Devlog: January 2021
Well well, January disappeared fast didn't it!? In a blur of dark winter days and a little snow work continued on Hokko. So let's have a peek at what got done!
Lighting
I fixed up the lighting setup in the game so that it does things properly as opposed to the sort of half-finished setup I had before. This has meant the world and items have started to sit a lot better together, and have a more uniform look. Alongside this I went in and configured lighting for the different times of day, as well as several different summer weather types: sunshine, overcast and rainy.
To help me configure the lighting I built an editor window that allows me to change between times of day and weather when the game is running, and then live-edit colours for things like the sky, and tweak values for the sun intensity and other stuff. It made previewing and working on the lighting a lot more pleasant!
The Lighting Editor
I also made sure things like the lights on streetlamps and houses were working too, and I managed to find an ambient occlusion setup that supports my custom-lit character shaders! (Ambient Occlusion is an effect that gives the appearance of contact shadows and darkens areas in crevices etc, where light naturally doesn't reach)
Timeline of Lighting on Sunny and Overcast Days
Game Intro
Most of my time this month was spent between two things, the game intro, and usability testing preparations. I completely reworked the start of the game, adding a small cutscene as well as going through and setting up quests for the player that guide them into the game.
By completing small requests for the villagers, you'll learn and unlock the systems in the game, and my work this month was focussed on writing the dialogue for these, as well as locking off parts of the game until the player reached certain parts of the quest line.
I even set up a very short cutscene that hints at your arrival in the world. It's really not much, but is far better than nothing!
Shot from intro cutscene
Usability Test
Like I say, the other major time-sync of this month was getting things ready for usability testing. What this means is we set a bunch of testers on the game to gain feedback on areas that are confusing, or that they struggle with. Doing this enables us to get really useful info on what parts of the game could do with some work on user experience. It's very easy to not see these issues when you're working on the game, as you understand how everything works; so getting fresh player eyes on it is extremely valuable. To make sure the build of the game the testers were playing was stable and had most of the rough edges smoothed out I spent a bunch of time this month squishing bugs and making tweaks.
I've not got the results back yet, but I know it's going to be very interesting to see what their report says!
Mine
With some of the remaining time I spent a day or two on the mine/cave part of the world. I replaced the old wall graphics with new meshes and also implemented a gameplay idea I'd had for a while.... darkness!
You won't be able to stray too far away from the light in the caves now, and will need to place out light sources to enable you to see and head deeper into the mines. This really enhances the feeling of exploration as you move further and further into the darkness and I think it offers a nice change of pace and gameplay feel to the rest of the game.
Placing lanterns in the mine to progress
Bomb
The bomb got a little bit of love too this month, updating the graphics with those done by another artist, and also setting up a proper throw animation. I added a fuse and flashing effect too. I'll be adding the explosion fx a little later, right now i'm using a very placeholder sphere!
New bomb graphics, throw animation, fuse, and flashing effect
More Art
The artists over at Team 17 have been beavering away producing more and more art for the game. Including:
New Houses!
Flowers!
Updated graphics for the general store!
They also got started on the new character meshes, which I'm very much looking forward to sharing with you in the coming updates!
So there have it! Already we're part of the way into 2021, and more and more areas of the game are getting a lot of visual love. It's really coming along well!
I hope you're all keeping well, thankyou as always for your continued support!
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I'll speak to you all again soon!
from Robert