Reading about all your experiences with Maya makes me wonder why didn't you just use Blender (which you seemed to like).
I love the art style, but I'm even more interested in the story and gameplay hook, which you mentioned but didn't want to talk about yet.
Your devlogs are a great inspiration! Thanks for sharing your process.
For this project I want to try paid software for everything in the critical path. Especially with the new reasonably-priced Maya LT. I've used and enjoyed Blender, but it still had issues related to being free software.
Story, Gameplay, & SpoilersI'll wait a big longer before going into the story & gameplay. And it's a good thing I haven't said anything about it yet. My core mechanic ideas have already changed quite a bit since starting. I haven't prototyped anything gameplay-related yet either so it could all change some more. What I've got in mind now seems ok enough so the next steps will be to prototype it. If things work out, I can start fleshing out the narrative using that mechanic.
Actually, revealing the core mechanic will ruin a large surprise near the start of the game. Part of me wants to keep everything secret until I release. But there's not much point in running a devlog like that so the core mechanic will become public when I start prototyping it. The full story will likely stay mysterious until the final release though. Similar to the Papers Please dev process I guess.
Technical FeaturesI mentioned in the OP that I want to experiment with some technical features. At this point, there are 3 of these:
- 1-bit rendering
- Walking simulation
- Hand-reaching environment interaction
The rendering is mostly taken care of. I'll be tweaking things for a while but the basics are done. The hand-reaching (not around) I'll describe in detail a little later. I worked on the walking today.
Walking SimulationSound will be a big part of creating the atmosphere and filling in the holes left by the visuals. One of the things I want to get right is the footsteps across the wooden ship. The game won't have a run button (the ship is too small for it), so the player will be plodding along everywhere. I thought it would be fun to make a simple little simulator to drive the footfalls, scuffs, and head bobs. Something to tie them all together in a logical way. Here's what I came up with:
Walking sim foot discs
There are two discs, one for the left foot and one for the right foot. The circumference of each disc matches the player's stride of 0.5 meters. As the player character covers ground in the game, the discs "roll" along the ground.
In the gif, each disc has a red arc that represents when the foot is on the ground. The bottom of the discs are resting on the ground, so when the red is down, the foot is down. As the black hole passes over the bottom, the foot is in the air. The "foot" of each stride is connected by the line. The dot follows whichever foot is higher. The left foot always leads (for now) and the right foot follows behind. When the player stops walking, the discs return to their natural orientation with the hole at the top.
So with this simple sim, I can attach some events:
- Red arc first touches ground point -> Foot fall
- Red arc just leaves ground point -> Foot rise (scuff)
- Center dot -> head bob
- Disc speed -> effect volume
The only input to the simulator is the delta of the player's position. There are two neat tricks that make this work well:
1. The radius of the discs starts out small and gets larger quickly as you walk. This isn't visible in the gif, but the idea is that you take a few small steps as you get up to speed. So the initial stride may be 0.3 meters before you're at top speed of 0.5 meters/step. This is simple to model by just changing the disc radius.
2. The y coordinate of the player position delta is scaled by 3. This makes the sim think you're covering much more ground when going up or down slopes and stairs. The result is that the player takes quicker steps in these cases. You can see it in the gif as the screen gets darker when I go down some stairs. It also adds little extra quick steps as you go over small bumps, which is a nice effect.
It's only been tested with temp sounds right now; I'm curious to see if it holds up with proper foley sounds. I expected to spend a few days on this but ended up happy enough at the end of one day that I'll move on to the next tasks.
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