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[TonyManfredonia]

@amanfr01 That's cool to know some are looking forward to this!    I'll do my best to assure it's worth playing.

Funny you mention Space Station: Silicon Valley and Iggy's Wrecking Balls,  SSSV is actually one of my faves from long ago.  It has that 'hard to put your finger on' charm on top of some great gameplay...maybe one day I'll beat it.  Last I remember I got to some difficult gorilla stage later in the game and didn't make it past that before I had to return it to Blockbuster video.
Same with Iggy's wrecking balls...didn't think much of the cover art but one day curiosity got the best of me and it turned out to be a very fun rental.

Kickstarted N64 Cartridge release?

That would be cool no doubt but I'm kinda 50/50 on Kickstarter as it is.  Honestly the most use I could see getting out of KS would be another avenue to 'get the word out', money up front would be nice but putting energy towards fulfilling promises instead of towards the game itself gives me pause when I think about it.

Maaaaaaaaaybe I'll do a KS but only if the game is basically 99% complete, the goal amount would be small and I would not promise anything I wasn't 100% sure I could deliver...sadly a functioning N64 cartridge is way beyond my skills to create.

It's blowing my mind because of how "out there" it is.

Haha we are free to be as goofy as we want are we not?  Personally I prefer something interesting to look at vs realism or cohesion.

Take a look at some of Hieronymus Bosch's paintings, I believe his claim to fame and why he is still remembered is more based on all the absurd details and "out there" scenarios he paints rather than his skills with a brush (which is also considerable).

Now could you imagine being able to hop around one of his paintings in a game and see/interact with everything within them?

I'm not saying I'm going to have that level of detail but maybe it gives a notion of what I'm leaning towards visually.

Thanks for the kind words amanfr01 and I'll try to make this worth checking in on!

Thanks for your awesome response! The N64 Cartridge KS reward was partially me just being silly, but it is a fun thing to dream of, is it not?

Either way, I think you have a great vision. Referencing/drawing inspiration from Bosch is a wonderful surprise for me to discover.  Keep it up with this direction. 

Let me know if you need any opinions, thoughts, feedback, or assistance! I'm always happy to help, especially for someone who relates to my fondness of SSSV hahahah!

[NoLocality]

I remembered I was doing video logs today (something that apparently escaped my mind for over two months...), and proceeded to mumble into a mic while running around in my own game showing off it's current state of development.

Mind the music, I'll figure out my volume issues some day.

[Quicksand-T]

I'm getting a Gary Panter meets Nanosaur vibe from this.

Sad that you're planning to change that player character, he was growing on me.

[Mr Bazooka]

Haha this is so crazy! Very trippy.

[NoLocality]

Haha this is so crazy! Very trippy.

The trippyness will make a surprising amount of sense when a certain mechanic is revealed 

Feedback like this makes my day and fuels my resolve heh...thanks for the kind words sir.

I'm getting a Gary Panter meets Nanosaur vibe from this.

I've been looking up Gary Panter since I read this, had no Idea the guy existed till now.  That is some crazy art he puts forth and I see the comparison...I'll definitely take that as a compliment.

His style reminds me of when I'll go to kill some time and look up various sections of kickstarter...in the upcoming comics section you'll find the occasional nutty style where the artist is 'just letting it all out' visually.  Good stuff man...good stuff 

As for Nanosaur it flew right under my radar till now, had I known it existed when it came out in 98 I probably would have had a blast with it.

Sad that you're planning to change that player character, he was growing on me.

 

Yeah me to, he was the first doodle I took 'all the way'.  He will live on in the game as an NPC (you might see quite a few cossack dancing cave-dudes actually) and in my signature...and in my heart.

I've been dodging getting around to doodling up the actual main character so I did something just now I haven't done before and did a bit of concept art for y'all.


Say hello to your main character in BMC...The shaman of storytelling!


Hope you don't mind looking at old man-backside cause you're gonna be seeing a lot of it while exploring.

[TonyManfredonia]

"forget about all that 'keep the file size little' nonsense."

Now I'm unbelievably excited. This has such insane potential.

[NoLocality]

Work continues!   ...at a pretty slow pace lol.

Been in a bit of a slump and not getting as much done lately as I should, oddly I'm okay with this.  It's not the wisest mind-state to have but I'm kind of in the 'I've got all the time in the world' way of thinking at the moment and just putting along as I see fit.

  Probably better than burning myself out I would wager.


Anyhow I'm currently in the process of spriting out the main character and dayuuum is this one a different beast than random NPCs.  Where 4-5 frames for those cave-dancers is a breeze I've estimated this one to be somewhere between 60-100+ frames before completion.  I don't mind scribbling but the repetition of the same character in slightly different progressive poses wears on me, it's not going to get itself done though so onward I grind.


I've kept myself somewhat fresh with various 'little' jobs in between tedious spriting sessions such as modeling out little odds and ends (stone formations, plants, etc) for the landscapes, throwing together new songs and cleaning up old ones, tweaking AIs, taking a stab at shader code so certain sprites are treated as pseudo-3d objects as far as lighting is concerned (mild success despite having only a vague idea of how shader code works!), getting the ball rolling on text-boxes and talking with NPCs and progress on one of the main combat mechanics.


Given that I prefer to show as apposed to tell (and the above is a whole lot of telling) here's a gif of the next WIP dinosaur.



This one was supposed to be an evolutionary precursor to the chicken and it took me a couple days of wondering why it looked familiar about it when it hit me...it looks more than a little like the old crested booka enemy from Earthbound.  I was gonna scrap it but then thought better of it as this is early in development and I kinda like it...just gonna have to differentiate it later.

Also this one isn't for fighting...


And as always I do have quite a bit of fun goofing around within my little game world...



...who needs benchmarking software when you can conjure up infinitely more taxing scenarios to brutalize your hardware.


Cheers people   

[NoLocality]

What's a game with dinosaurs if you can't ride them anyway?!

[TonyManfredonia]

IT'S BACK!

I've missed seeing your surrealist experience of a game x)

[NoLocality]

This is looking really great! Keep it up! It has that mysterious early/beta n64 game feel, like a cool game you'd see in a dream and wish you could play!

Thanks there, the more I get into this the more I realize I'm a product of my times lol.  Of all the consoles I've owned I've probably sunk more hours into my old N64 than anything else and look what I end up churning out...

IT'S BACK!

I've missed seeing your surrealist experience of a game x)

I've missed updating this!   


Honestly I had to go somewhat AWOL to 'level up' my coding and animation skills and I'm so very glad I did.  Finding out single line commands existed the whole time where I was doing convoluted, home-brewed workarounds that weren't even necessary.  Getting familiar with blender's pose-library system instead of eye-balling out every single little part of an animation, workflow is much, much better now.  Where once the idea of shader-code scared me to no end I'm now getting used to the odd layout and starting to realize it's pretty much the same as coding anything else...who knew?...


Things I've gotten done in my 'down-time':

-text management system is go.  Our protagonist will probably be of the silent variety but everyone else is likely gonna have quite a bit to say.

-context sensitive interactions are go.  The same button that you use to ride a dinosaur will likely be the same button to pluck a fruit off of a branch, or turn on the lights in a villager's hut.  I'll damned if there's going to be little exclamation marks or anything similar popping up though...that always bothered me.

-got one of the defining mechanics pretty much done.  Just gotta cook up some proper 'ammunition' before it's presentable...hopping on this one next actually.

-adjusting for the bugs that pop up.  Every step forward produces at least a few but I'm fine with this, it's getting kinda cool realizing how much faster you get in knowing how to deal with them.


I have no illusions that there will be more and more necessity for learning even more "in's and out's" of everything as this continues but that's par for the course it seems.

[BomberTREE]

Oh man, this looks so wild
Followingggg

[NoLocality]

Oh man, this looks so wild
Followingggg

  let's make this worth following then!


Okay so mechanic number one: Our shaman protagonist will be able to absorb and use 'abilities' of other things within the world.  I'm expecting that this is mostly going to come off of enemies but also expect abilities to come from objects, events, NPCs, etc...

These abilities will be used for battle, puzzles, transport, possibly story...basically I want to assure that these aren't strictly limited to combat abilities.

Each ability will have a certain amount of charges based on...uh...based on how many I decide to give it I guess 

Mechanically I've got it down to one button per 'chamber'.  When chamber 1 is empty-->pushing button 1 projects an absorption field from the player, if something absorb-able is caught in the field then it is absorbed into chamber 1 with the appropriate amount of charges then--> button 1 will now activate the ability and take off a charge, when all the charges are used up then--> button 1 reverts to absorb-mode.

Players will begin with either one or two chambers (haven't decided) and will max out at twelve.  Want those extra chambers?...explore, explore and explore some more 

TLDR: glue twelve hungry Kirbys to a stick and you'll get the idea.


Anyways show>tell so here's some gifs of a few abilities...


Want to flatten things rolling-pin style?  Then absorb our friend Rollzilla's powers!



Missing that speed-boost from riding the Derplidoci but your mount wont fit into your path?  Absorb your mount's innate speed and have at it!



Did you find some ominously glowing meteorite hidden off the beaten path?  Absorb it and get ready to unleash a true meteor storm!



Really been waiting to share this one, had the idea long ago but now it's up and running so....Yay!

Okay time to get mechanic two up and running...Cheers people!

[NoLocality]

Dusted off my video capture crap and tossed a video up showing the applications of the absorption mechanic.





Now with 50% less mumbling... 

[NoLocality]

Enjoying going a bit overboard with my skyboxes.

[high-priest.clppr]

Very odd but you have my attention 

[flipswitchx]

Whoa this is wacky as sh$t, I love it! 

[NoLocality]

Whoa this is wacky as sh$t, I love it! 

Very odd but you have my attention 

Thanks guys!

I'm getting a bit exited lately, I'm getting close to the end of the "make sure everything works" phase.  Just gotta get mechanic two finished (it's functioning but I'm tossing together some assets to demonstrate it visually...hence the sky-box), ensure certain variables/funstions pass through scenes/transitions properly and create a game-save function.

Then onto assets and world building 

I actually stumbled across the term not to long ago..."concept complete" or alpha build.  I think that %done meter on this devlog is gonna go up a tick when I hit that point.

I remember joking about a 2019 release date some time ago, at this point I wouldn't mind hitting that to be honest 

[NoLocality]

Dinosaurs™

[NoLocality]

So this here dinosaur will teleport evasively while slowly stalking the player before it tries to launch some entirely too big ,wobbly projectiles in their general direction.

Kinda reminds me of a more colorful Ringu.

Gotta introduce some artificial stupidity to the AI heh, in it's current form it's a big too difficult for a non-boss enemy.

[Pineapple]

I don't think brontosauruses have mammaries