Project 3 out of five is a go! cancelled!

A digital experience in the exploration genre. Also about taking pictures.

Try the demo here.

[45]

Some project statistics for those interested in... statistics. I'm one of those people, btw.

Hours

Official work days: 45
(5 days per week for 9 weeks)
Official work hours projection: 360
(8 hours a day)
Official "effective" work hours projection: 270
(6 hours a day)

Actual work days: 49
(weekends too)
Actual work hours: 412.5
(weekend hours, overtime, everything)
Actual "effective" work hours: 303
(actual hours minus lunches, breaks, etc. Slightly estimating here)

Successfully followed the schedule this time. A few extra days and hours here and there, but most importantly finished the project on the planned release day; nine weeks is all it took.

Did a few small bug fix builds later. Those don't count...

Code

Significant lines of code (SLOC): 2706
(Swiched to this tool which has more options)
Source files: 52
(Only those actually written for this project)
Average SLOC per file: 52
(What a coincidence!)

Most SLOC in a file: 341
(BlockManager.cs. Loads of functions for manipulating the blocks, i.e. floor tiles.)
Least SLOC in a file: 9
(RoomView.cs. A few references and a Destroy function.)


More reuse this time too. After some tweaking the new tool strips out lines starting with # and empty lines starting with { or }. Not quite perfect regex, but seems ok based on a few tests. Will also rerun the line count for Save the Civies. It is much higher still.

MainController SLOC only 144. Better use of components, I reckon.

Project 3 is up next!

Gotta count the last two days, phew that was a lot of over time!



Saturday worked on the demo. Once again WebGL breaks things. This time JSon.net could not serialize Vector3Int objects. Took a while to figure that out. Audio systems need changes too due to lacking support on WebGL.

Today, Sunday, spent the whole day recording, editing and implementing the voiceovers. They turned out ok, despite the crunch. Ha, will not leave such a task to the last day in the future!

Very little time for testing, I'm glad I went through all the levels earlier this week. Fixed some graphical issues, runs on Linux and Windows so... Good enough? Will keep testing after the release. Might need to push an update or two later, who knows? Now I'll be taking a week off. This last day was quite long.

A few more posts on the project still to come up, then I'll be moving on to project 3.  

Try the demo here

Cheers!

Menu animation: simple and random; will do.

Reordered tasks on the schedule. Leaving the voiceovers as the very last one. Did record a test today and implemented the functionality though.

Pretty much all other program related tasks are done. Will set up the itch.io page tomorrow and make sure the demo works too. No panic, no rush, refreshing.


Cheers!

Working undertime (?) rather than overtime! Progress?

Had to wait around in public due to RL for an hour and a half, but managed to playtest many levels using a quick & dirty Android build. A tablet is useful for writing and planning on the go too, in a pinch at least.

No image today, tweaks don't tend to translate well to screenshots. Small things, loads of them and, yes, I did come up with more tasks once I started going through the list. That always happens.

Cheers.

Saturday:
? ? ?

Saturday evening: profit

I was thinking of Sunday, but the sooner the better!

Here's the schedule for the polish/release week.

Monday:
- Graphics menu (resolution, screen mode, floor options)
- GUI tweaks

Tuesday:
- Level testing & tweaks
- 5 last Level descriptions

Wednesday:
- E10 tweaks
- Level testing & tweaks
- Asset credits

Thursday:
- Optimize build size
- Build icon
- Build settings
- Clean up scenes

Friday:
- Voice over recording
- Voice over toggle & audio slider

Saturday:
???

Sunday:
- Release

I'm pretty sure I haven't forgotten anything. Not that many things to do, which is good!

Cheers.

Once again took a while to edit the stream down to size (shaved 25 minutes off, better than last time)





Thought I was behind schedule in work hours, but it turns out there was a spreadsheet formatting issue which drastically affected the sum of all the hours. Hear me out, this is pretty interesting in fact.

Cells set in the default time format (HH:MM) look all nice and dandy. Subtracting the start time 11:00 from the end time 21:00 results in 10:00 hours total, which is correct.
Subtracting the start time 13:00 from the end time 00:30 results in 11:30 hours total, which is correct too.

Unfortunately, behind the scenes the latter value value is in fact negative, due to subtracting a bigger value (13:00) from a smaller value (00:30), and the time format simply wraps it around to seem sensible. Summing these sort of numbers together completely throws the result out of whack.

Fixing this is easy, it turns out. Use the cumulative hours format ([HH]:MM) for all cells and add 24 hours to any time values over 00:00 (01:30 becomes 25:30, for instance). After these changes the sum flipped around completely. I've been working overtime for 25 total hours (15 "effective" hours). The truth has been revealed!

Also checked the time sheet for project 1 and sure there were dozens of extra hours too. I don't feel that great about that one, but updated the statistics post anyways.

Last week coming up. I do need to take some time off again due to RL, but now I'm not too worried. The project is doing fine too!

Cheers!

Already moved on to next week's agenda: tweaking & polish.

Wrote this handy, dandy editor script for easily changing the font of certain text elements and the color of main image elements in any scene. Will be useful in future project too as I can use it from the very beginning, expanding its functionality.



This is to say the GUI got a face lift, you can see it in the stream tomorrow, not that it is quite final yet. The panels need some texturing/shaping at least, simple squares are a bit hard on the eyes.

Level E9 done too. I'm now missing a single level and 5 level descriptions. Darn close to content complete, a miracle taken how many hours I've skipped in this project due to all sorts of reasons. More on that later.

Cheers!

One more level. These big one's take quite a while to make.


E7, runthrough

Looking for fitting, low key, chill, music. So far only a few hits, will keep digging. At least the code is already in, no need to worry about that.

Beta (content complete) stream on Saturday at 15.00 UTC. Crunching to get (nearly) all of the content done by then.

Cheers!

4 out of 5 sound effects done. Turned out pretty ok. Basically lifting things whole cloth from FreeSound and tweaking them in Audacity.


The magic of GIFs does not extend to audio, unfortunately.

Threw in quick particle effects and camera shaking to liven up the otherwise dry user interface. Successfully reusing code from prior projects there.

Continuing to add in those missing level descriptions. Tweaking the levels too. I don't wish to leave too much for the last week.

Cheers!

Hello ! I played the two first level of the game. I would have like to see the nice 3D models you made into the WebGL demo =)
I think some sounds could make the game more enjoyable.

Hello!

Audio is coming up next week. A few effects and some music; maybe even voice-over, but time is of the essence.

Will release a demo with the first 10 levels once the project is finished. Stay tuned.

The last 3D models, but not the last graphics related tasks by a long shot.



Managed all 12 models after all, looked grim this morning. As you can see the importers and exporters are simple texture variations. Initially I had the idea of different icons for each to further differentiate them, which would be helpful for colorblind people, but looking at the resources (and time) I don't think I'll go there. Try coming up with icons for the following resources: metal, trash, plastic, plastic product, oil and gadget. Yeah, not easy.

A bigger issue with the assets is the apartments and stores. I should have made the breakroom model first as I really like that design now. Will have to tweak the assets to conform to the more abstract, block'hood like style. Hmm, that's what I get for rushing. Should have taken an extra day thinking about the style right away, eh, switching to damage control mode.  

Only two weeks left, officially. Will have to work overtime during the weekends. I'm behind in the hours due to many irregular days during the project. Hopefully everything will fall into place nonetheless.

Cheers.

Apartments and shops; colorful on purpose. Also a massive 3D printer! Proper relative scaling isn't a priority.

12 models to go, 2 days left. Sounds grim, but most of them are simple. Should not be a problem.

Cheers!

The texture work is inconsistent at the moment. Making 4 models per day is quite the pace and something has to give. UV's eat up a lot of the time too. I'll need to take a second pass on the textures later.

Cheers.

Even got a few viewers this time, that's a first! Unfortunately Twitch eradicated the comments immediately, so I cannot give shoutouts to those helpful people. Too bad, will keep that in mind next time.

Another first is actually working within the stream. Made one more level, only 4 to go.

Next update on Saturday. I've got a rooms-per-day quota now and Friday is a no go. Timetables are turned.

Cheers!

Elements, systems, objects, things? I haven't decided yet, let's go with room for a while longer.



The visual style is still taking shape as are the model sizes and colors. Going low poly and flat shaded is easy, as in Block'hood, but will experiment on the way. The later issues will be fixed once all the assets are in. At that point it is possible to see how everything looks together.

Throwing in some references too. The power generator, for instance, is based on a generator from my favorite RTS. Recognize the design?

Cheers.

Yes, that there is the first 3D model for the project. A warehouse, very exciting...

Made a spreadsheet (suprise, surprise) about the models I need. 20 are shared by at least two rooms and 14 are custom models only used by a single room. The warehouse is used by 7 rooms so decided to make it first. Each warehouse needs custom icons, though. The plastic product exporter will have to do with a ducky, mostly as a joke.

About the "rooms", realized that most of them aren't really rooms. Water pump, power generator, trash burner; those are machines not rooms! Two room flat, family apartment, tech store; these are composed of multiple rooms! Will have to think of a new word, block being the lazy backup choice.

Lastly tried the default Unity post processing effects real quick. Will have them on by default with options to turn them off. They do make even the simplest assets look better and even allow for different color profiles for each level. Will try that one out later.

Cheers.

I'm calling it that, officially at least. GUI done, levels nearly done, level descriptions not nearly done (but they are quickies).


Tutorial panel; very simple, should be enough.

My weekends are still quite full so the alpha stream will have to wait until next week. Thursday is the day, mark that down.

I'm ready to move on to 3D modelling, so there will even be some graphics to show off come Thursday. Good to get back to Blender! It's been a while.

Cheers!

Tutorial panel and escape panel are still missing in the main scene, other than that all them menus are done.

Had to change one of the rooms. The plastic product manufacturer only created a single product, which was fine in levels with product exporters as they only needed a single product. On the other hand levels with more rooms requiring such products would get filled with manufacturing plants, which is not great design as it leads to bigger levels and loads of clicking.

Changing the output to 2 required me to go through all the levels containing the manufacturer to make sure nothing broke. Wrote a handy dandy editor script which searched all the scenes for me because the level design spreadsheet doesn't have this sort of info (and it might be slightly out of date in places, I'm afraid).

Well, a few of the levels did break, but it didn't take too long to fix. Also spotted other issues in some of them, so it wasn't all a waste of time. Merely annoying, the kind of work I'd rather not have to do too often.


E3, big and messy

Continuing work on the E-set. Should have 5 levels out of 10 done by the end of the week. The 50% mark for the whole project is creeping up. On paper I'm not too much behind schedule, yet I'm slightly worried for some reason...

Cheers.