Making great progress yet again! Gorgeous background art and cool to learn even more about the characters and story.

Nice to hear about all the background stuff even if it's not as interesting to show too, seeing the reality of what goes into it all.

It shouldn't be weird since humans are at odds with other humans in most human-centric stories, but with other animals it feels like it's always cross-species to the point it feels like an interesting subversion to see rabbits quarrelling with other rabbits here! I do like that.

Nice!

Thank you both No select/remove at the time of writing but yes, that's the plan~

[After all the prototyping and hand-coded schedules it's finally time to get some real content into the game once and for all!]

56

Schedule editor

Hello! Still lots to do but past this point I have to do some thinking, so here's the update on the recent sneak peek.



This update focusses on the editor functionality so please excuse the surrounding jank I've disabled the watercolour shader, the collisions are a bit off, and that's not one of the new character models since they're not animated yet.

Why?

After all the prototyping and hand-coded schedules it's finally time to get some real content into the game once and for all!

I'm rushing through making this editor as fast as possible. It only needs to be just good enough for me to be able to add stuff visually without frustrations. It's all the same underlying data and systems as before, now with an interface.

How?

The editor has always been on top of the actual game so playback is running the same simulation code.

For now the schedules are saved with the scene using the same serialisation system as everything else. I might want to adjust that later to keep memory usage and file size down, but it was a nice way to get up and running with this immediately.

In short, basically everything was in place already to make this a fairly easy addition at this point, which was nice!

What?

Hopefully the GIF speaks mostly for itself. It's basically like a video editor timeline where the "clips" are the different schedule event types. Moving, waiting, talking, changing animations…

You jump into recording mode and you can start adding stuff. Some event types are missing but these are the most useful ones besides the kind used to set situational metadata for the snapshots we've seen before.



Things are as automatic as possible, for example precalculating a movement path on the navigation mesh and setting a duration based on the distance and "gait" (walk, jog, run…).

Where and when?

Everything is colour-coded so that the timeline matches the gizmos in the 3D viewport so I can see time as well as place of an event, also highlighting the currently active one by giving the label a background in the timeline and making the gizmo bigger in the scene.

Here's a still of another test with a right skewer-looking pile of gizmos:



Whither?

Where does this all lead? Here's the result of the above in game, tho again with all the jank mentioned at the beginning



I still have things to add especially regarding synchronising multiple schedules.

I also need to set up animations for the new models and bring some stuff over from the Unity prototype. So there will probably be at least one or two more update cycles before I really get going. But things are looking good!

[RealScaniX]

Thanks, everyone! Yeah, this is also just (one of) my spare time project(s) so yeah, it can be hard to find the time or energy sometimes but these bursts are better than nothing

RealScaniX, that's more or less how it used to work, but since I decided that you can no longer interact in the past (it's more like walking through 360 footage now) it's no longer necessary, which means I can premake all of this stuff, serialise it, and easily jump to any point in the timeline without simulating up to that point, which is going to make it easier to work with.

The old system will still be used a little bit for interactions in the present timeline tho. You can still make changes to the past by coaxing additional info out of your witnesses, but it's just a "branch" system now so also premade and thus needs no logic, just needs to check a flag for what branch to use. That said it's hopefully going to be quite sprawling and provide almost the same effect as a truly dynamic system.

Oh, I love those tools for generating/shaping geometry. Those are always fun to make and use Continued impressive rate of progress in this thread. And yeah, the graphical changes made a big difference! I did like how the cylinder faded into the void in the old one tho.

Heyy, two really neat updates since I was last here! Looks like you had some great luck finding an artist in the end, very talented and really does match the preestablished style, very cool

The zodiac system sounds cool too! Definitely prefer logo style B too and the moons made from the letters are nice. Since you had some planty branches going on with the text boxes I wonder if some similar flourishes could work in the logo too, or if it's too much.

Some cool new updates Good work on the accessibility stuff, always nice to have more options.

That's really spacious for one person! Or do you have someone else on board too? Hope it's a nice fit either way And looking forward to seeing that bouncing charged light in the game!

Took another month-ish break but back on it again.

No big update yet but a little preview:

So cool!

Wow, you got a lot done already since releasing the last game! Looks really good

Thanks for all your great replies c': Hope I can get the light right. And the train.

Some of this stuff is older than the game so I'm glad I was able to mesh it all together and make everything more developed as a result.

(and that old blockout game is cool!!)

Thanks Prinsessa for always making sure my posts make it to the next page :D

Oh yeah, that was twice in a row

New update is shorter but nice too. Know how finicky cameras are, sure there was a lot of work behind it! Good to hear you figured it out.

Another great update with more cool lore and art! Fun to see the concepts too. Surprisingly windy in that cave

Almost two weeks since that update now, so hope you had luck with the artist, or that you will soon if not

55

Culture

Something infernal is in the air! I come back to the forums after weeks away, and one thread shows burning mechanics and another a cosy fireplace. And here I am to discuss flames as well.



Some fire I made some time ago. Might use a similar technique for this game.

I haven't really worked on the game per se since last, but coming up with names for characters I got inspired to get back into working more on the language stuff, which informed new ideas about the culture, and in turn some things for the actual game.

So how about some lore story time in the interim?

Fire

Game plays out in a seaside town. But a deeper history permeates the cultural sphere of the area. The mountainous backdrop of the setting is the link to the original homelands, where volcanic soil offered fertile ground for settlements, making the fiery craters kind of a big deal, also for being, well, dangerous.

Maybe eruptions are precisely why some people moved away. But they took their fire, and their reverence for it, with them. And the new settlement remains built around a central hot spot.



Hopefully I can show this shrine with an actual fire lit soon enough.

The same word, mee refers both to fire and to the centre or core of something, such as this town square. In the home this would be the hearth, in the middle of a combined kitchen and living room. Where it’s not necessary or practical to have a literal fireplace, a symbolic mee can be seen, such as a fountain, a flowerbed, or a chandelier.

Water

Of course in the new location of our previously rocky friends the sea is also a big deal.



Updated 3D blockout of Appa with fancy filters to mask the incompleteness. The reality is far more colourful!

The town, like the game, is named for this, ảo meaning salt or sea, and Appa (Ảhba) being a derivative thereof. It also refers to kelp and other edible seaweed, which are cultivated and harvested here.

Of course besides all the stuff powered by naturally flowing water, this has also led to a nautical way of life for many residents. Ships and other boats. That lighthouse where our main character lives, itself a kind of mee on the water.

Anchors

Sailing around on them ships, occasionally finding another spot in the area to live on, the expression "to drop anchor" came to also mean "to settle down". In a fusion of the extended senses of "devoting oneself to something" and "settling on an agreement", the word ảdla today refers to the task of our good friend from the previous devlog update, the town coordinator, Atwa. Settling agreements. Making deals. Coordinating people's devotions.



Atwa, Ảhdo, literally means anchor. There is no difference between titles and names.

Thus people in town who are able to contribute something to the community go through the coordinator to figure out how it can best benefit everyone. Again our main character as we know has settled, or cast their anchor, in the lighthouse, helping shippers to safely do the same in the literal, original sense.

Steam

If you're not heading to sea, perhaps you're going back deeper into the hilly mainland. As old meets new so does fire meet water as you hop on a train cart pulled by a locomotive with a steam engine (both the same word: dodsa).



Another spiced up image of the 3D blockout. Can't wait to design a proper train!

Ceremonies

Another collision of the two times and places in history greets us early in the game as we see the funeral of one of the characters in the first witness account from none other than Atwa. Once again the big mee on the square is involved, lit up in the evening as attendees of the rite bid their farewells. A torch is lit from the bonfire and the boat holding the honoured is set ablaze and allowed to drift to sea while the same is done to paper lanterns that accompany the vessel into the night.



Have some happy whales instead of an actual funeral. There will be more houses so not quite as clear a view.

The bonfire is also used on less unfortunate occasions, or even just as a nice place to gather on a cold winter's day. Depending on the purpose, substances are used to colour the fire and the smoke in different ways. When there is no fire, it may be decorated as a flower bed, again with meaningful variations. It may also serve as something of a wishing well but with the offerings consumed by flames, another leftover from the volcano days.

We can also see these dualities represented in Appa's emblem, of water and fire, wet and dry, dark and light, night and day. It goes on. The sun rising between the ancestral mountains and setting on the horizon of the new home by the sea. Old and new~ Nothing we haven't seen a million times over in the real world, and perhaps cheesy, but I like this sort of stuff!



Anyhow, that's enough filler content! See you again!

Thank you all <3

For the highlights reading as pupils, I don't think that's something to avoid necessarily. I lean into it a bit for the SPSD aliens for instance and I think it looks good, so it's really more of a creative choice than anything imo:

Oh, these look so good!! Definitely works IMO too

Wow, it's really coming together! Very cosy backdrop. Cool how they move in that more twitchy, exaggerated fashion, like, well, rabbits.

Very understandable But it's nice just to hear from you!

[BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Burning Down the House

(or at least the trees and bushes)

Hey everyone,

I crunched like crazy for the last few days, because I did not want to do a simple devlog this Friday. I also wanted to release the features I have worked on, so players can check them out right away in the Steam Playtest. I made it and I think it was worth it. So everything I talk about today can be explored by all you fine people right away.

Those of you following along might know that I have been implementing environmental effects lately. The first one allows you to freeze rivers and lakes, now you can light things on fire. This one turned out really cool in my opinion, because so many systems interact here: Fire has a chance to propagate, which is connected to the weather system. It is less likely for fire to spread if it is raining.

Trees burn down bit by bit. The first time you set them on fire their leaves burn away, then the upper part and so on until only the roots are left. Everytime a part burns, ash and wood materials spawn.

The spiky circles as seen in the image above indicate where fire causes damage to you and enemies. So you can utilize burning objects by kiting enemies into them.

The game world feels so much more alive now that the environmental effects are getting done one by one and I can't wait to continue working on the "arcane" environmental effect.

Let me know what you think or if you have questions and have a great weekend!

Alain

Woahhh, this is fantastic!! Very satisfying to see the end result of, and probably a lot of fun to work on as well? You're right, it really does come alive. Graphically very pretty too. Does it have sound yet?