Hello everyone, here are the news from the front.

It’s september, yeah! After two months with a reduced rhythm because of holidays, heat wave, and other things, I am finally fresh and motivated to attack the rest of the dev. I’ve revisited my schedule a bit, there’s still a lot of things to do, I’ll really need this energy. I hope you have also enjoyed the summer :)

Programming

I have made good progress in programming the latest features, but I have not finished yet.

I have implemented a very robust localization system which I like a lot. It is so clean that it would make a very nice asset for the Asset Store, if I took the time to do it. We’ll see.

I had a lot of things to do with the game manager, especially to have a clean management of the game states, the loading screen, and so on. I can now launch the game and have beautiful transitions from the logo to the game, with fade of music and screens, etc. It looks a lot better.

I started making the necessary changes to the inventory system to solve the major issues encountered during playtests. I have to be careful not to refactor too deeply some of the things I did at the beginning that I do not like at all, but still do something clean. In theory it should not be too long. In theory.

Procedural Things

I always play a little with procedural modeling, especially with what I did during my Ph.D. thesis. Here is an image of an quick ecosystem generation test:

Graphic Novel

I really like my dialogue system, because with just a few additions I was able to do a graphic-novel-like introduction sequence. Here is what it looks like:

So I took the opportunity to write the game intro as a multiple choice story. Not only did I have a lot of fun writing it (I should restart to write novels, like I did when I started the game), but the result is really cool. So cool, I was told I should make a game just like that. It’s not a bad idea, I thought about it for some stories I wrote and that I know are too hard to do as an adventure game, but that would be great with this format.

3D Characters

This week, I took my courage with both hands to start the 3D modeling of the remaining characters. Modeling characters is the hardest for me, especially because I do not know how to draw. I make quick sketches to think about the concept, and I’m looking for a lot of sources, but I do almost everything directly in 3D. Here is an image of the Adventurer (work in progress):

I still have to improve it, I do not like its proportions. I would like it to be threatening while being a bit ridiculous, and in armor while having an “adventurer” aspect. I will continue to iterate on. Do not hesitate to tell me what you think of it :)

Roadmap

After the adventurer and a review of the other 3D characters, I will make the last character, which I will keep secret not to spoil. Then, as I said last time, I’ll iterate to improve the game experience (and everything else) on this first part of the adventure, until I am satisfied.

See you soon,

Arnaud