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[mystic_swamp]

Getting closer to a playable demo.
Going to try to start streaming some development soon.

[JobLeonard]

Oh man this looks so good. Using ordered dithering trail combined with error diffusion dithering elsewhere is really satisfying somehow

[bayersglassey]

That is a seriously cool art style :O

[RealScaniX]

This looks really great. I love all those UI transitions and animations.

[mystic_swamp]

Oh man this looks so good. Using ordered dithering trail combined with error diffusion dithering elsewhere is really satisfying somehow

That is a seriously cool art style :O

This looks really great. I love all those UI transitions and animations.

Thank you for all of these kind words!
: )

[mystic_swamp]

9/2/21

[silly placeholder cinematic trailer]




Steam
My steam page is being reviewed, so hopefully in 1-2 days I can end every post with "Wish List Here! [link]"


Navigation

My system for moving around the game world (which is about ⅓ of the game) is obtuse and bad. The more I use it the more glaring the problems become. It is set up so that the button that controls navigation moves the player to another room in the "direction" they choose, but the whole game you are "facing" only one direction. The problem is that sometimes the direction you are "facing" changes (why did I do this lmao?). It is not clear when this happens. In one instance if the player wants to travel through a path they would have to be using the "go backwards" button even though this would be taking them places they have never been to. In another location if you press the "go backwards" button it would take you to another place where the "go backwards" button would take you back to the previous place, so going backwards will just loop you between two rooms. That is some confusing and inaccessible garbage lol.

I have a solution. I call it halls and walls. I'm reversing my original system, which turns it into something much more intuitive and conventional. Each room will be 4 times the length. The user will be able to turn left, right, or around, leading them to face north, east, south, or west, which corresponds to 1 of the 4 sections of the room. There will be only one movement, which is forward, and you will travel forward in the direction you are facing.

Some directions will offer no place to go. I decided it would be good and funny to make this very discreet in the interface. For each direction in each room there corresponds two symbols.

One is a wall, meaning you can't move forward. (When facing walls your movement button will be dithered and unusable, much like me.)

The other is a symbol of a perspective grid (I'm calling it a hall), meaning you can move forward.

Organization

I will be creating a separate public trello that contains just the requirements for a demo to be completed (no story spoilers). This includes the main systems and ui that still need work. The requirements to reach a playable demo are fortunately quite difficult and time consuming.

Here's a comprehensive and semi-comprehensible checklist:

• New Navigation System
• New Vision Point Investigation System
• Updated Email UI
• Finish Memories (World Map / Fast Travel) UI
• Finish Data Folder (Attachment Storage) UI
• New Entity/Attachment Interaction Screen
• Data Folder Equipment UI (does not  have to be useable yet)
• Inventory UI
• Passage Gating
• Entity Analysis and Limited Operations
• Initialization intro and tutorial integration

Obligatory Gifs

[JobLeonard]

All the cinematic trailer needs is a bit of dithering 

[Alain]

I just love your style! And I agree with JobLeonard, for any future cinematics I'd love to see some sweet dithering.

[mystic_swamp]

trailer with some "dithering" (actually just 1-bit, but whatever)

9/9/21

Animation

While I work to remake my navigation system, I am allowing myself some time to do fun things. I decided I didn't want the creatures in my game to be static images. So I set out to find a good solution for animating sprites using armatures. I tried spine for a bit, but it is so expensive and not that intuitive to me despite looking really nice and usable. I decided I'd look for something open source. It seems like the closest open source alternative is called Dragon Bones. Unfortunately it seems to be a relatively dead project, but I figured I would give it a try anyway. Well, it works great and is exactly what I needed.

Locations

Because my new navigation system requires a bit more coherence per room (4 faces for 4 directions) I've been taking some new photos / looking through old ones and attempting to find some I can stitch together in a way that makes sense.



Anyway, short update this week, as I just had a root canal.

Oh also, wishlist my video game if you think its cool!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1738830/This_Is_Crying/

[JobLeonard]

Wishlisted! Good luck!

[mystic_swamp]

9/30/21

Navigation

The core of the new navigation system is finished. I'm actually really proud of how it turned out. Not really because It's super special in execution, but because the implementation is really simple and dynamic, saving me a lot of time.

I'm not a programmer and I'm shit with math, so believe me when I say I'm proud that I did a thing with a multidimensional array and it worked like I pictured it would.

Before I knew how I was going to implement my navigation system I made a little map of how each room was connected:


A week or so went by and I had an idea when I woke up. I looked at the map and realized I could just 1:1 map each room's connections inside of an array.

The player can only go north, east, south, or west. This is just +1 or -1 in the array. Therefore I just needed to store the room names inside of the right array coordinates to directionally match the map I drew.

It probably seems obvious to a person who actually programs for a living, but I am thrilled I was able to arrive at this solution.

I added a mini map using this same logic:


(This is using WASD controls) Here's what it looks like:


I've been thinking about what the tutorial will entail:


Here's a plant:


I'll be working on more UI next.

Don't forget to wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1738830/This_Is_Crying/

[JobLeonard]

It probably seems obvious to a person who actually programs for a living, but I am thrilled I was able to arrive at this solution.

It is, but it is only obvious to me because I have been programming for years and I also had to go through this step, so I totally agree you should be proud of fitting the puzzle pieces together!

Also I freaking love the rustling plants above the UI. And the mood of rest of the screenshots in general