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[Luno]

ah yeah, i tried offsetting B as well but didn't like it very much...perhaps you (and everyone else) is right that A is just better .__.

there will always be a place in my heart (and possibly somewhere else in the game) for B though

[Devi Ever]

ah yeah, i tried offsetting B as well but didn't like it very much...perhaps you (and everyone else) is right that A is just better .__.

there will always be a place in my heart (and possibly somewhere else in the game) for B though

RIP "B" fence

Great opportunity for an easter egg fence. :3

[YellowFeatherPat]

I really dig that little animation when you mouse over an object.  Little details like that are going to take the game from good to great. Keep up the awesome work, everything you've showed off so far is gorgeous!

[Sundrop]

Looks to have everything I love about Sword & Sworcery. Yes!

[Luno]

@Sundrop - yes, standing on the shoulders of giants and such...thank you!

@YellowFeatherPat thanks a ton, it's a bit slower and causes some wasted effort here and there but I like to go straight to polishing immediately after a prototype works

[io3 creations]

The visuals are looking better and better. 

What do you think?

It's odd that in the low res gif, I prefer fence B but in the static high quality images I prefer fence A.  At first, I also thought that it was because fence A is more randomly placed, but still prefer fence A compared to Devi Ever's randomly edited version.

[Luno]

Thanks! Yeah, in-engine it ends up looking more like the static images. I think A reads better and is more organic for sure, but B seems to fit the house better?

[io3 creations]

Thanks! Yeah, in-engine it ends up looking more like the static images. I think A reads better and is more organic for sure, but B seems to fit the house better?

This is one of those "subconscious things" when is hard to narrow down *why* sometimes seems better.   I've been wondering about why I prefer A and looked at the images but not sure.  In some sense, I agree that the fence around the garden matches the fence around the house.  But when looking at the big picture, maybe as Devi Ever said that B becomes busier with the extra detail and loses the nice contrast that A has between area with less and more details.  That's my guess.

Of course, as with many perception based things, individual preferences also play a role and that's why you may prefer A.

[Mochnant]

A little late to the party, but I'm a fan of A over B, as well.  Game is looking great!

[Luno]

@mochnant yo dude! thanks

[Mochnant]

@luno  My pleasure!  Nice to see you again, been trying to get back to your Monday stream, but the timing hasn't worked out just yet.  Hopefully soon!

[Luno]

There's item durability and decay in the game now. Hoooooraaaaaa-




aaaaaaaaaa-wait. I hate item durability. You hate item durability. Is this actually a good thing?

Any game that makes collecting items and ingredients an important part of the main loop (aka survival, roguelikes) needs to find some incentive for you to acquire new items.

Item durability is a really common solution because it solves the problem neatly and models our real-life intuitions. It's also much bemoaned due to several pitfalls that I'll talk about briefly.


As you're probably aware, we humans have a strong propensity for loss-aversion. Once we have something we're more likely to hang on to it than to risk giving it up, even when risking it means there's a very good chance of a better payout.

It's the old "having your cake and eating it too" dilemma, although I've never liked that saying because what's the point of having a cake you don't intend to eat. Is it just a really fancy looking cake?

Anyways, having things you own taken away from you feels bad. It's also lame to have something helpful that you are too afraid to use for fear of losing it (like those potions of invulnerability you finish a jrpg with).




I hope to keep the item decay from being totally annoying by following a few guidelines:
 - Any item that is likely to decay or break through use should be relatively easy to acquire and frequently needed.
 - Any exquisitely rare items should be either indestructible (as will be the case with unique "artifact" items), or repairable.
 - Few consumables should be so amazing or irreplaceable that you would risk dying before using them "just in case".

The dilemma of using some amazing consumable and surviving vs gambling in order to save it for some even worse future situation just isn't that interesting to me I guess? I do envision some rare food that provides special bonuses, but nothing so amazing that you wouldn't want to eat it. In addition, some food may be preserved and last indefinitely, but would suffer some other trade off (less nourishing, more expensive to make, and so on).

In most cases, I want you to feel good about using, breaking, and replacing items. I'm trying to think of ways to incentivize you to craft items frequently so that you will always be discovering new recipes. Along these lines I'm also considering a salvage/repair mechanic that could be applied to broken items, so you can choose to trade an item for raw materials or vice versa. Restoring items could also spark new recipe discoveries.

This is all very speculative so I am of course prepared to throw it out if need be. For now at least, this feels like a good fit for what I have already.

[Luno]

What's up all, just wanted to pop in and share the progress from my village scene - the completed town square!






I'm more or less finished with working on this area so I've decided to return to working on my demo. Happily, what I have planned for the demo requires at least one new environment which I'm working on now, so that should give me additional mileage in terms of backgrounds. I do plan to return to areas and concept stuff afterwards, but so far it's been so incredibly time consuming I'm really neglecting the rest.

Rough ETA is probably a few months I think, but we'll see -.-

[PetSkull]

Really like your colors. A fall scene hopefully?

[Luno]

Really like your colors. A fall scene hopefully?

thanks! actually the lore is that time is frozen there so it's supposed to look kinda in-between...I'll probably have to do more to turn up the weird factor at some point though

fall outside the village looks something like:

[Luno]

New area! This scene, which i'm calling the shrine cave, will be one of two playable areas in the pseudo-private alpha demo. As long as you're signed up for my mailing list (see yearinthetrees.com) before it's released, you'll get access.

Most of the hard work on this area is finished, but I still have to churn through the rest of this photoshop doc to turn the pixel art into in-game objects.

I hope to have the demo ready in just a few more months, but what I'm planning will require one more new area, several new monsters and items, and a few extra features from what I have now. Of course, with the day job it's a total crawl so we'll see.

Fly-by of the area. Particles! Gradients! That's how you know it's hi-bit.


Really feel like I've leveled up my color skills working on this. I was able to draw it faster than normal too.


I mentioned this on Twitter, but the skeletons are to help communicate my "charming, but also it kinda doesn't want you there" aesthetic.

Here's a before and after of the art in Photoshop vs. Unity. Really glad l decided to spend the effort learning how to write shaders and post processing effects, even though I'm still kind of a novice at them. I have a set of per-scene adjustments and lighting tools that I can add on top of Unity's stock image effects which really let me dial in a lot of atmosphere and mood.

Before: Photoshop


After: Unity. The lighting effects, gradients, vignette, and colorization are all custom, but I'm using Unity's stock levels filter, saturation, blurred corners, bloom, and chromatic aberration.

As always, let me know what you think or if you have any questions. 

[Luno]

I'm looking for feedback on a new tune for the soundtrack that I recorded this weekend

https://soundcloud.com/lunomusic/natural-cave


I was really pleased with how this came together. I expect that the soundtrack will be the easiest part. It was nice to work on something where I can work quickly because I know exactly what I'm doing. It's also so much less work for me to write instrumental music than the normal vocal stuff I do, so I was able to write and record this in a single day.

Most of these sounds are from my Nord keyboard. The upright bass and tom tom pattern were recorded live. I put very little effort into recording the toms so they don't sound amazing, but I really like the little polyrhythmic thing I came up with.

[PetSkull]

Hi, I like the sound, but don't think it fits in a cave environment. I picture an open area with green grass, trees and a breeze. For a cave, I would think a more dark tune would fit better. But nice use of the instruments

[Luno]

Hi, I like the sound, but don't think it fits in a cave environment. I picture an open area with green grass, trees and a breeze. For a cave, I would think a more dark tune would fit better. But nice use of the instruments

Ergh yeah, I was afraid of that. The other vibe I'm getting from the first part is sort of a desert town theme (the first version started with the bass and drums and had a clarinet part and that made it *really* desert-y).

The feeling I was trying to go for is like, a cave that is not very deep under ground - the kind where sunlight can still be seen coming in the entrance. The B section is supposed give a sort of anxious sense of wonder as you discover the beauty and weird stuff in the cave.

I could always use it elsewhere though, or split it into two tunes and develop each idea more.

[IndieGameFiend]

  following! looks good!