Hello again everyone! Looks like it's been a long time since the last devlog. (again). Sorry about that! It's for a good reason though actually, as like I mentioned on Twitter and Bluesky, I'm now at a point in development where the majority of the workload is with animations, music, and other non-coding related tasks. This is because the game's new framework for the stages is pretty much complete! The tradeoff though, is that less coding for me to do also means less for me to write about in these devlogs. Talking about animation and music is a bit more difficult, especially since I can't show you most of it yet. All things considered though, rest assured that I am indeed still putting my all into working on the game. I'm lucky enough to be in a position that allows me to work on this game full-time. Nearly every single day, I spend most of my time working on it and making progress, even if you can't always see it!
Well, let's get started then. Firstly, I'm pleased to tell you that last week I finished all of the 2D animation for the Act 2 boss! Since then, I've just been making the necessary 3D models for it and implementing everything into the actual game. It's going incredibly smooth so far, which means all that coding I did to make the process smoother was a success. I'll have to give myself a promotion 👆🏽🎖‼
This boss won't introduce any new special note mechanics, but instead will utilize all of the new mechanics introduced in the Act 2's other songs. I felt like this pattern would be perfect from a game design standpoint, as the player gets to conclude each Act using everything they've learned from said Act's rival battles. I wasn't entirely safe from coding anything new here though, as I just made it so that the beat dots/stars on the UI will rearrange their order to line up with the placement of the first note on each respective line. This way, lines that begin on a backbeat or middle beat will be properly reflected visually instead of just always starting from the first beat of the measure. (In case you didn't know: The 4 stars represent the 4 main beats in each measure! Gameplay wise, these don't function any different from middle beats, they just help you visualize the BPM)
As you can see, I've also tweaked the UI a bit again. Most notably, the Fidelity meter and Score counter have both been moved to the bottom and given new looks. I was having issues with the previous placement of the Fidelity bar, as I needed a good and clear way way to visually represent when the player is close to ascending into Lucid. As I experimented I concluded it was just far too cramped up there for me to do much of anything. So, I just moved it to the bottom. (Along with the score counter too to keep things balanced) People who are familiar with what the dog was doing may be more accustomed to this layout.
I think that wraps it up for what I can say about progress at the moment, so to make up for the likely slower rollout of devlogs for a while, I decided to answer a few more questions I've seen on social media. (I'll be kinda paraphrasing them, but hopefully my answers suffice!)
Q: "Would it be a good idea to hire more people in your team to help with the development of the game? Even if you already have enough?"
A: In my case, I don't think so at the moment. Right now, I actually don't exactly have a traditional dev team. I don't think I'm ready to manage something like that. Of course, I do still work with some people for a few recurring things, such as the voice actors performing their roles and 2cada tuning/mixing the vocals for the songs, but other than maybe bringing on a "guest" here and there to do a special thing for the game, (like when I had Marceline Gainsboro animate the pixel art section in Sidechain Fever) it'll continue to be me making most of everything for now.
Q: "Will there be modding support? (e.g. custom characters, charts, frames/sprites, dialogue, story mode, etc)"
A: Sorry, but probably not. Going out of my way to make my game into a feasible platform for other peoples' works is far beyond my scope. I'll just be focusing on expressing my own art and ideas as well as I can within the medium.
Q: "Since the tutorial level is changing, will the Astral Advisors still have a role in the game?"
A: Yes, at least one of them will be. I'm a little on the fence about whether or not having both of them would be beneficial or just too bloated for my plans, but this is just a thought right now of course.
Q: "Will the game be translated into other languages in the future?"
A: I can't promise it, but if it does happen, it would likely only be subtitles.
Q: "Will any more stages be getting their animations updated? How difficult is this?"
A: Yep, at some point I do plan to revisit some of the parts from earlier in development just to keep a consistent level of quality. To keep things moving, I will likely be doing this after I have more of the new stuff complete. The process of doing this can be a bit convoluted sometimes depending on how long ago it was first worked on. That's why for Stir & Mix, I focused on getting motions more fluid first before adjusting the frames to her new proportions. (This resulted in some pretty wildly different looking WIP stages you may have seen before the preview video of it was released.) Most things I've animated since 2023 were made with the possibility of me wanting to change them later in mind, so it shouldn't be too grueling for those at least.
Q: "How's progress going with the other stages' Lucid modes?"
A: Other than some models and animations I already have ready, I haven't done much for it since I've implemented the one for Stir & Mix. The framework was made for me to easily implement it into the other stages when I'm ready to though, so I'll probably do a lot of it around the same time so I can really be in a "3D mindset"!
Looks like this devlog ended up being a pretty long one after all, thanks to the questions. Not sure how often I'll do these Q&A portions, but of course feel free to ask something in the comments. I can't answer everything of course, but your interest in my passion project is appreciated nonetheless. :) Thanks for reading!
-LJ
