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[oahda]

Yo. This post feels sort of bumpy, but if anybody cares, here's what's going on anyway.

UPDATE 86(?)

Not really a real update in the same vein as the others, and not actually an update on the game, but rather what's holding me back from working on it, and some of  so maybe I shouldn't number this, but here goes anyway.


Status report

So I've been taking a break from this for a little while now, but only indirectly, as you will see. There are a couple of reasons, beyond the usual stress, fatigue and feelings I can't seem to ever really escape from, which is something I'll just have to take for granted at this point.


Other games

A detour was the usual participation in Ludum Dare alongside Marte and Morten. I'm dead set on doing each and every one of those, because it's a great experience and always useful practice.



Can be played here.

We've also had to work a little extra hard recently at my day job to have a build of a first version of the educational game we're making there so that school classes could start using it from September and on. We don't do crunch, luckily, but it was still more intense than usual and rather tiring. But we made it.

However, this, in combination with some other stuff ("life") took away basically all the time to play other people's LD games before the final date (tho I'm not sure what the date would signify when there are no ratings...), so I should try and squeeze in some time to do that if I can find it. :c


Brushing up

This, however, is the main reason I'm currently holding myself back from doing any more work on the engine or the game.


C++

I got a book:



I've decided not to touch my codebase at all at least until I finish reading this book. I might watch a few more talks before I do, too. I'm almost done now, and may well finish it today if I find the time to read some more (currently on lunch break at day job working from home while typing this post up).


Shaders

My excitement for graphics programming hasn't ended, and I've been using Unity as a playground to do some shader experiments...



Knowledge that will surely be useful no matter what I make.


Miscellaneous

I guess in general I've been doing more with 3D too. I also tried out Unity's networking stuff and got that working.


Side projects

This has nothing to do with the break, but I'm making a note about this anyway.

I have the other project PUSE going on with Marte. However, Marte isn't really feeling up to this kind of stuff ATM, and it's definitely a key aspect of that project that we're in it together, so I'll be holding off on that in the meantime as well.

I feel like I need something to help me not burn out on Vatnsmyrkr, however, so I might be setting up a solo side project instead in the meantime. I have an idea that I'm a bit excited about. Maybe I'll end up making that my main instead and being a big traitor to this project. Who knows? I used to be horrible at committing to projects, but I've been amazingly faithful to Vatnsmyrkr by my own standards so far. It's also possible to combine some of the ideas. Some of them also fit into PUSE. Big mess. We'll see. I don't think this other thing will exist as more than ideas on paper for a while anyway.

[JobLeonard]

Scott Meyers. That means it's not exactly lightweight material, right?

[oahda]

Scott Meyers. That means it's not exactly lightweight material, right?

It's an interesting balance. The terminology and the code examples are definitely your usual textbook material, but he also employs some non-conforming language, like the section that reads "Damn, damn, damn!" or "Here, look:", which feels slightly out of place... Nonetheless, very useful material. I've learned a lot.

[JobLeonard]

Well he's considered one of the greats, so no surprises there

[oahda]

Yeah, definitely. There's a little chit-chat about this in the happy programmer room ATM.

[JobLeonard]

Programmers... happy? Huh?

[Franklin's Ghost]

Can't believe I hadn't seen this before.

Just finished going through the whole devlog and it's such an interesting thing to see it evolve and change as you progressed over the years. Liked seeing how you'd originally envisioned it and then how you're able to achieve some of those goals in later posts.

Also since I've followed and played your last few Ludum Dare games it was interesting to see them pop up in posts which gave me more of an understanding of the time passing in between.

Sorry to see you haven't posted in awhile but I do think sometimes a long break from a project is all you need to one day come back and be re-inspired to continue it. Those final visuals you'd achieved and the introduction of the jellyfish from your early sketches was great to see and the water level puzzle dynamics you were playing with looked like they were coming along.

[oahda]

Hey! Thanks.

Heh, your saying over the years actually scared me a bit. I went back to see when the OP was made, and I hadn't realised it was that long ago. In some ways, I guess that's actually a bit depressing. Slow me!

I've actually not given up on this, and I'm actually somewhat actively working on it right now, but I've been going back to a lot of the really low-level stuff that doesn't have much to do with the game specifically, so I haven't felt like I could post about any of it, tho I do update Twitter in case anybody's interested (link in signature). I guess I'll use your bump to describe it briefly now that I'm replying to you anyway tho.

Made a quick thing in Unity to give an idea of the 3D geography while retaining 2D sidescroller mechanics that I've been pondering for a long time:
• https://twitter.com/avaskoog/status/824748016334675969

Been doing 3D from scratch in OpenGL properly to learn more, since I want to render actual 3D geometry in the game, just never got there:
• https://twitter.com/avaskoog/status/817098357839634433
• https://twitter.com/avaskoog/status/814246304146685960

And then there's all the low-level stuff to make the game run better, reach more platforms more easily and for the workflow to be nicer, which I won't bother you with here, but the programming threads in the technical sections outline my progress there quite well since they've basically been my diary (and again, Twitter).

And since you mentioned it, we did LD again of course, so I'll leave the link here (thanks for playing)!
• http://ludumdare.com/compo/2016/12/13/jam-entry-lock-and-reload/

You do touch on an important point when talking about breaks to get inspiration: there is still some uncertainty as to where I wish to be heading with this project, some unanswered questions, and just a lot of general design still missing, so I need to be considering that as well, going back to basics where necessary. But all in all, this is still a project I'm interested in completing, even if the end product ends up nothing like the original ideas.

[JobLeonard]

Slow and steady...

[diegzumillo]

I really like this project and this devlog! Your non-game related updates are just as interesting (now that I'm a twitter user and I found you there I think I'll see more of it!)

Heh, your saying over the years actually scared me a bit. I went back to see when the OP was made, and I hadn't realised it was that long ago. In some ways, I guess that's actually a bit depressing. Slow me!

You do touch on an important point when talking about breaks to get inspiration: there is still some uncertainty as to where I wish to be heading with this project, some unanswered questions, and just a lot of general design still missing, so I need to be considering that as well, going back to basics where necessary. But all in all, this is still a project I'm interested in completing, even if the end product ends up nothing like the original ideas.

I can relate to all of that.

[oahda]

Thanks for the support! ♥︎

[oahda]

Not much, but just to give you a general idea. I'll try and keep it short.

UPDATE 87

Don't have much time in general due to day job and such, and I'm mostly experimenting and playing around with stuff to see what I can do with it, but it's starting to resemble something again...


Cross-platform stuff

A lot of the recent efforts have gone into setting up a cross-platform build system that's as automated as possible. My old cmake stuff worked, but it was clunky and required a lot of manual fiddling. My current goal is to make everything work with minimal setup on the command line so that I can invoke things from a graphical interface. I switched to using premake for most targets.

This is going quite well, and I can now build and run on six systems this way: Mac, Linux, Windows, iOS, Android and web. Started with the hello world triangle, of course, and shot this ridiculous photo:



Then I got beyond that and got the submarine model in there, to make it a bit more representative of the game that will eventually run on there:



I'm also able to build remotely over SSH on another computer, so that I can build for Mac, iOS, Android and web on my Mac and for Linux and Windows on my borrowed Ubuntu laptop to the side, all at the same time. Here's an mockup of a graphical interface in the editor I've started working on using ImGui:




Editor

So yeah, the editor. Last time around that I was working on this game, I didn't have one. Everything you saw was just painstakingly placed by coördinates in an XML file. Going to make things a bit nicer this time. The editor will also handle building, as you saw, and will set up new projects with all of the automated build stuff in place, handle resources and stuff like icons for all build targets, and so on.



Wrote my own docking system for this. Can also undock into system windows, but also ImGui windows as seen here.


What else?

Stuff. Code stuff. Boring. I'll talk more about that when there's more visual feedback, maybe. But it's nice. Nicer to work with and so on.

Interested in Switch development eventually, if possible. Still don't even have the console tho.

More to come...

[JobLeonard]

That cross-platform development setup... I'll be in my bunk.

Also, you're a trooper for all the multi-platform support!

[oahda]

guess one usually does these the first week and not after a couple of years, but here's a moodboard of what's currently in my head

i think i've also got an idea for the art style and the camera mechanics; more later



(picture 3 from the right on the second row, with the city by sea, incredibly looks just like what i had in mind when i tried to sketch a similar scene that i never finished)

• big
• bigger

[JobLeonard]

Eh, sometimes mechanics come first, moodboard later?

[oahda]

True. But this game definitely started from a mood (simple LD game) more than anything, heh.

But hey, this moodboard also reflects certain changes to intended mechanics: only about half of the pictures are actually underwater! hint hint

[JobLeonard]

oooooooh...

[oahda]

Basically I'm going "fuller" (as opposed to full?) 3D.

I already referenced the tweet where I had the idea of 2D mechanics in a 3D space. I've got a slightly more expanded idea now: the game will dynamically be changing perspective, camera angle and movement dimensions depending on where you are, but still generally stick to 2D mechanics depending on what suits the area at hand.

If you've played Crash Bandicoot, you'll know that some levels are third person from the back, some from the front, and some are in a sidescrolling view. I'm having similar ideas, but with smooth camera transitions between the different states, as this isn't the kind of game that's divided into "levels" but takes more of an open world approach. Hope that makes sense.

So in one area you might be crossing streets or scaling buildings in a side view, with two movement axes being left/right and up/down, while in another area you may be sneaking behind walls in a top-down or third person kind of view, able to move left/right and forward/backward. And in the side view you'll still be able to turn around corners like in the tweet.

Basically a proper 3D engine but with mostly 2D restrictions on the level design. Hope that makes sense. Does it seem like a good idea?

[JobLeonard]

Aaah, so "2.5D"

Well, depends on your technical skills I guess? If 3D is easier to implement, go for that. I'm sure that sticking to 2D for the level design simplifies that aspect a lot!

[oahda]

Yeah, no problem there—I was really wondering whether it feels like a good idea from a gameplay perspective to you as a player.