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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsAgainst The Mountain - 1st Person Exploration/Platformer
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baftis
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« Reply #200 on: February 24, 2022, 11:05:36 AM »

Hey, Prinsessa!

I haven't given that much of a consideration to the jump mechanic recently, I must admit. To be perfectly honest, I haven't touched the character blueprint for quite a while, because the last time I did, I got so burnt out that I put off working in it for after the new year arrived. But never touched it since. Thank you for bringing this up.

Technically you can look straight down when jumping, but I got cocky during the recording, so yeah Smiley). I don't know if "absolutely terrifying" is a good thing or a bad thing, so I'll assume it's a bad thing. This thing also came up many times during development: should I automatically tilt the camera downwards while the player is falling  and then switch it back to normal when the character lands or just leave it like it is? Because on one hand, this camera auto-tilt would be a massive quality-of-life feature for the game. On the other hand, without auto-tilt things get really challenging (on the brink of frustrating sometimes, honestly). So I'm still at odds with this. 
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« Reply #201 on: February 28, 2022, 04:32:28 PM »

DAY 72

Hey, Guys and girls, hope you are doing as well as possible. Me? Oh well...as you have probably observed, I haven't posted any updates recently because I've been learning the shader basics in Unreal. You know, all the math nodes, data types, input vectors, View Space, World Space, Object Space, & Tangent Space...that kind of stuff. Riveting stuff, almost illuminating. Even thought I might dabble in HLSL/GLSL programming.

Though I must confess that, creatively I've hit a roadblock when it comes to level design. Or, more specifically, what musicians and writers call "writer's block". And I've hit that roadblock for quite a while. It's not a pleasant feeling, especially if you think of yourself that you have untapped creativity at your disposal, like I do.

To give you some context for what follows, I'm also a musician and have been a bedroom musician/weekend warrior for 20-odd years. In all these years, I've hit the writer's block many many times and sometimes I was able to break through the block.

And, naturally, I thought that the lessons learned in music breaking through writer's block could help in game dev as well, but could not for the life of me figure out how to do it. Until I've spotted the similarities.

1. If your level does not seem to go anywhere, no matter what you add to it, it's time to scrap some part of the level that currently doesn't really work. Do not be afraid to scrap something. What you have scrapped in one level can be used in other levels and/or in other ways.
2. If sections of your creation do not gel together but in and of themselves the sections are great, it's time to focus on other things. This is because stress/pressure has very likely reared it's ugly head and there's nothing really constructive you can do about it except detach from what you are working on.
3. Play other games to get inspiration from. Do other things, completely different things (watch a movie, go for a walk) and allow greater inspiration to hit you.     
4. Writer's block is a mindset. When you fight against a mindset, you actually feed it. When you work with a mindset, you actually feed it as well. Therefore, if you fight writer's block, you feed writer's block. When you work with creativity, you feed creativity.

With this in mind, I've decided to re-make the second level, aka the Rocky Formations level. Well, this:



And this is how it looks like now:











Keep in mind, this is still a first person platformer, but the mannequin is there to show the scale of things. Although I was asked if I would make a mix of First/Third Person platformer, it would still be a First Person (though I would leave the game moddable, and if his/her heart desires so, he/she can make a mod).

The very first thing on my list was to make the very first scene of the level fit the scene composition rule of thirds, with the addition of making it breath taking (basically this would be the first WOW scene in the game, but don't quote me on this). I'll explain later on what the rule of thirds is. The end-point of the level was moved way in the back and the level landmark got way taller.

As a natural consequence, the level just got way bigger. This was a desired consequence, though not necessarily something that I directly pursued. To populate the level further, I've decided to stick with the BSP brushes instead of using the stylized meshes and replace said meshes where the case calls for it. 

One of the bigger mistakes made was basing the level around "not-exactly-prototype-material-but-this'll-do" meshes. Stuff from the Unreal Marketplace. While that's absolutely great for emerging ideas and going with the flow, not exactly great if you have something specific in mind.

Since this would technically be the second level (again, don't quote me on this) I would tone things down a bit mechanics-wise and only add the basics. Also, I would be toning down the difficulty of said mechanics.

The biggest gripe I've had with this level and the reason I've decided to re-do it is because of the scene composition.  It had it's moments, but I knew I could do much more. So I started documenting myself about scene composition. One thing that I have been made aware of (although I kind of knew it from photography) was the Rule of Thirds.

The rule of thirds means that the screen is basically split into 3 rows and 3 columns. Depending on the artist's desire, the focal points of the scene could be aligned according to the horizontal or vertical lines OR at the intersection of the lines. Like so (hope this gif shows up)



And I thought that I can incorporate this into Unreal. And so I did. The way I did it is as follows:

1. Downloaded a Rule of Third grid picture (with transparency) off the internet
2. Made a material in Unreal with said grid
3. In the material, I loaded the texture and plugged the RGB into Base Color plug and the Alpha into Opacity plug.
4. In the first person character blueprint, I added a plane mesh under the FirstPerson Camera, so that it is attached to the camera.
5. In the Event Graph, I had this blueprint code attached to the plane mesh:

6. With the plane selected, I changed the rendering stats and unchecked the visible tickbox. This is so that the grid will only show up when the G key is held. (the G key is only for development, not a feature that will be present in the game...unless I make a photo mode)

And voila. With this simple tool, I can check the scene composition in-game. Would actually check if I can do it for the editor camera. Like so:



That's it for today, I'll elaborate more about this level in the next post. Buh bye.
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #202 on: March 01, 2022, 01:26:00 AM »

Looking forward to see what you're turn the level into

Also, is that skybox new?
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baftis
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« Reply #203 on: March 01, 2022, 01:44:23 AM »

Hey, Leonard!

It's a separate level from the actual game world, skybox and all. This is because I don't want the game world to suffer major changes without being 100% certain that the changes made are the real deal.
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oahda
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« Reply #204 on: March 08, 2022, 10:06:12 AM »

Yay, shaders! Good that you've found ways to combat your blocks and that you're finding things to do anyway Smiley Rule of thirds stuff is interesting, is it for the angle when you first enter the level?
« Last Edit: March 09, 2022, 02:40:59 AM by Prinsessa » Logged

baftis
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« Reply #205 on: March 08, 2022, 12:42:57 PM »

Yay, shaders!

I know, right? There's so much cool stuff to create just with the basic shader math nodes. It's unbelievable.

 
Rule of thirds stuff is interesting, is it for the angle when you first enter the level?

Yes, but it's not just limited for the level entrance. Let me give you some context. All the levels have a 4-act structure (introduction, development, twist, conclusion), and at the beginning of each act the player will be shown a scenic view that respects the rule of thirds.

For example, the screenshot with the grid in one of the previous posts would be the first act of the level.



Now, here's the beginning of the second act of the same level:



And here's the beginning of the third act of the same level:



Granted, these areas don't have good composition right now because I've eyeballed it (hence the need for the grid). But they have a small semblance of composition. With some tweaks here and there, hopefully might turn out great, not just good.    
« Last Edit: March 08, 2022, 12:48:31 PM by baftis » Logged

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« Reply #206 on: March 09, 2022, 01:27:54 AM »

It's a good guideline for tweaking, that's for sure. Don't be a slave to it though Wink
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« Reply #207 on: March 09, 2022, 02:41:47 AM »

Ohh, that's really neat!
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baftis
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« Reply #208 on: March 13, 2022, 03:52:50 PM »

DAY 73

Hey-oooh, guys and girls. I hope you guys are doing as great as possible. I'm back with another update on the devlog. I know that I haven't been posting as regularly as I used to, but work on the project is still ongoing. Me, I'm still learning to program shaders and have taken quite an interest on the technical arts side of things, which surprises me because I was afraid of anything programming for as long as I can remember. And to a certain extent I still am scared because it's an overwhelming subject to me.

As for the project itself, remember last post where I stated that the second level is being remade? Well, I am still remaking it and that is what I have worked on since my last post (project-wise, anyway). And since then, functional-wise, I am 75% done making iteration number 2.

Here's how it looks, bird's-eye view:



Structurally, the difficulty is toned-down a lot (maybe too much) and the hazards/obstacles are laid out in such a manner that they explore every scenario possible as of right now. Since I don't have enemies in the game, the mindset is basically "the environment is the enemy". Plain and simple, no two ways around it.

A new addition to the level is the long and hollow mesa in the middle of the level. This mesa came about similarly to how going out and around the tall sequoia tree: as an answer for the "variety" question. At first I was really skeptic about the idea, because on paper it seemed like it was not very interesting. But the idea kept popping in my head, even though I kept dismissing it. And since it kept doing that, I decided to give it a shot and see what comes of it.

Lo and behold. One long mesa, 4 different sections. Breakdown time!

This section is where I introduce the grappling hook:



This is the section where gameplay with the grappling hook gets slightly complicated, adding falling platforms to the mix:




This is the section where I throw off the player by introducing a different mechanic (the vertical moving platforms).



And the is the section where everything introduced before gets thrown in like a melting pot of mechanics:



To be honest, it's just OK-to-good, gameplay-wise. It's nothing spectacular or out-of-the-ordinary, it's more of an area where the the player can learn the grappling hook mechanic in an easy-to-learn environment. What might be spectacular is the addition of some big holes in the walls of the mesa that reveal the environment from time to time. Towards the end, things get more difficult, as the player has to use timing to his advantage in order to reach the end of this section. Improvements will be made to make it as good as possible, but the focus is to have a structurally sound foundation to the gameplay.

The stage following the hollow mesa is simply a transition area towards what was the entire second level and is now the last stage of the second level. Although I wasn't really for it, I added the jump pad in this transition area to get the player to the last area faster. But that may soon change it. This is because I settled upon having to only walk in the transition areas, no jumping or anything else that might cause the player to die. Just let the player breathe, take in the environment and allow the story to unfold during that time (for this level, in voice-over form). 

The last area (which again, was previously the entire second level) will suffer some modifications to it, since I've also added a double jump feature. I've replaced the stylized cliffs from the previous iteration with BSP brushes so as to have better control over the layout of the area. I've stated before that I'm OK with the "happy accident" of stumbling over a path that the player can take due to the cliffs placed, and I still am OK with it. But I want more control over the layout of the level, because I feel that in this level I relied too much on the "happy accidents" thing. True, they got me going in a good direction, but I can't rely on that too much.

In the following days I'll continue working on this second iteration and keep you guys posted. After this, I may take a break from level design (should I finish the tree level too) and focus on implementing the swimming and the wall climb mechanic.

Anyway, that's it for today. See you guys in the next post hopefully I'll post sooner than I've been doing lately. Buh-Bye! 
 
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« Reply #209 on: March 16, 2022, 03:20:12 PM »

DAY 74

Alrighty, day 74. Hello, guys and girls. hope you guys are having as great a time as possible. I'm back with another update on the project.

So up until now, I've managed to prototype about 80% done with the Level 2 version 2.





Made some minor modifications here and there, because some meshes were weirdly placed before, like so:



Now, what's left to do is the following:

- Complete/remake the last section of the level
- Make secret areas
- Place more tall rocks clutter

Anyway, after these steps are done, I'll most likely move back to the tree level. And then after that, I'll be moving on to swimming and wall climbing, as stated.

On the to do list was testing as well. I have to say that I really think this level is too easy. Within the first minute of gameplay or so, I start to zone out and that is not good. To be fair, my focus gets kicked into gear a bit later in the level. And this concerns me just a little. As a precautionary measure, I'll make minor modifications to the first section to make the gameplay more "active" and alive, so to speak.

One other small thing I managed to do, this time regarding the tools, is that I've added a one-point perspective grid to the camera, similar to the rules of third grid.



Someone here (JobLeonard) mentioned something very helpful, and that thing is to use these grids as guidelines. And he speaks the truth, you can get caught up way too much in a cycle of constant checking, evaluating and reassessing composition. A dash of "guidelines, not rules", a sprinkle of "good enough is good enough" and some good old fashioned planning + deadlines would kick you into high gear and make you not think too much.
 
And that's all for today, guys and girls. See ya in the next one. Buh-bye.

 
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Alain
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« Reply #210 on: March 16, 2022, 11:51:35 PM »

Hey baftis! The grid you and JobLeonard came up with is so simple, but yet such a powerful tool  Gentleman Keep up the great progress!
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baftis
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« Reply #211 on: March 17, 2022, 03:27:26 AM »

Hey, Alain. Welcome to the devlog and thank you very much for the kind words.

I'd like to make a quick correction: Leonard merely said to use these grids as guidelines (with the accent on the italicized word). And this was said after the tools were made by me. To be fair, Leonard did contribute with some ideas that I also liked, but he didn't contribute on this one.
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« Reply #212 on: March 19, 2022, 10:29:02 AM »

Yeah I didn't do anything! Cheesy

Unless encourage baftis counts I guess, but that's about it Smiley
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Alain
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« Reply #213 on: March 21, 2022, 01:32:38 AM »

I see, sorry, I understood that wrong Wink
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baftis
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« Reply #214 on: March 21, 2022, 05:23:17 PM »

Yeah I didn't do anything! Cheesy

Unless encourage baftis counts I guess, but that's about it Smiley

Oh yes you did Smiley) And of course encouragement counts and I am most grateful for it. One encouragement is basically one idea and a half, if not more.

I see, sorry, I understood that wrong Wink

Absolutely no problem, mate. Again, welcome to the devlog, hopefully you'll find enjoyment in reading it as much as I like writing it.

DAY 75

OK, guys and girls, it's that time of the week again. You know, the time I write an update for the project. I'm happy to announce that I've managed to complete Level 2 v2.0. And it honestly wasn't as easy as I've hoped it would be. Granted, it wasn't hard, but not as easy breezy as I thought.

For one, I was left in a complete stump as to how I'm going to end the level. The previous iteration looks something like this:





While being an extremely tense and calculated section, the above does not really fit with this second iteration, which serves as being a introductory section more than anything.

Anyway, here is hot the last section of the level looks now:











(Spoiler alert: the oversized campfire is a placeholder)

This section definitely has better structure to it level design wise and environmental building-wise. Compared to the first version, this definitely looks more as if the person who made these obstacles worked around the environment and with the environment. Whereas the previous version looked tacky and obviously gamified. Definitely not perfect, there are still a lot of touch-up to be made, but it's a big step in the right direction.

While playing it front to back, not accessing secret areas, it has the same..."problem??" if I can even call it that. It starts as really unassuming (borderline boring to an experienced player) and a low effort type of gameplay. But excitement picks up after the first quarter of the level. I would say that the level is not really challenging, but it has kicks of excitement sprinkled all over the place.

But I'm still hesitating it calling this a "problem". At certain points, I would want to add some voiceovers (mix of walkie talkie and voice in this level) and the section that is the least challenging is basically a springboard for the voiceovers. So if the flow of each level starts off as the least exciting gameplay wise and then ramp up the difficulty for the rest of the level, I believe something cool might come out of this. But since I don't have any voice overs, I can't tell. Oh, now there's an action item on the to do list, placeholder voiceovers.

Anyway, that is all I have for today. See you in the next post. Buhbye
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« Reply #215 on: April 04, 2022, 01:32:16 PM »

DAY 76

Alrighty, guys and girls, it's that time of the week again...after two weeks, but still. A new entry in the devlog is happening now. And I'm here to talk a little about creative burnout and why this thing is kinda sorta normal and OK to happen.

So, have you guys happened to just have a pretty hot streak in your projects, only for that streak to get colder and colder and colder until it hits ice levels of cold? Well, that is exactly what has happened to me. And honestly this was bound to happen, because things like burnouts are what happen when you try to dedicate yourself to a project such as a full blown game.

So, why is this normal? Well, first and foremost, there's a lot of moving parts and stuff going on that you, the solo dev, must handle personally. It's a daunting task, even for someone who is experienced in solo game devs. I actually came to the conclusion that every dev suffers burnout on their projects at some point, but the more experienced devs are coping much better with it. Either that, or they can manage it a lot better than inexperienced solo devs.

So is there something to do when burning out? Well, for starters, take a giant step back from the project. Like seriously, stop working on it and thinking about it for a couple of days or for however long it is necessary. Then get back right into it if you are feeling revitalized. If you are the kind of dev who goes gung-ho about the project, with the "zero-days-off" policy and whatnot, then at most work on some small part of the project or something that gets fast results....or just do some project management in Excel...or testing...

In my case, burnout occurred thusly: after Princessa stated that the jumping is floaty, I immediately recognized this as an issue after I posted about it. So I decided to do some tweaking in the character blueprint. At first, I didn't really commit to it, just did some tweaks here and there without saving the changes that were made. After a few days of fooling around with the tweaks, I kind of had a relatively clear idea for what I wanted from the jump mechanic. I knew that the jump (from input to landing) should be under a second, ~800ms to be precise. This theoretically felt the snappiest and the most enjoyable jump and I knew about this for a while. I knew the height should be around 2 times the height of the player character. This further added to the snappy aspect of things. What I didn't knew was what other ingredients to use to make the vision come to life. This mystery didn't last long and I've started messing around with the gravity. And yeah, mesing around with the gravity was for the better.

But as I started to test out the changes in the levels, I've had a rather unsurprising revelation: all levels needed to accommodate changes to the jump. To be expected, sure. But I did have one surprising revelation: things got way more difficult in the rocky formations level. Which, if you recall, was something that I've complained on more than one occasion. So in that level, *very* few changes were made. Fixed the section where some sequence skipping occurred and made adjustments to the overall layout.

Discovering all these issues, fixing some issues while other issues popped up (of course the height of the character jump affected the jump pad and the monkey bar distances), then fixing those issues as well and the OTHER issues popped up (of course the gravity changes affected the wall run) was just simultaneously draining the joy out of the project and adding to the joy of knowing that the level is closer to being great.

But in spite all of this, I think I may have regained some of the joy back. Because I've started working on the forest level. I'll only link one screenshot of it, because it's terribly late and I'll be missing my beauty sleep. But here is how it looks as of now:



I am making a promise to show more tomorrow. Pinky swear.

Well, that is all for today, guys and girls. See you in the next post, buh bye.   

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« Reply #216 on: April 05, 2022, 12:57:53 AM »

OMG, yeah a fundamental change to jump distance affects *everything* in a platformer. That must have been quite the herculean update, I can understand how that leaves you feeling exhausted

Glad you've managed to bounce back!
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« Reply #217 on: April 05, 2022, 02:07:59 PM »

DAY 77

Why, hello guys and girls. And especially, hey Leonard.

Yes, the update was exhausting, but it wasn't as exhausting as I would've anticipated. Modifying the jump height, gravity and adding a double jump, one would expect to change most of the level layout, which would've took days on end. But I was fortunate enough to only do it for about 2 days. This is because I used BSP brushes that allowed me to move the faces only as much as it was necessary. If I would've used static meshes, it would've been a guaranteed disaster. Also, what really helped me low key was prior testing of the level.

Onto the devlog....

So today I continued to place chopped tree trunks that serve as...well, un-chopped, real living tree trunks. Not much work has gone today, because of a Discord call with a friend (what was supposed to be a short, ten minute or so call ended up being a 2 hour bonanza of talking...not regretting it one bit :D ).

But as promised, here are some more screenshots from the Forest area (including today's work).









This area would preceed the ginormously large tree from earlier posts and clips. THere are a number of challenges that I would encounter throughout the creation of this level. One of them would be the "kill zone".

OK, so for falling to the character's death, we've only had heights so far. Continuing having heights will not really go over well, for an obvious reason: variety. So for this area, a thought that keeps popping in my head and doesn't want to let go is the idea of having a huge fire spreading over the area. Or a fire that has already spread wide enough. And that fire would be the kill zone. This allows me to have death situations at low-ground level as well, not just way high above.

At first I thought about making this area a swamp, but it was already established that the water will not kill you if you so much as touch it. So the next choice would've been fire. Now, the way I want to do it is for it to propagate via blueprints (i.e. controlled situation). I'm not done looking up into this solution, but it is very doable and would look fantastic. Once I have some update on this, I'll tell you guys all about it.

So, that's it for today, guys and girls. See you in the next post. Bye 


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« Reply #218 on: April 19, 2022, 01:26:43 PM »

DAY 78

Howdy, guys and girls. Hope y'all doing as great as possible. Me, I'm back at it again with an update on the project.

So I've been on again off again working on the Forest level, replacing some assets here and there, making gameplay adjustments and so on. Kind of secretly delaying working on wall climbing and swimming and fixing bugs, but I'll eventually get to that...eventually...



There's still a lot of work to be done, a lot of things to be added and a lot of modifications to be made. First and foremost, I've added a small, make-shift pier with a hut. This would serve as the very beginning of the level, as you'd be arriving in this level via Paraglider.





This pier section would be just for exploration and some exposition purposes. There are two huts (one of them still needs to be worked on) and a toilet, just for fun. Complete with toilet paper.



Inside the first hut there are some computers. I'm not telling why exactly there are computers in a pier near a forest, except that it leaves some story bits for the player to discover.





I've completely replaced the grey tree trunks with a fallen log mesh, just to have a feel about how this level would look. I've also completely replaced all ramps with the bridge blueprint.





So as you can see, work has progressed pretty far in this level. Not up to snuff, tho. I haven't exactly figured out the gameplay: it might be more exploration oriented, it might have some puzzles in it, I don't know yet. But from what I've played, something like solving puzzles to progress to the next area feels right.

Lastly I would actually make a change in how I present the devlog to you guys. In the past few weeks, I've been working on the project bit by bit without updating the devlog. Sometimes literally working just 15 minutes per day, like no joke. Of course, working 15 mins a day doesn't result in a devlog-worthy entry. So naturally, I've decided that devlog entries would be a weekly thing, not a per-day entry. It makes more sense to me both time wise and content wise. Plus I'd have a more balanced work-life-passion project-hobby thing. Hope you guys would also enjoy it in this format.

So that's kind of it for today, guys. See ya in the next post. Bye!
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« Reply #219 on: April 22, 2022, 12:21:13 AM »

Wow, those trees are huge! Thought the hut looked tiny on the outside but then I saw the interior and realised that the juxtaposition had tricked me Cheesy Always cool to see more of the story-related non-nature stuff too.

As for devlog updates, hope you're not getting stressed out by trying to stick too rigidly to any sort of schedule Sad
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