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[oahda]

7

Appa

Welcome to town! Rough, grey and barren, but enough to update the log to keep it going? Started blocking out the actual layout so I can start working on a little demo of the game's intro section. There will be a lot of houses stacked vertically along the mountainsides but I haven't gotten that far yet. Still, this is about the size that the actual town itself will be, altho there are going to be some things in the outskirts to be discovered as well!



Most of the town will not be covered in time bubbles in the demo, but I got a bit carried away since it was so exciting to finally see the place that had been living in my head for some years by now!

Centrepiece is the town hall with a clock tower (only represented as the roughest outline ATM) that can be seen from almost anywhere in town, which together with the changing sky, the onset of darkness, and the piling up of snow will give the player a sense of the current time instead of relying on exact minutes, so there will probably be no need for a UI clock—especially since reaching the end of the cycle isn't a game over in Ao, and time winding is done freely~



Hopefully I'll be able to show off some more soon! I've got enough in place to start on the demo so I might neglect working any more on this for now, but I do want to get a bit more in place (colours especially) before demo time.

Posted some half-finished sketches figuring out the basis of the architectural style on Twitter.

[qMopey]

Have you thought about music style at all yet? I just happened to be listening to Breath of the Wild songs while looking over your last gif, and I gotta say it really added a whole lot as your character walked up and around those steps. Specifically this one (at end of post), which I think was Prince Sidon's theme (a royal Zora).

Will your world geometry stay very "blocky" and simple as the game moves forward? I really hope so! I miss old games where focus was on what the content means as opposed to the fidelity of the content    And your world already has a certain charm to it.

[oahda]

Thank you so much for seeing something already in this grey mess!

It's going to be relatively low poly, sort of hidden by a version of that painterly shader I showed in my main post and the picture there with the whale and the lighthouse is probably fairly representative! But I do definitely want all sorts of ornamental details of architecture as part of the world building (spirals, waves, arches, overall inspired by the sea~).

That's a bit funny regarding the music, as I posted a video on Twitter earlier today where I slapped on some Zelda music as the character walks up the first staircase and the town hall comes into view, but it invokes a slightly different feel to Sidon's theme (and is not at all representative for what I have in mind, I just thought it was funny).

I've definitely thought about music! Since everything is going to be going on in roughly the same small area I think I probably will take a bit of a cue from BotW with regards to subdued music so that the player doesn't have to listen to the same grating loop for hours on end. I do want it to be a bit dynamic depending on where (and when!) the player is too. Don't want to spoil too much, but there are going to be segments where the player gets "on the trail" of something (possibly a bit creepy!) which would be nice to accentuate with more intense music, for example. c:

(for clarity's sake I've played and beaten BotW!)

[nenad]

This already has quite a nice atmosphere. And it's great that it runs on custom engine. If you don't mind me asking; which language/libraries are you using?

[oahda]

Thank you!!

It's a C++ engine with AngelScript built on top of SDL. c:

The main libraries are Bullet for physics, only OpenGL/GLSL for graphics ATM, GLM for linear algebra, ImGui and Im3d for debugging, Recast and Detour for navmeshes and pathfinding, my own WIP text rendering library Kirja (itself based on a bunch of great libs)…

[diegzumillo]

Looking very promising! What are you using to sketch those volumes? I always wondered about designing levels in 3D in modern games. You make the 3D model and transform its model into colliders?

[oahda]

Thank you too!

Right now I just wanted to get a sense of scale so I exported the whole thing as one big model which I’m using as the collider itself (or rather what Bullet calculates based on it; not sure if identical), so I’ve yet to do it properly, but I’ll be splitting things up so I can stream and LOD them and so on and then make much simpler colliders than the rendered geometry. Don’t need rounded colliders for arches if the player character isn’t tall enough to bump their head on the arch, for example. Good to stick to mathematical primitives where possible. But I’m still figuring this all out, honestly. Don’t have an editor yet.

[oahda]

Never really know how to use the % thing but thought I'd update to 10% to show that the game isn't just a concept anymore but has a solid foundation at this point?

[Shephf]

Looks interesting and it's all built on your own engine, pretty cool! I'm also fond of going with my own stuff. Wondering how do you build levels right now, do you have your own in-game level editor ? For me personally level editors were always something that I didn't want to do, so I use third-party software for that, even if that software is not meant for level editing. Like it's sometimes easier to adapt to existing stuff than implementing your own from scratch.

[oahda]

What a coïncidence—the logo for my engine is a koala too!



Thank you! Hadn't come across your game before, but it looks really neat as well.

Up to this point I've just been juggling a bunch of JSON files (but I've been able to copy positions on the greybox world from Blender so I haven't had to guess completely). Not the nicest thing, but they're mostly human-readable and I still don't have a lot of objects to keep track of~

But soon enough I'm going to want something barebones to place objects visually. I'll probably just code something up myself since it doesn't need to be all that complicated and I can put ImGui and Im3d to good use. c: It'll just output more JSON that I can keep hand-editing for now if I have to. Will also experiment with some autogeneration for houses and foliage and stuff.

Overall, I'm thinking tooling will have to evolve along with the game as things are needed, just like the engine itself (which is still lacking in certain features that I haven't gotten around to implementing for the game yet, like lighting and audio), or I'll get stuck working prematurely on stuff instead of progressing on the game itself.

[diegzumillo]

Never really know how to use the % thing but thought I'd update to 10% to show that the game isn't just a concept anymore but has a solid foundation at this point?

Don't remind me. My devlog is stuck at 20% for years.

What a coïncidence—the logo for my engine is a koala too!



(...)

Overall, I'm thinking tooling will have to evolve along with the game as things are needed, just like the engine itself (which is still lacking in certain features that I haven't gotten around to implementing for the game yet, like lighting and audio), or I'll get stuck working prematurely on stuff instead of progressing on the game itself.

Your engine even has a logo! I didn't realize how making your own engine for a game in a way that it's useful for other projects later is like working on two giant projects at the same time. Somehow a logo is what made me think of that.

I kinda like tooling. It feels like a waste of time but it's a pleasure to edit and create things in your own tools. (also, it's not really a waste of time in the long run)

[Shephf]

What a coïncidence—the logo for my engine is a koala too!

Wow, a coincidence indeed They even look pretty much alike)

Thank you! Hadn't come across your game before, but it looks really neat as well.

Up to this point I've just been juggling a bunch of JSON files (but I've been able to copy positions on the greybox world from Blender so I haven't had to guess completely). Not the nicest thing, but they're mostly human-readable and I still don't have a lot of objects to keep track of~

But soon enough I'm going to want something barebones to place objects visually. I'll probably just code something up myself since it doesn't need to be all that complicated and I can put ImGui and Im3d to good use. c: It'll just output more JSON that I can keep hand-editing for now if I have to. Will also experiment with some autogeneration for houses and foliage and stuff.

Overall, I'm thinking tooling will have to evolve along with the game as things are needed, just like the engine itself (which is still lacking in certain features that I haven't gotten around to implementing for the game yet, like lighting and audio), or I'll get stuck working prematurely on stuff instead of progressing on the game itself.

Oh, I see, so the plan is to use own tooling in the long run. Good luck with that and other stuff, I'll be watching your progress, m.b. you'll end up with a generic engine that others will use, you do have a logo already, the most important thing is in place already Oh, you'll need to name it as well)

[oahda]

Karhu it's called! c: Not sure it'll ever be user-friendly enough to be worth using for anybody else (and that isn't my goal anyway; I'd point them to Godot!) but I am absolutely planning on continuing to use it myself.

Oh, I see, so the plan is to use own tooling in the long run.

"Where it makes sense", I'd say. If I can leverage an existing tool I see no reason not to do that. So for example while I'll code something custom up for level editing, I'll be using translation/rotation/scale gizmos from Im3d so I can get it up and running quickly.

[nenad]

Thank you!!

It's a C++ engine with AngelScript built on top of SDL. c:

The main libraries are Bullet for physics, only OpenGL/GLSL for graphics ATM, GLM for linear algebra, ImGui and Im3d for debugging, Recast and Detour for navmeshes and pathfinding, my own WIP text rendering library Kirja (itself based on a bunch of great libs)…

Great! Kudos for doing it with your own engine. Is there a specific reason why you went that way after prototyping in Unity?

[oahda]

Not gonna lie, a big part of it is simply because I enjoy it as a project in and of itself. But also because Unity wasn't really up to my wants and needs in certain areas, like input or text rendering or accessibility.

Also I sleep easier not having to worry about the prospect of royalties and stuff like that… Don't like paperwork!

Unity is still great, tho! I use it for all my jamming and I've worked jobs with it (and of course did those prototypes for this game in it). c:

[JobLeonard]

or accessibility.

Good human

[oahda]

Will do my darndest! Having settings is good! c:

[ProgramGamer]

Oh hey, this is making good progress! I was gone on vacation for a little bit, so I missed your update there. I also wasn't aware that your engine had a logo, and I want to say that it's looking pretty good!

[oahda]

Thank you! I made it a while ago when I was working on making program icons work and set up a system to generate all the needed sizes and icon files for each platform (also splash screens for iOS and Android) from a logo and some other style settings.

[diegzumillo]

What are your plans for KoalaTek? Will Apple & Worm 2 be powered by it??