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[rj]

8.8

just a check-in! mike is currently working on the third build, which refines the basic platforming feel even more and getting walljumping in for my personal testing. he's also gonna try adding some basic functionality Secret Other Game Stuff i'm not sure when i'll reveal

but it's a cool thing i think. i don't wanna give it away just yet though! maybe in a trailer. maybe not.

it's not even that big of a deal in general if i'm not being a huge marketing shill since the whole game isn't built around it as a gimmick so i might just never talk about it since it's more of a subtle game flow thing than anything else, but it's cool to me

anyway you'll notice it when you're playing, probably

at some point in the future

meanwhile, i'm still fleshing out ishmael's basic animations and painting backgrounds, which is a way slower process than the music for sure
---

other news

my current goal date for a playable alpha vertical slice build/demo/thing (i'm not sure how we'll distribute it/if it will be open 100% to the public at large but...maybe?) is february but it'll more likely be closer to april at the pace we're going

so there's that!

[rj]

8.84

this is a tiny thing: as far as percentage completion goes, i'm considering each full whole number update to be a tenth of a percent; in other words, every ten full whole number updates will move the completion forward one full percent. so when update 100 hits, i'll switch to 10 percent completed, and so on.

this perhaps means that later, as i brush up against update one thousand, i'm gonna get into decimal updates way more ludicrous than what you're seeing now.

this has nothing to do with the game proper; this is just for the devlog's own semantic clarity's sake

[parodyself]

I think I love you

[rj]

well thanks, dude! i am genuinely flattered and only maybe two percent weirded out that that's your first post on this entire forum!

[Yxven]

I like the front flip.

[Savick]

I don't see any snow. I want my money back

[rj]

i promise at least one percent snow and at least ten percent beautiful

also: pay me first

[Nilanjan]

i promise at least one percent snow and at least ten percent beautiful

[rj]

and a certain amount hard, too, probably

8.9

working on animations. once the next build is done i'll have a much more robust set of them to show in general, but here's a little tease:

it's important that the player has full freedom of movement. if you fall and keep holding right you should keep moving right when you hit the ground with no delay. with the previous animation for landing, it looks like this if that's enabled:



ishmael just kinda slides along. it's awkward!

this is how it's looking now:



it's the tiniest, subtlest thing, but it's super important so that everything looks good.

so i'm going in and doing frame transitions for every possibility. if the player doesn't move at all when they hit the ground, the standard animation plays. there's gonna be smooth transitions in and out of every frame that the player hits a button on so everything looks like butter. it's a lot of work for me but it's very worth it in the end. everything will look seamless and nice.

[alvarop]

 
I don't see the difference. Let's play that again, in slow-mo.

[rj]

yeah, sure.

here they are at half speed.

without transition:



with transition:



obviously a lil' rough right now still!

and again, it's subtle; it just adds up in total to a whole mess of really smooth gamefeely junk when it's all together with all the other transitions, ideally.

[rj]

8.92

since i started working on transitions it's a matter of course that i'm also finally working on flips. finally.

so whereas ishamel facing opposite directions previously looked like this:



it now looks like this:



so that's neat!

[rj]

8.93

also here's some weird music. for an arcade or shop or somesuch urban thing

[rj]

i guess this is 8.935

after listening to the above music again, it sounded really rough and kinda terrible, so i gave it a major spruceup and i like it a lot more now

[rj]

8.95



taking a break from animation work to work on painting this background

[Nilanjan]

Looks great

[EdFarage]

how do u change ur avatar every page refresh
also ur game is weirdly beautiful

[rj]

i use signavatar


also thank you!

[Impmaster]

Dude I love the background. Character kinda doesn't seem to fit tho

[rj]

in what way, out of curiosity?

here's a closeup (at playable 1:1 pixel ratio), maybe that helps



edit: for the record i (obviously?) totally don't agree but i'm def interested to hear what's up, because keeping shit coherent is the 110% most important thing to me here