Hello, welcome, we've decided to move our dev log over to Steam while we continue work on the game.
My name is Rob, I am 1/3 of the team working at NV on Summerford along with Daniel (programming) and Sarah (art). I'll be posting here once a week with whatever we end up getting done by the end of the week.
You can find our previous dev log over on our site, for now. For continuity purposes with that blog, it's now day 82 since we started working on the game.
EGX
We did manage to show Summerford for one day at Rezzed! Unfortunately the build wasn't really where we wanted it to be, and as we got the space for free as part of running the tabletop area with our other company, we decided it was best to just do a quick demo and get back to working on making the game.
It was always going to be difficult taking even a vertical slice demo of Summerford to a show with only two months in development. The problem with a vertical slice of a game like Summerford is that it's very programming heavy early on.
Still, we DID show Summerford for the first time, and we got some good feedback on things to improve. Also, I think the threat of EGX certainly meant we're further along with many of the game systems than we were before.
We have a vague plan to go to PAX West, now...
School "Version 3"
Our goal this past week and for all of next week is to take our school area that was part of our EGX demo and the first area of the game, and basically strip everything out, and put it back together again.
Sarah has been taking the time to go back through all our old models and textures and giving them a very thorough clean, we've removed a huge amount of old asset store stuff we didn't need, and Dan and I have been rebuilding the school visually, too, with wider corridors and an overall more abandoned look:
UI Changes
This isn't just about visual changes though - even more important is taking this time to sort out all the many systems that need to work in the game, such as combat, puzzles, UI, and so on.
Taking the game apart and rebuilding it isn't something we'll be able to do more than once, but two months in this seems a really good time to put all those systems back in after giving them a thorough rewrite.
UI is the first system to get added back in. Along with a lot of back end changes, there's a few visual ones to show as well.
Firstly, we now use our phone UI to pick up objects as well as interact with them:
And secondly our text now has a paint stroke effect in the background which should make it easier to read no matter what's going on in the game itself:
Next Week's Plan
Ideally, we want our entire school area, including the out buildings, and both our primary and secondary puzzles all in the game and working - however, as we're rebuilding systems we're trying to improve and expand them as well, so it's a higher priority to simply make sure that each system is fit for purpose.
Either way, no new areas until we're comfortable with the school working exactly how we want it. Good news is, once we get there, new areas should be much faster and easier to make!