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[droqen]

march 21 20

Play YRKKEY'S PARADISE on itch.io
IT'S OUT, IT'S GOOD, YOU'RE A RACCOON.

december 13

YRKKEY'S PARADISE (a sort of first-draft name that might stick) is a raccoon-building-a-computer simulation that I've been working on for a couple months now. I'm still figuring out how to describe it even as I shake out what it's even about, but it's a sort of puzzly adventure jumper game that's not terribly hard exploring themes of paradise and digital duality.

You can sign up to (maybe) be included in the next batch of playtests at this link: https://forms.gle/ZhSEYSWJ9zjgrTjp8

october 26

a virtual space for take shape

Hello! I am making something again.

At the moment, I'm trying to figure out what it is, and also how much I'm allowed to post about it :D

Here are my pixel art sketches which I nearly guarantee will not appear in the final game at all.



tv-headed jumper mockup, abstract black/white line art with 'noisy' sky



an imp sprite that i wanted to try making jump because the animation is so bouncy, and also because the sprite is so short (wide rectangle shape)

[mystic_swamp]

looks interesting. I like the way the animation of the little imp makes it look wiggly and floaty in the air, like its fighting its fall/trying to gain air while jumping.

[droqen]

Spent a little while thinking about setting and artstyle. Need to decompress after HMDL, so taking it easy while exploring different visual spaces within my restricted 8x8 style

Working on a new sprite that might be closer to what I stick with? Not su

Spent a little too long thinking of lofty design goals, but returning to the muck & grime and figuring out what the world I'm simulating is like.

The big question:

What does it look like when an individual is lost in cyberspace?

It's hard to render a character in front of a computer terminal
maybe they're wearing VR goggles or something?
Preferably they're stuck in place
Lying in a bed (asleep?)
Maybe they just vanish from the real world or transform into something else for the duration of their stay in cyberspace??
Not sure.

[droqen]

(one of these is player-controlled)

[droqen]

I've been having thoughts about the shape of this game, and I don't think I'll end up using this prototype much at all! It may not even end up a platformer. But, I thought I might post this gif anyway and discuss some of the preliminary thoughts that went into it.

I was thinking about using these boxes as a sort of physical inventory (a bit like Uurnog's save room), and I was going to make adjacent boxes (boxes touching, in contact) communicate with each other, so that certain functions would bleed between them? So you'd put a dead computer next to a blue circle computer and then you'd have two blue circle computers.

I didn't get that far, but you can see that I've got a computer on my head, and I was thinking about using that as a sort of control scheme - again, like uurnog, you'd pick stuff up and hold it on your head.

edit:
ALso, I upgraded to Godot 3.2.3! The physics are way better and more solid-feeling than 3.2.1, and they fixed the overlaps-ignore-collision bug in 3.2.2. I'm happy.

[droqen]

raccoon

I was working on cleaning up some Navdi stuff (personal Godot library), mostly making it SANE to load levels again after the mess I made working on HMDL! Anyway, I made this little raccoon. Nice to be in a place where I enjoy blank-slating a project again

[droqen]

haha look at this silly thing! i'm enjoying myself.

[mystic_swamp]

loving this. The racoon is super cute and there is something very satisfying about the blocks displacing you while all still having dropthrough properties.

[q1]

oh dude, this is so creative! especially love the feel of those boxes (do they play an animation when being pushed, or is it something else??). excited to see where this project's headed

[droqen]

Thank u both! Here is a different raccoon I did at the beginning of this year:



Interesting to me, to see how different they are!

~

warmsundae, assuming you're talking about the one with proper physics - no animation, just pixelated graphics & 2d physics engine! I really love the look of objects rotating and shifting through pixelspace.

[droqen]

pictured: raccoon overlooking a pile of heat generators (the batteries) supported by trashcans & heat-dispersing fans on top of the whole heap.

I struggled conceptually with a lot of the work that I did today, but I'm pretty happy with where it's at now; it's very easy to add new tiles, and the way they move around when you stack them precariously (very tile-based, not physics-driven as in the gif from oct 30th) is very... controlled, yet embodied in a way I'm satisfied with.

Adding new tiles and particles will be very easy, I'm still not sure quite what the gameplay will be like, but managing this simple particle system and heaping tiles is a very satisfying physical metaphor.

[jsjohnsonfilm]

This is super cool! The simplicity of the raccoon is excellent, and I agree with mystic about the satisfaction of laying the blocks.

The heat generators with the heat-dispersing fans is an interesting idea - I assume the red dots are the heat right? I'm excited to see where you take this.

[mystic_swamp]

yes! love the possibilities here, droqen. thermodynamics and racoons sounds like a blast no matter what the objective may end up being haha

[droqen]

I assume the red dots are the heat right?

Yeah! Glad that was borderline readable. It's tricky, because I want to communicate lots of little things but I'm already at a VERY low resolution... I considered going to 16x16 just so heat icons could be more visible, but decided against it. Too much art for one droq.

Glad yr both onboard for thermodynamics x raccoon. <3 Will post again when I have more!

[droqen]

Uploaded a very garbage-y build, if you want to play around with what little is available

http://jetsam.droqen.com/1107-raccomp/

Heat doesn't do anything yet.
And (hidden, in case you want to play around & discover first):
<adjacent batteries get more powerful and create more heat.>

[droqen]

Thermodynamics particle system is REALLY hard to design for, moving into space more like my 'THE CITY' game, where adjacency matters in a simplified/localized way.

[droqen]

playing with CPUs, batteries, and fans

Think I'm gonna call it a day here - this system is still too complicated! Layering one game on top of another means I really have to focus on how much information a person can actually process and understand, because I'd like the 'real world' to fade into the background almost completely while you're in cyberspace (this will eventually make sense, I promise), and it can't do that if you're constantly babying a picky thermodynamic system.

This system is fun to play with in real time, but it needs to work while you're in cyberspace too. Hmrm. You need permanent/non-volatile resources. Good thing I already have a floppy disk sprite!

floppy disk! floppy disk!

edit:: Thinking I need to do less sub-tile stuff (heat, power, battery level) and more tile-size stuff (e.g. maybe an item that spawns floppy disks? conveyor belts or something? idk. oh, and i wanted fans to make you hover above them! increase jump height! reminded of starseed pilgrim stuff...)

[droqen]

Leaving out all the meandering details and dead ends of imagination, I was thinking about how to encourage the player to build tall towers, now that I've tweaked the toppling system, and I started thinking about stuff 'flowing' upwards through solid objects and materializing on the surface.

It was going to be coins, but I was like, coins go down, not up. Not that this makes a lot more sense, but now I have floppy disks capturing these wild sparks of data that flow upwards from the bottom of the world. It's kinda cool?

TODO:
> Add block types that do other stuff with data. In particular, block types that direct and that duplicate/reproduce data. I'll probably get to this today, tbh.
> Especially focus on block types that encourage the construction of very tall towers. But, I think as long as data flows inexorably upwards, you'll be disinclined to stick with the physical/natural 'pyramid' shape that the blocks like to fall into.

[droqen]

I made these "coins" that feel really good.

[q1]

floppy disks! computers! towers! i don't know for sure where this is going but i love the direction. especially the main character being what looks like a trash raccoon in some dark urban alleyway