Boo

We are so back.

Happy Halloween! I've been working hard on the game since I posted last Wednesday and I'm in the mood to share some of what I've been working on.

However, before we get started...

Sorta important announcements

I'm going to be taking the demo down on Monday, so if you haven't played it and you really really wanna, I suggest you go do that. Keep your expectations low and you might even like it! Think of it as a little taste of what the game's not gonna be like.

Something or other

Here's what I've finished in the past week since I was last here, and also some stuff that's been decided for certain that was kind of up in the air last week.

Mechanics

• Fully functioning graphic inventory system. It's done and it works yay. It's super ugly right now because I'm using placeholder assets, but you probably get the idea.
• The inventory space is also now limited, with expansion upgrades available as a collectible. (There's actually no upgrade item right now, but I set it up to be pretty plug and play so it'll be there whenever I remember to add it in)
• Equippable weapons and items framework is complete. It's less jank than the old one, but still needs some polish. I still have to make a bunch of animations.
• Crafting is for certain and for real, absolutely definitely in the game for real this time. It's classic Resident Evil style combining though, so don't expect anything ultra complicated. All that's left for that is making it feel less wonky in the UI. Honestly the hardest thing for me to do lately has been making the UI interfaces not feel like doodoo.
• The sum total of craftable items right now: a health recovery item, a low durability single use weapon, and a throwable weapon. I need to make sure the rest of my mechanics and game loop are solid before I go ham with this, so there's not much I can do for certain without potentially wasting time.
• Status effects galore! You can now get hurt and bleed, have seizures, and the base fever mechanic is already functioning well. Getting dangerously high fever temperatures is what causes seizures. There are various other debuffs and statuses I'm currently working on, but for these I'm not yet sure what's definitely gonna be included. I really wanted to make it so you could throw up, but I've honestly got no idea how to do a nice player camera animation without some sort of root motion solution. I guess I could just let it be ugly...
• New pause screen with settings and inventory as tabs in the layout. Just improved usability.
• New interface design for popups. The result of this right now is I now have combination locks that I'll place on doors in the game.
• Notes tab in the pause screen that will hold objectives and little written story snippets found on pieces of paper throughout the environment. Will also include keycodes (for combination locks).
• I've made various physics improvements in general.
• One last small thing that ended up being a major improvement in feel; you no longer have to click twice when opening pause and inventory screens, and you no longer have to click to regain camera control after unpausing. Feels so much better.

Monsters

• Some monsters that were previously broken by the code changes have been added back in. The faceless was already working last time I posted, but I want to tweak his behavior heavily. I've got a few ideas for him in particular...
• The headless baby (rotisserie chicken) is also in the game and does bleed damage when it launches itself at you. I genuinely like it a lot.
• Crows are back! You can now also shoot the crows out of the air. They also give you bleed, but because of their speed they do less damage. I found when playing that they're a lot more fun to fight in small clusters as opposed to the huge 300 bird swarm from the trailer. Also due to the nature of the old map I couldn't let them use traditional navigation, but now I think it's viable, although I'll have to see.
• The playdough lookin enemy from the trailer (the one mad doggin u thru the window) is also back in. He works beautifully too, better than I expected. He's wasn't in the demo, but all he does is kill you if you look at him for too long enderman style. Occasionally he'll teleport behind you or to other inconvenient locations. In order to make him more dangerous I was thinking of making it so he approaches you slowly while you're not looking and attacks, so you have to balance the risk of instant death if you look too long and slow damage if you expose your back.
• The large naked man from the demo is getting a rework too, sometime soon. I think I'm going to make him more dangerous, but less present. I've got a nice idea, but it's heavily dependent on the level design so I'm waiting to implement it. Also he will now be afraid of fire so you can scare him off with that. Before release I'm gonna tweak or make a new jumpscare for him because I realize his is pretty underwhelming.
• And lastly the one with the pretty smile. I'm currently reworking her behavior right now, but because her MO is to play tricks on you, I need to wait until I've got more gameplay designed before I can decide the best tricks.
• Currently I have no plans to add any new monsters leading up to the early access release. Post launch I'm definitely considering it. We'll have to see how good the originals are by themselves. I have a bunch of silly ideas that I could throw in relatively quickly, but that kind of thing doesn't add a whole lot of value.

uh oh

And that's pretty much it. I was going to get a bunch of screenshots to post here, but I decided I'd wait until the game is a little more presentable (especially the UI it's ucky). I'm going to put together a test level for myself to see how all of my mechanics work together in tandem later this weekend, so I'm hoping I can use that to show off the new gameplay stuff all at once. I was gonna finish with a long paragraph about some cool new mechanics that weren't quite finished yet, but I decided that was probably not a fantastic idea. I'll let them speak for themselves next month lol. All right thanks for reading this far and for caring about my game, or if you don't care, your patience.

One last thing to note about my work on the game since I started the redesign; I haven't made any destructive edits yet. And by that I mean that everything for the original Selenetrope version still works. So in the event that someone wants to play the old version just for laughs or whatever, it's not impossible. Eventually I'm going to have to get rid of a lot of that content in the main project, but I have backed up all the edits since the demo release so it's not a big deal.

byeːsteamboredː