7:41
And we’re back. Took the day off yesterday for Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve got some catching up to do!
First track: I like the pipe thing at the high end. I like the fade out at the end. It sounds like a hollowness. Definitely feels like ancient places. I think this one has the most character. It’ll probably go well with the catacombs.
Second track: More of a mysterious sound to it. I guess the first was more like jungle totems or something. Blow dart traps and shaman statues. The intro 45 seconds feels like breathing. Ooh, those haunting slides at 1:36 are cool. Nice dissonance. Feels a bit more castle/cathedral. I guess medieval catacombs.
Third track: The notes seem cautiously hopeful. I really like the tone. Kind of a distortion atmosphere going.
8:23
Catching up on the jam Discord and there’s some useful content refs in there.
AngryMobOfSteve: john carpenter’s films the thing/prince of darkness/ in the mouth of madness, stephen king’s The Mist, the movie The Void, elements of the first season of True Detective
…
AngryMobOfSteve: oh there’s a couple pretty good podcasts that kinda border on cosmic horror/elder god type stuff too The Magnus Archives and Old Gods of Appalachia
Luke: There’s a lot of decent audio adaptions of the old cosmic horror tales by people like Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch and more on YouTube too LibreVox has a lot of them available as well
8:32
Okay, I’m caught up (for now).
Now where was I with dev.
Oya, I had trouble typing two days ago (Friday) because something happened to my pinkie finger. I got shooting pain while practicing cello and after that, touching anything with my pinke hurt. So I taped together my pinkie and ring finger, which made typing pretty hard.
So I’m pretty happy to have it back. I can feel it but it’s not pain anymore.
11:31
Got a new room with four doors that I should be able to turn on and off relatively easily.
The near door looks weird and the near and far door animations are pretty wonky but they’ll do for now.
I still don’t want to make too many rooms because I’ll very likely need to change them and the more rooms I have the longer that’ll take. Maybe I can do a test with six rooms or even nine rooms. Then I can test all the combinations of doors. Should be able to tell where I am in the level based on which doors are available as well.
12:54
Taking a break to get some exercise.
15:17
And back. Looks like Alysan wrote an intro. Sweet!
TIL Google Docs document tabs
Wow, first off, I love this idea of Alice and Prima being two sides of the same coin. Both archaeologists but Alice was a dreamer that needed grounding and Prima needed sparks of colour in her life.
The intro is too long to get a player to sit through for a five minute game but I hope we can find a way to work some of these passages into the gameplay later. Maybe Prima finds something that she knows belongs to Alice, some token she wouldn’t part with willingly, and that can be a chance for more exposition.
Could, “Wait for Me, Alice” be the title of this whole thing?
Some of that intro exposition we can probably leave out. Like we don’t need to explain why they lost touch. But I’ll let Alysan decide all that.
This is exciting.
Just checked out musician Tim’s title menu ideas and it’s super solid. Man this is gonna be great!
Gave some feedback. Now I better do some coding!
Oh yeah, the artist question came up. Not sure where we’re sitting on that just at the moment but I’m sure we’ll figure something out whether or not we’re able to get a dedicated artist on the project.
16:30
Wow, searching for “ossuary” gives some pretty spectacular images. I see where H.R. Giger got some inspiration.
Apparently bodies were buried then a few years later dug up and the bones placed in the ossuary. Wild.
I like how in 28 Years Later Dr. Kelson puts the body in a furnace or something to clean it.
Apparently a niche where a body is housed is called a loculus. Learning a lot today.
16:57
Dinner time. Man, my day is really carved up.
18:55
Okay, catch up on some more Discord.
20:01
Alright. We have a hiding mechanic now. Here’s a picture displaying the intent to hide.
Here’s a picture where the player is hiding, wide-eyed, in the loculus.
20:49
Pretty happy with how it’s looking and behaving. The code is another story.
What do I have?
HidingSpot detects Player entered its area.
HidingSpot calls a method on Player to tell it that hiding there is an option. hide_body_entered
Player records the hiding spot intended_hiding_spot and displays the intent, the word “hide”.
Player detects keypress ‘E’ and doesn’t hide itself but calls HidingSpot’s play_player_hide() method. It updates its state so that it knows it is hiding.
HidingSpot, meanwhile, is the one that actually hides the player and changes its artwork to show the player hiding in the loculus. This will allow HidingSpot to orchestrate an animation later on if needed.
Okay, that’s actually not too bad. The names sucked but I cleaned them up in the process of writing the above.
Now, Player detects keypress ‘E’ and doesn’t show itself but calls HidingSpot’s play_player_unhide() method.
Similarly, HidingSpot shows the player and changes its artwork back to the empty niche.
While in the niche the player controls respond differently.
I guess I’m gonna want to have a player state machine pretty soon here but so far it’s not too bad.
21:01
Feeling pretty good about progress today. 16 pomodoros is pretty sweet.
A couple possibilities for the next bit of work:
- Add NPC locations so we can start working that into the game. That might allow Tim to incorporate a dialogue system into the codebase at those locations.
- Add the intro so Alysan can see how their writing will be incorporated.
- Add the mob that chases the PC around and hide from it. A little technically risky but I think it’ll be alright.
- Add the big bad signs around the door and either turning back or game over. That’ll let me test the idea of having a single room for the bad signs room and animate the ending.
- Do a nice version of a background. That’ll help me see if my art skills are going to be good enough or if we need another solution. That might help unblock Tim so he can experiment with atmosphere.
- Do a nice version of the player walking animation. Again, see if my art skills are up to the task.
Okay, that’s more than a couple. I’ve included some notes about risk because that’s what the loop Jesse Schell described was based on.
What’s the riskiest part of the game right now?
- Delivering something ugly that doesn’t suspend disbelief enough to create a compelling atmosphere
- Losing engagement from the team
- Not delivering at all
- Delivering something not fun (big bad, mob that chases)
- Delivering sloppy gameplay (big bad, mob that chases)
21:14
Hard to leave. That’s a good sign.