Happy Friday, friends!
Louis here this week, taking a break from all the systems programming behind the magic + glyph system to bring you this week’s development digest. Let’s get right into it!
DD has been working away this week on the main storyline content for the Windless Woods, leading up until you first arrive at The Eyre — the secluded druid village deep in the forest. I won’t reveal anything here, but stay tuned for some screenshots.
Wendy has been working with the Shrubrian villagers this week. There are some important aspects to the level design that need to be sorted out to prevent sequence-breaking the quest line. Plenty of dialogue changes, too — the Shrubrians have an interesting dialect that reflects their proud demeanour and their tiny stature in equal parts. It’s hard to write with a voice like that and keep it consistent, while also giving each Shrubbie their own personality! Also, not to give anything away, but Wendy and DD have been working together on a riddle puzzle you might stumple upon in the woods. (Yes, that spelling was intentional. Hint, hint.)
Jesse’s still working hard in the Eyre. This week he’s added a nursery — for plants AND children — and populated it with furnishings and NPCs. He’s also set up the Eyre housing plot, and has had some genius ideas for new player furnishings. I’ll include a tour of his work with screenshots at the end of the digest!
Kindred and Janna are off visiting family at the moment so you’ll hear more from later, when they're back.
And as for me, (lucky last!) I’ve been working in two main areas: magic, of course, and a tricky usability problem. I’ll start by cherry-picking a couple of magic updates that make for good GIFs:
Since last week, I built the electric beam damage proc for the Storm Aura spell. I made sure to build it in a way that was flexible — I’d always originally planned to make sure all our spells were modular and could be used for different things like enemy attacks or traps if we wanted to, but I noticed after working on a Magic Missile spell that I'd got away from that goal and made it in a way that’d only work for players. So the zap here is a return to that:
I’ve also done some work on the Launch spell. Kindred lent a hand with the animation, and with the new VFX, it’s really feeling good. Particularly proud of the little wind trails on the hands.
As for that “usability problem” — with some testing, we’ve discovered we need a way for spellcasting players to quickly swap back to their default attack in combat. We’ve trialled a few hotkeys, but the prevailing solution right now is a quick-swap ammo bar, accessed by holding CTRL + scrolling the mouse wheel. Mouse wheel on its own is reserved for camera controls. Here’s a demo GIF, but sound off in the comments if you have opinions or ideas re: the default controls for an ammo system like this.
Alright, alright, I’m hogging the digest! Time to sign off and leave you with those promised screenshots. Until next week, take care!
