Heya,
It´s the first of the Month, and with that another Mik devlog!
First of all, Mik passed 1300 Wishlists even tho I really neglected doing any Marketing the past few Weeks, which is pretty cool!
Also I have discord now so go join: https://discord.gg/R6fAPVCqbw
I´ve been able to work way more on the game the past Month as exam season is over (still no new Levels tho). Here´s a quick overview:
- (almost) finished revelOS (the new custom (but fake) OS for the PCs you can find around the world)
- changed Player Movement and started adding new gameplay elements
- Volumetric Lighting!
- localisation
- leaves, vines & nature!
Revel OS
The custom operation system that I´ve mentioned last Devlog is now (almost) finished. The only thing missing is a proper way for it to react with the outside world (open doors, turn on lights... stuff like that). I´ve already talked about the Idea/concept behind it so go read that if you´re interested.
The Hardest part about making this was that I had to write my custom text styling and layout since I decided to do everything on the code side, meaning that the text is changed on runtime and it needs to know where to put text, not to put text over one another etc...
This was complicated by the fact that I also worked on a localisation system but more on that later.
Here´s a rundown on what it can do:
- User System (each User also has their own logs)
- User Perms (can´t do anything with perms rn tho)
- Login with different Users
- Menu Navigation
- Launch & Display Applications
- localisation
TL;DR: you can Login and open device specific Applications. The whole Application System is built modularly so each PC can have their own Applications. The only finished Application right now is "Personal Logs". Which allows you to view User associated personal logs (like a diary).
There is the menu page of the App where you can Navigate using the Arrow keys. With Up & Down you can select different logs. With the left & right keys you can switch the page to view more Logs.
Selecting & pressing enter on a Log will expand it and show it´s entire contents.
The only thing missing functionally wise is the ability to interact with the game world, like open a door or turn on a light (working on it rn tho). Apart from that I want to add actual content to the OS so it does not feel like a waste to have spent so much time developing it.
More in-dev Videos on my discord btw.
Player Movement changes
I started balancing&changing the movement as I did not like that you could easily get insane speed. There is also a differentiation between spriting & walking now. Here´s all the changes so far:
- slowed general player speed
- made jumps weaker
- added sprinting
- added wall jumping - difference to wall running being that it can be performed on any wall
- added 2 gameplay elements. One pushes you away when clicking on it and the other one allows you to perform stronger wall jumps
Volumetric Lighting
I mentioned last Devlog that I´m trying to switch Render Pipelines, but that didn´t end up going anywhere because of bugs with the converter and the fact that I´d have to rework tons of shaders, materials, post processing stuff for it to work.
But fear not, as I have still found a way to implement volumetric lighting! At first I wanted to code it myself, so I used a 7 year old Github repo as a base but I realised that it would take way too much effort to maintain & optimise it so I chose to use a proprietary system.
There´s not much to talk about so just enjoy the screenshots (these are only tests btw, the implementation in the finished game might be different):
Localisation
I have added a localisation system into the game which is a mix of Unitys localisation solution and my own code. I chose to do this now since it would be a gigantic pain to add it later on when im already finished with revelOS and I´d have to rework it. It was still hard enough to get it working for the OS now since the text is created/loaded on runtime.
Nature
Last but not least: Nature!
I´ve wanted to add vines/leaves/grass to the game for a while since the whole theme is this abandoned facility. A large inspiration for this is the start of Portal 2 where everything is overgrown & destroyed.
Here are some pictures (once again just tests):
You can´t see it on the pictures but the leaves move in the air to look more convincing. I´m also working on a effect where when you walk into the plants, they move (like in rdr2 or cyberpunk).
Currently there is just one type of leaves but I want to add some variation, grass and maybe some different plants.
That´s it with this Months devlog!
Sadly I can´t upload videos here (except embed youtube Videos) so if you are interested in more indev footage be sure to join my discord.
https://discord.gg/JXn6Xa4VC4
Also follow me on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/@stefaaan06