Welcome to Issue #64 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie talks of lore design, Neal works on three new features, Matthijs gets new lights, and Matt prepares for game content.
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The game's Prologue polish and onboarding improvements that we've been tackling in recent weeks has been coming along nicely and is very nearly ready to be pushed out onto our preview branch. Shortly after that we'll be taking a proper dive into the "Growing Up & Going Out" update, which focuses on relationships and becoming an adult (which will primarily just be a visual player sprite change for now).
Also coming ahead this week are some new threads and info that'll be getting posted 'round the community. This includes the roadmap update, which previously we thought we'd get up this weekend but we decided to go back through the "Entire Journey" section of the roadmap and start categorizing the completion level of each item. So we're spending a few extra days on that, but we figure it'll be pretty helpful to have that there in the long run.
The other threads going up this week will be all about our different update branches, what each is used for, and how to access them. Branches are something we've been using for a while, but we don't really provide much info about them in the community and so most folks probably don't know about them. So for any of you interested in dabbling in the non-main game updates (like this week's upcoming preview branch update), keep an eye out on our forums and Discord later this week.
Of course we've been working on more than just that this week, so to hear more specific game progress from the team read on below!
I thought this week I would talk about a design, rather than waffle on about what I did or didn't do, what I ate or didn't eat, the weather, or the team's toilet habits.
I had been doing some house decorating and reorganisation this past week and found my fave reference book: Folklore Myths and Legends of Britain. It is a thick tome packed with amazing true customs and superstitions and is incredibly inspiring. One thing we haven't really got into on the game yet are those customs and superstitions.
Gary, our character artist, will be working on some of those quirky characters soon...and some are deadly! It is the other elements of superstition we want to get across though. Most of these will be through lore and old books you can read. Some will be told by NPC's around the fire or when drunk at the tavern. The main thing though, is that all superstitions in Quill are real...
Iron will ward off bad spirits. Throwing a certain item in a certain pond at a certain time will do a special thing. There may be a way to make a long-dead family member appear for a chat. A way to summon a Fae that can do something for you if you do something for them. We can have special locations with interesting backstories. Or weird stones that have a legend attached to them.
Quill is a place packed with such old customs and stories. We want to start slowly bringing more of that to the fore to augment the lore we have sprinkled around already. This way we can present to you a rich and interesting world that feels lived in and that was lived in. Every corner and nook should be splashed with the stains of ancient myths and every tree should have witnessed legends wrought real. So don't forget to carry your sprig of parsley, toss a bone in the pond, and wear your red shoes and cheese hat. Am talking about in real life. We just wanted to see if you would do it.
This week also flew by quickly! On the game development side of things, I've been working on further improvements to the noticeboard including a third type of task (item wanted, so pretty similar to the other ones but allows an extra means of directing player gathering or emptying of their inventory!). I also worked on three new features:
The Wottyzit, which is pretty much functional in-game as a flashy pointer to first time users of interactable objects, but needs some polish in how it leaves when the player gets close to it. Dialogue on interest points for NPC's, still very rough and not ready but I've started to put the structure in place (which relies on additional editor support for setting the many context sensitive text ideas this and other features might involve). And the pet whistle, which allows summoning pets and sending them home and telling them to stay (and also gives a better sense of where the pets should be for debugging as they do still have a tendency to wander right now!).
Apart from the interest point dialogue which is disabled, all the above is in the experimental branch now as I continue to try and update that branch regularly with the latest developments.
To diverge into other news, I've found a resurgence again of energy in the latter half of this week. It seemed to unleash from taking what is usually unexpected action by myself in the face of a situation (e.g., by letting go or seeking understanding). The mind likes to fixate or distract whenever a situation occurs that it has strong feelings about. When it fixates, then it loops again and again without really ever going anywhere. When it distracts, it is deliberately trying to quiet the situation so it doesn't have to deal with it.
It's not easy to deal with it, but a lot of the time we intuitively can feel deep inside what needs to be done - or a positive step that could be taken that is often quite simple, if only we can overcome that mindset of past habit. When that step doesn't happen, then not only is the situation left in place but energy is also expended to fixate or distract it (and sometimes even more energy in recognising that is what is happening but feeling trapped in it anyway).
In a way, talking about this is part of a step for me in the hopes it might be helpful to other folks or give me some additional ideas on how to handle it. That's probably enough introspection for two weeks though, so next one I'll try getting more into detail on the game development again!
Yet more sound effects were made this week. Flying helper Fae, pet whistle commands, an eerie wind, and there's always more. Sometimes I get it right the first time around, other times there's a lot of feedback to incorporate, and many versions of the same sound effect are often made. When that happens it gets easy for things to get lost in the chaos. But Matt just added a feature to our Trello that allows me to list assets that are yet awaiting approval. So rather than scroll through our team chat's Discord history to find out which file is the final version that needs ok'ing, we'll now be able to quickly see what's still waiting to get approved at a single glance.
Of course I do have to keep the list neat and updated, but that's far less of a hassle than sifting through old messages. Not to mention that the number of audio files on our server now numbers in the hundreds! On my own disk there's over 1,000 individual audio files in my personal Kynseed project folder. This includes older versions of tracks and sound effects as well as drafts that never made it past approval. So if you don't have a good indexing system, you'll regret it!
I recently also installed new fancy lights in my studio, and just being in this room is now a cool experience. I say 'do whatever it takes to be inspired', and for me cool lighting is part of that.
This week I spent a fair bit of time tying up some remaining tasks on the production side of things. This included roadmap work, branch work, Trello organisation, and some preliminary setup/testing for streaming (which I'll be doing more of soon). It'll be good to have all those tasks completed and in a good state for when I begin on more game content related work once development on the relationships update kicks off properly very soon.
One such area of game content that I'll be working on is adding a new cutscene or two as well as going back and polishing some existing ones (like the one that happens at the end of the Prologue). This'll all be done using our Cutscene Editor dev tool, which Neal has made. Something else I'll be doing during this process is working closely with Tice on the music and audio needs of the cutscenes.
I've been trying to get back into the habit of helping out with audio direction as I find the time, as it's something I've generally helped with throughout the whole project but recently production stuff seems to be taking the lion's share of my focus. In fact, thinking back to the super early days of the game, I was working very closely with Tice on establishing the 'sound' of the game's soundtrack. So I'm rather looking forward to dipping a toe back in audio again for the upcoming cutscenes and, of course, I'll be sure to share how it's all going here and around the rest of the community.
