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[HuvaaKoodia]

The corruptors can be destroyed now, also showing off the electric attack. Graphics are very much temp as you can see.

Also trying out the extra mechanic I though about back on Day 8. Basically a single use item to remove all corruption on a node. This ability combined with the new powerful characters allows me to mix up the levels in the second half of the campaign. Hmm, those will be fun to design.

Tomorrow's for initial menus and probably a few of those levels. Will work Saturday too, to make up for last Friday and Monday, and stream about the project progress on Twitch at 17.00 UTC as per the plan. Alpha is wrapping up!

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Temp graphics strike again!

Got the brilliant idea of mashing continue campaign, new campaign and past campaigns all on the same screen so that there is no need for a separate high-scores/history menu. No doubt this has been done before, but right now I cannot remember an example. Works for me.

Didn't get to level design yet. It took a while hooking up the serialization to the menu. It does work now and even the advanced options, which there are going to be more of in the future, are serialized with the save file.

Streaming tomorrow. It's been a while.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

50% there. Feature complete, more or less. Watch the video for details and a showcase of the current progress.





Didn't do much earlier in the day. Some cleanup and bug fixing.

Graphics for the next three weeks. Hopefully I'll manage.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Started on the two humanoid characters. Well, testing out some styles based on random references off the internet. Trouble with hair! Usually when I run intro trouble I find a way around it, so ah... expect baldness.

Not committing to the human characters yet, I need some more practice. Instead the other characters take priority. Here are the "civies" (need a better name for them)


Made them dance just for fun... Might sneak that animation in somewhere anyways.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Couldn't quite put in the full hours yesterday or today, so will need to undergo more overtime in the future. Did manage to achieve both major tasks though so it isn't all too bad.



First the shape shifter portrait. Simple, maybe too bland at the moment. Took pose reference from Faust (Guilty Gear). A friend commented on how it does look a bit like Thing (Fantastic 4). Yeah, did not think of that did I? Might change the color later and there sure won't be any pants!



This here is the fox then. Turned out pretty ok. My brush work is sloppy, but it does not show much when scaled down. Pose reference.

Also implemented portraits in the dialog system. They pop up whenever someone has something to say, which is not very often at the moment. Will have to find time for those too. Tough.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Humans! Kind of in a fantasy sense. Needed a reference for a rad jacket and the first image popping into mind was who else than Roy Batty (Blade Runner). What I ended up with is not quite the same. Black didn't work taken she's supposed to be the silver mage and I didn't bother with all the detail.

Decided to try the hairstyle too while at it. Works alright. That's a double dose of Rutger Hauer then. Also, baldness avoided.

Two expression should do for this character. She has some altercations with the fox, but is mostly neutral.

Tomorrow's for the pixie. She needs quite a few more expressions.

Cheers

[HuvaaKoodia]

The pixie is done for now. The flat shaded green skin does look a bit off so that'll need rethinking. Used this image as inspiration for the dress (if only I could draw that well!) No idea who the character is or from where, a random internet reference.

Made 6 expressions for now,  those up top are normal and angry. Might need one or two more depending on how much of the dialog I get in. Another random internet reference that I used for the expressions is this one by Sharpie91 (could not find the original anywhere).

Righty-o. That's 60% done. One more portrait to do next week (the witch!) Will use the rest of the week for the boss battles and hopefully putting the campaign together for good. The extra characters also need world graphics... It is going to get tight.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Having a break from the portraits. Instead implemented the witch in the world first. She flies around on a broom, following a spline. I'm using a slightly modified version of a free spline package by Catlike Coding who has a whole lot of other quality tutorials too. Worth a look.

Additionally got more prose in for the tutorials concerning the witch of course.

First boss battle tomorrow. I gotta jump on that as time is ticking out. The witch will be flying around a bunch in it, so everything should be in place... except for inspiration.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Something simple will do. Basically the witch flies to a random node, increases the corruption level after a delay and then repeats. Additionally more and more corruptors are popping up as time goes on.

Had to implement the witch properly as part of the world model, otherwise her current position and movement trajectory would not be saved. Got clever with the movement system. The model only stores the end position and the percentage of the way there (50% is halfway, etc.) It is the view who can then embellish the current trajectory any way it wants, for instance using a spline to do loops.

Also tweaked small things here and there. Tomorrow I'll try to put the campaign together, in a rough cut kind of way. Still missing the second boss fight, a tutorial for the new characters and an ending of course.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

(Exoskeleton not pictured, it does not exist yet!)

The rough cut isn't quite done. Spent the day implementing the tutorial level for the new characters. It is unpolished, but finished for now. Then fixed issues in the boss level and nearly got all the transition prose in too. You get different dialog depending on who is corrupted and who is still alive. There are quite a few combinations there.

I am slightly worried about current progress. Only slightly though; a bit of pressure will do me good (yes?).

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Felt like the least productive day of the production, yet that is mostly due to working on smaller things. Made the initial draft of the second boss battle. Same mechanics overall with destroying corruptors being the key to victory this time. Should do even if a tad derivative.

Tweaked things, added an auto-pause visual (that's been a while coming), wrote the rest of the prose for the first boss battle ending (5 variations with further small differences. Really it is just a few lines, nothing fancy).

Not exactly happy with the progress so far. There are a lot of small things to do and they take more time than expected!

Tomorrow's for the last portrait (the Witch as mentioned). Then starting next week I need to create some world graphics too (props etc.) and finally implement the assets in all the levels.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Drew the last portrait. I do like how the shading and textures worked out. Will have to try similar techniques with the prior two human characters. The mage especially is very flat in comparison.

When it comes to the design it sure is a bog standard witch. Used this image as a reference for the face and this one for the dress. The striped pants and sleeves are just generic witchery.

One more week for graphics and campaign; one week for audio; one week for polish. I really need to plan the rest of the project carefully.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Started the day with scheduling the whole week. The task for today was world graphics for the last three characters. Got them drawn quite fast including animations where needed. They don't look terrible as far as I'm concerned. Tried making a representative GIF, but no luck there.



Tasks for the rest of the week:

• Campaign (part 2) levels (6 more)
• Unique level assets (props, trees, buildings, etc.)
• Implementing level graphics (boring, but it has to be done!)
• More prose (currently only tutorial and boss levels have dialog)

 

Loads of work to do, that is.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

That's the rest of them. Now there's a total of 5 tutorial levels, 18 main levels and 2 boss levels. Enough?

I've been thinking about a "hardcore" advanced option which would alter each level to increase the challenge. Should be a fast way to add in some replay value.

Also fixed some issues and tweaked things. Usual development woes.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Drawing all day long! Some programming in between there too.



Already implemented many of these in the graphics test scene (E1M1), they look alright when colored properly in the scene. That's why they are mostly grey scale btw. More on this tomorrow.

Feeling somewhat tired of the project for the first time now. I only have two and a half weeks to go, though, so I'm certainly motivated to see it through. Luckily the second Alakajam is happening this weekend, meaning I get concentrate on something else for a while. It'll be fun as jams usually are.

[HuvaaKoodia]

The plan was to implement crude graphics in all the 20+ levels, but didn't get very far until I realized that the current level editor functions just weren't enough to quickly implement the assets. Improved the editor window and now there are quite a few useful options.



Got the 6 first levels done more or less. Should be able to crank out the rest tomorrow? It is dreadfully boring work though, so who knows.

HD screenshots

Noticed something odd while taking the screenshots. The Linux build sometimes crashes when pausing. To make things even worse there is no error message! The only clue is that it exclusively happens in the tutorial levels. Will need to investigate further. This is rather critical.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Realized that trying to add in all the assets to all the levels in a row is not only dreadfully boring, but also counter productive. You see, changing the level layout takes more time with graphics as they need to be changed too so I took it slow and play tested each level first. Also added in yet more level design functions to make the whole process even easier.  

12 levels done, 13 levels to go. Will go through those levels a few at a time. More screenshots in the same place.

Did not look into the crashing bug today. Alakajam awaits! The theme is "You can't see everything". No ideas so far. 80% done btw.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Have I got a cautionary tale of technological malaise for you today, no pictures either so get your reading cap on.

I took yesterday off to finish up my Alakajam 2 title PEACEKEEPER, so no work got done (Saturday earmarked for overtime again then!) Just for fun I installed Godot 3.0.1 and tried to get the C# support working. No dice. Linux Mint runs an age old Mono version by default (4.2 something), better update? Still no dice. Well, nothing broke so not a big deal, maybe they'll fix that in the future.

Early today I realized that something did break. MonoDevelop doesn't recognize the runtime properly anymore, basic classes are not found! Still somewhat green in the Linux business had loads of trouble reverting back to the older mono version, but finally managed. Problem is, it did not help.

At this point I decided to do that which I was not supposed to do until the next project: Update Unity! Apparently they'd completely dropped support for MonoDevelop so had to install Visual studio Code instead (simply called Code in the package manager... Please, Microsoft!). Seems to function just fine, debugging is ok, but for some reason it has the very same problem as MonoDevelop! Cannot find basic C# classes!

The Code editor (see how silly that name is!) complained about lacking the C# .net runtime so I begun the hunt by getting it. Unfortunately the ".Net in 10 minutes" page had no instructions for Mint. Tried two Debian and three Ubuntu repositories, but none worked properly (kept complaining about the architecture. I'm running 64 bit, what's the issue!) I even tried manually installing an older Ubuntu package with no further success. More research revealed that there is another (proper) download page for the SDK which does have instructions for Mint..... Great!

Funnily enough the .Net SDK only removed the error message, but not the issue. Luckily one other person had had the same problem before. Guess what. VSCode needs Mono too! The newer version of Mono! Gah!
Checked up the requirements of Godot again, trying to kill two flies with one stone. It requires 5.4.x, ok. Figured out how to download an older version of Mono (5.10 is current btw.) and finally got it installed for real.
VSCode works! Phew. Got a bit of work done today at least. Lastly booted up Godot and tried to build the C# Solution -> Error message...

That there is the story. Beware, for your productive hours may be reduced to naught when it comes the hubris of updating.

Workwise I did implement graphics for two more levels and found some free (and legal) music online. Free Music Archive has a search function for licences so finding proper commercial use tracks is a breeze. SoundCloud does just as well in that regard. Lastly there's the audio portion of the internet archive. An esoteric jungle at best, due to limited search functionality that is.

More audio related topics coming up this week. Hopefully no more technical issues crop up in the meanwhile.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Playtested and implemented graphics for three more levels. 9 levels to go. With this pace I'll get them all done by the end of the week. That is just in time for the content complete milestone.

Also put in more music tracks and tweaked the volume fading. The big programming task today was making sure the build works. It seems updating to the 2018 version of Unity (which is apparently Beta.. Ups!) helped by removing the weird crashing bug. Great!

Had a few other scene loading related bugs in there, but managed to fix them all with the help of the debug build option. Editor of course does not have those same issues for some reason.

Still a bit unsure of the current progress. It does not feel like I can gobble it all together in less than two weeks, but maybe I'm just not seeing the finish line clearly. I can push the release a few days at least and I do plan to take a week off after the project anyways. I'll need that!

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Spent the morning fixing and tweaking some prose related things. Then added missing animations to the tank and the exo-suit. Next jumped to sound effects (got maybe a third of them done). Lastly added graphics to two more levels.

Good amount of work there, but I'm not going to lie, it was a lot of overtime! Been doing that recently and I'd rather not. Sure, time is ticking; ticking away! Come back, time!

Ahem... Talking about the schedule, that's all. Less overtime tomorrow. Only going to concentrate on audio (and those darn levels!)

Cheers!