, increased the player's recoil time.
- Begun the introduction of the new enemy!

Have already gone past the deadline for Indiecade, there's another one in about 12 days, so I may well enter it... It feels like it's coming together well.

Next up is:

- Flashlight batteries / fading, dot a few around the world.
- Map?
- Finish the apartments 1F and the next section (probably best not to say what that is yet.)

[Jasper Byrne]

Progress update...

Here's my screenshot saturday:



Things progressing very fast, I'm on the final section of the Apartment building which makes up about 1/3 of the game.

- The flashlight and battery system is in and really helps the feeling of tension.
- I've reduced lighting across the board.  I think it helps!
- Done some new music for the nightmarish sections.
- There's a bunch more food items (and soda!)  Each has differing effects on your immediate health and the health you regain by sleeping.  Short and long-term energy I guess.  I'm not revealing any stats to the player (apart from flashlight battery and ammo counts.)
- I've done about ten new rooms, a couple of new cutscenes and puzzles.  There's now 45 locations, which are between 1 and 10 screens wide.
- Improved the heartbeat / visual pain indicators.
- The big finale is in the works.  Can't reveal too much about it though!  I hope to get it done in a week or so, then focus on bug-fixes and polish for the last couple of days.

[TheLastBanana]

This looks great. Looking forward to trying it out!

[Jasper Byrne]

Thanks man, appreciate the response as was starting to wonder whether I was just talking to myself in this devlog hehe. 

[Inanimate]

Yeah, the problem with devlogs is that sometimes I feel a bit funny responding... but rest assured, usually people are interested in your game.  I, for one, really love the aesthetics of this; it always lights me up whenever I see it.

[Hima]

Horror is one of my favourite genres ever so I really can't wait to try this.

[Cosr]

I just have to say that the palpable sense of atmosphere from just these still shots is delicious.

With the promise of hallucinations, I'm hoping for some good exploration of the protagonists damaged psyche, but I'm looking forward to this game in any event.

[MaloEspada]

Thanks man, appreciate the response as was starting to wonder whether I was just talking to myself in this devlog hehe. 

worry not; we are all here waiting to put our hands in this baby