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[ChrisLSound]

Thanks, everyone!

The Jelly lantern is a cool concept, makes me think of Stardew Valley's moonlight jellies

Oh, those are cute! Maybe we'll see something similar in this game…

When I turn the valve to full steam, will the lamp convert into jellyfish launcher?

That would be a good easter egg, like in Zelda!


Took a break. Decided a couple of days ago to try and set up a playground version of the game in Unity so that I can get some proper playtesting going much more quickly and then I'll transfer whatever sticks back into the real project, done properly. Pretty quick to set up since I'm able to just make simplified copies of systems I already made:



This version will stay blocky and programming can be quick and dirty without messing with the real codebase. Using ProBuilder (like a simple 3D modeller built into Unity) to extrude houses and such fast. Things like that.

Things like movement and camera will remain rough and I'll focus on the game loop itself. Time to figure out if the game is any fun, and rethink and quickly try again in this Unity testbed if not!

Nice to see an update here! Good luck indeed!  

[Alain]

I am sure it is a great idea to be able to iterate on mechanics quickly and see what sticks. The fact that it is not inside your actual game surely frees up a lot of headspace.

[oahda]

Good luck! Looking forward to hear your thoughts on the findings

Nice to see an update here! Good luck indeed!  

Thanks! Actually making new stuff now will be trickier but it's a good start

I am sure it is a great idea to be able to iterate on mechanics quickly and see what sticks. The fact that it is not inside your actual game surely frees up a lot of headspace.

It really does! Can be as sloppy as I want to.

[diegzumillo]

That is a great strategy! I did that with my stealth thing, and it allowed me to more quickly realize the idea was not going to work and try something else instead.

[oahda]

Oh yeah, I remember seeing the posts in your thread

Of course I hope the current plan will be magically fine from the get-go…

[diegzumillo]

I'm sure the basic premise works just fine! worst case you might need to tweak a few things here and there 

[oahda]

Hope so!


Not sure how functional this will be, still creating the schedules through code and changing things here doesn't actually work, but it was hard to keep track of events with no visualisation besides playing the game, so I made this window to at least give me a better overview of the timings so I can make it all match my spreadsheet more or less.



Had to spend the days before this figuring some unresolved design issues out. How it'll all work viewing the past from different perspectives, the discrepancies between them and so on. Now I know the past timeline schedules will be static, but with premade "branches" for the cases where witness accounts disagree. Those bubbles limiting the field of view will mostly handle the rest. In really complex cases I might just make multiple separate NPC entities for the same character. All of this means I'll be able to swap instantly between perspectives without worrying about resimulating anything, which is nice. The dynamic NPC system will probably still get used for the non-memory gameplay in the present timeline.

Think I'll try to code up the game loop between present and past timelines now before I start filling the past events in…

EDIT:

Got started on that and thought I'd give you the simplest idea of the sort of mood and colours I had in mind for the present timeline, since I haven't shown that before.



Won't spend more time on it than this for the Unity prototype but of course it's important to be able to see the difference between the timelines even there.

[vdapps]

Glad to see update from you.

Regarding faster iterations, good to have something like that! I don't have it (as I'm not on any 3rd party engine or editor, so I'm much less flexible, in case I want to make big design change) and I'm wondering if my game design will be good or not. I just can't throw months of work out, so I somehow stick with what I have designed and hope it'll turn out to be good and enjoyable gameplay.

[oahda]

I'm almost counting on having to throw out or change a lot of this so I'm trying to not spend too much time on any of it in this first attempt, just get it working and then do a clean rewrite once I've found and fixed any issues That way I can hopefully be quite fast! Almost like a game jam.

[baftis]

Hey, Prinsessa

I've got to say that your work is top notch quality and the idea of having a separate project strictly for prototyping is at least interesting. Even though it might seem that you invest double the amount of time between two separate projects, the time spent in the prototype version will make up for it with less time spent in the actual game version. 

While reading your last posts, I had an idea that will hopefully be of some help. Would it be easier for you to have (or make) a tool that imports data from a spreadsheet directly into your engine of choice, and therefore directly into the NPC schedules tool? This way, down the road, all you have to do to iterate is to change data from that spreadsheet.

Keep it going, your work is inspiring.

[oahda]

Thank you! That's my hope too, that this will actually save time I think some kind of importer like that would be neat, tho the current spreadsheet is just notes and not very programmatic so I'd have to figure out a format for it. The biggest problem is I still don't really know how much time the events actually take up yet, and that's probably easier to work out by adding them into the engine one by one and seeing how they work out and fine-tuning as I go.

[oahda]

Hello! Hope your holidays, if you had any, have been good!

Been a bit slow, did almost nothing in December, managed to spend an hour or two every few days for the last two weeks or so.

Had to spend some of the time going back to writing to figure out the details of the tutorial at the end of the timeline that I'm trying to actually make playable now.

Present timeline intro in the works, right after you arrive:



Past timeline still uses scripting for schedules. I added a "jump" action that I'll probably be using a bunch to convey things like surprise in the absence of proper animations in the blocky Unity prototype.



I made it so you can also queue actions that let you run custom code for them, but like all the other actions are set to a specific length of time, and the implementation should be a function of this time to be rewindable, preferably without any state, so here's some hackery for the flock of birds, all considered a single NPC together:



Having all the control of time that the game provides is really handy for making sure the actions play out correctly. I was struggling a bit to make the transition between flying forwards and circling upwards smooth, but slowing down time helped me nitpick it until it was good:



So yeah, I'm basically spending my time right now actually inputting all the events into the game which is taking quite a bit of time. I just need enough that the tutorial can be completed and then I'll work on the mechanics for swapping timelines and presenting findings to the companion character to actually unlock new stuff and progress.

Here's the sort of mess I'm resorting to in order to synch things up at the moment, sT being the schedule for the human character with the birds, and sF that of the birds themselves…

[baftis]

Hi, Prinsessa.

Great progress, you did plenty of stuff with the time you invested. Don't worry too much (if at all) about spending less time on the project, it's actually beneficial. At most two hours per day will make you function more efficiently in the long run, since you'd be focused on getting things done in this short time frame.

Question: what exactly does the flock of birds do with/to the player? I haven't encountered the flock of birds in your previous posts. 

[Alain]

Happy new year Prinsessa, glad to hear you at least got a little bit of dev work done!
Btw. the capsule with the nose, scarf and hat is adorable

[vdapps]

Nice to hear from you Prinsessa! I'm also at lower pace, but this lower pace is still a positive number I guess, still better slow pace than burn-out. From what I see, you made quite a chunk of important work (putting those timelines together). Btw, I like your coding (indentation) style. It's well readable.

[oahda]

Thanks, everyone! c:

what exactly does the flock of birds do with/to the player?

They're essentially also characters that you need to keep track of to make connections. There are some other animals too!

Btw. the capsule with the nose, scarf and hat is adorable

\o/

Btw, I like your coding (indentation) style. It's well readable.

Aligning stuff manually is a hobby of mine

[JobLeonard]

Seconding that the capsule with fashion sense is adorable

[oahda]

Yay! It may be a blocky prototype, but being able to tell characters apart is still an essential mechanic

[Shephf]

Oh, you're using Unity to test things so that you can then move the right stuff back to your game. That's definitely the hard part with own engine when you don't have all the convenient tools yet and forced to use third-party (e.g. other mature engines). Great progress BTW, keep it going!

[oahda]

Thanks! Yeah, partially the convenience and speed of prototyping of Unity, partially to keep the versions separate so I can do quick and dirty stuff and take shortcuts without worrying about future maintenance since I won't be using this code in the end—it's really freeing to have a playground version like that!


Unrelatedly, some award-winning acting, "jump" being the superstar once again: