For the digging element, if you were to decide to keep it in, you can still have puzzles that players can screw up without having save states and resets as long as you have alternate ways of travel. Since you had plans for this to be more free roam metroidvania style, it'd be perfectly reasonable to have alternate routes to areas that can be messed up. That way the puzzles wouldn't be about making things possible it'd be about making them easier.

Another possibility would be to have the rooms reset each time you enter them, (though that could get tedious for players if you're doing a lot of backtracking)

Or you could go for a sort of Dark Souls II style of fast travel, when you can find hidden bonfires/crystals/totems/whatever that act as fast travel hubs. This could also help to limit backtracking if the map gets very expansive.

But yeah, I love the concept for this game, it looks incredibly unique and the mechanics look really fun so far. The character designs are all really interesting and I can't wait to see what the final product looks like. =)

This place is a mess, a mess wouldn’t be complete without a leaking pipe. (I might change it to only 1 pixel wide instead of two so it doesn’t look like a flood of water) So I have about 3/4 of the basement art completed. I’m gonna try to get the basement completed, and implemented by the end of the week, though next weekend I work 4 over nights, then I’m moving the week after so updates will be a bit more sporadic until things settle down.

I also played around with a possible monster design. I kinda like it, but I’m not sure if it will fit the theme or not XD

Anyways, have a good day~

@RedGreenBlue: I really do like the close-up camera thing, it's definitely my favorite look, the issue is that the game is going to be very story heavy, and the close up sprites just aren't going to convey the emotion that I want them too. So I think I'm going to have to go with number 2.

@Nuprahtor: Thanks =) I think I'm definitely going with #2 unless someone comes up with a better alternative or suggestion.

This looks super cool. The art style is great, from the looks of it you're using Gameboy Classic art restrictions right?

So here are all 3 NPC conversation options, I’m definitely leaning towards options 2 and 3 over option 1. Option 1 would be cool getting to draw some nice character art, but it’s just too out of place, and I think option 2 will give me the best blend of detailed character art, while still keeping a consistent style.

If you have opinions or suggestions let me know. =)

@Somin: You're totally right. I wasn't even paying attention to the shadows. I'll fix it and post an update of it in a bit. Thanks for the help. =)

@Dan: Thanks =)

Sorry for the lack of updates the past few days. I’ve been hesitant to do anything else while the graphical glitch I was experiencing wasn’t fixed. Unfortunately I still haven’t found a solution, so I’m just gonna have to deal with it for now, and fix it whenever I can figure it out. If it means reworking a bunch of the code then I’ll just have to do that.

I currently have almost all of the first of three floors for the prototype done, and I’m starting to do the graphics for the next two.



This is the walking up stairs room transition. It doesn’t look as good as I would've liked, but it doesn’t actually have to loop in game so I think it’ll be okay.

Just a small update to say it's not dead again. Just stuck.

Don't worry, text speed will be an option, and pressing 'E' a second time quick completes the text. I didn't show it in this video mainly because people don't know what I'm pressing, so I didn't want it to look like text was glitching or something. =)

[forgot to make a post about this]




Here’s a little gameplay preview. I’m really sorry for the poor quality, I only had livestream for recording which doesn’t give the best results.

The song is Empty Soul by VegetarianMeat http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/61315

I got a little more involved working on the rats then I'd expected to. They'll now randomly check they're surroundings, and walk around freely, though if they get to close to the player they'll run away. (It's not a huge thing, but it was nice working on something simple to add a bit more atmosphere)



Just a little comparison of two possible conversation options. I was thinking of going for a more visual novel approach, and have very detailed conversation sprites, but after comparing the two I’m leaning towards the blown up overworld sprites instead. It just feels more consistent. I’ve still got to do a lot of shading and refining to the top version if I do go with that.

So the plus of doing version one is that it’ll let me show off the character’s emotions a lot better, and give a better impression of what they look like, which might make it more engaging. Down side is it’s a lot more work, and it doesn’t looks as consistent visually (though I may be able to fix that depending on how I color it)

For version two, it’s a LOT less work, looks more consistent, but doesn’t have as much flexibility as far as expressions and emotions for the characters.

I might try to put something together to combine the two somehow, though I'm not sure how I'll go about that yet. Maybe a medium res pixel art version or something.

I did a thing. Animating is such low res is a massive pain btw. XD

P.S. Happy Halloween 

Thanks Caiys! I did both of those. Unfortunately I'm on 8.1 so they said they wouldn't be able to help me, but the forum might. Which I get they're working on Studio now and can't focus on old builds, but it still sucks XD

The forum however have been pretty helpful, it seems to just been and issue with viewport scaling in GM, and I think I should be able to get a solution soon. So yay progress. XD

I forgot to mention I have screen transitions working, and I'm planning to do a small gameplay video soon. It'll just be a small thing to show off screen transitions and the lighting I've been working on. I'll see if I can get that up in the next few days.

Tonight is my last night at work before I have a few days off, so I should be able to post some proper updates in a few days with screenshots and such. =)

Yeah, it happens to the backgrounds too, nothing I've tried has seemed to fix the problem either.

I agree the font is too detailed. I've been looking for something Home, or Clue inspired like

but everything I've found is either WAY to thin, or just a little to bulky and thick. :/

I'm still plugging away on the GUI. I think I've got it all working right now, though I'm still doing some tests and tweaking some positioning. No pics this time unfortunately, but once I finalize the GUI (hopefully before the end of the week) I'll post some more screenshots.

I'm still stumped about the graphical glitch, it may just be a GM thing, but if someone knows a solution let me know. You can see it on the GUI in the picture I linked in my last post.

While I was tweaking the GUI I made a script that draws buttons based on the length of a string. So now things like "Interact" "Yes" "No" "Come on" and "Get there" will have custom sized buttons. So that's a thing. XD

These probably don't seem like a big deal but it's been a lot of work so far, and work I'm very proud of, as it's starting to feel like a proper game now that I have a working interface.

So yeah, just a tiny update to keep the ball rolling. =)

(P.S. no idea why the image I linked in my last post wouldn't work as an imbedded image.)

http://sciophobiaproject.tumblr.com/image/64907960677

I started playing with some lighting here, and I finally got text working properly with the GUI. There is a weird graphical glitch that causes pixels to get skewed slightly and I don’t know why, or how to fix it unfortunately. I’m gonna keep playing with things to see if I can fix it. Otherwise though I’m very happy with the progress I’ve made so far. Figuring out the lighting and getting it to blend properly was a huge boost for me.

But yeah, that was it for today. The next few days progress will probably be slowed, I’m working nights for several days in a row, put I’ll keep tinkering with what I can during my time off. Most updates will be graphical for now while I polish things. Then I’ll start finalizing the prototype.

Did a lot of sprite work today. Here's a bit of what I've been doing.

@Rocket: Thanks! =)

@Somin: I'm not a fan of the beady eyes personally, but I'll upload a sheet of some more faces I've tried out and see what people think.

Different Faces I Tried


@Raptor: I'm gonna try to make him a bit more... wobbly, and off balance, but it's hard to make something like that loop and still look weird. Like I want him to look weird, but... not look weird XD

Here are some inventory screens I've been playing with for a few hours.
So far I'm leaning towards A3, C3, C4, C5, and D5 but I wanted to get some other opinions
http://i.imgur.com/2DtH5hR.png

@Spook: Thanks, I'll be doing my best. I actually only just a week ago found out that there was a Clock Tower for the SNES XD I might have to try and find a copy of it on Ebay or something.

@Kitheif: There isn't a lot I can do about that unfortunately. At such a low res the only real expressions I've managed to do are happy or sad (and sad looks a little derpy) neither of which are really appropriate for a horror. So I figured this expression is the most neutral I can achieve.

Just a rough walking animation for one of the enemies in the game. It still needs a lot of work, particularly the straight jacket. I'll post the final one once it's completed.