So after the release of the last blog, a bit is taken off from production, as discussed in the entry. Part of it was to refurbish the description of the landing page (for the game). Hopefully to better explain and represent what the game is all about. And what can you expect from it, from a bird's eye view. Probably will change more in the future, but had to comb through it, as it started to look like a mess, and wasn't with accordance with the new narrative. Now, back to polishing that pitch.

Ps.: Also the font of the text has been changed, to be less of an eyesore, and be easier to read.

The last few weeks were spent implementing all the things (and much more) that was previously shown in the "in between blogs"; as shown in the screenshots above. Now you can trigger an event to meet this NPC, which will play an important role in your day-to-day activities, and send them to their merry ways if not desired. What took longest is to implement a series of actions (seamlessly that is), where a gate appears, the NPC enters the room, then the gate disappears and the ravens come fly in (masked to prevent clipping, that's why they seem to disappear near the edge), and so forth. All the while knowing that most of the AI logic is driven on its own (bit difficult to tell from a still shot here, but they are displaying different states, the ravens that are in the background).

Although this is "just" a small step, the next "real" blog update (in long form) will measure another important milestone for the project: showcasing the first intractable elements of the game. However, before that can happen, a short sample text will be given for this encounter (think of it as a tiny tutorial/introduction), which will make more sense later (explained in the blog post).

Now comes the immediate Herculean task of figuring out the narrative system in no time; as it will have multiple elements to it (camera angles, intractable text, etc.). All which needed to be modular to for the foreseeable future.

Trivia: The making of this set took over a month to create and was entirely animated by hand (no simulation used for the attire), and faced numerous hurdles along the way (which will be discussed in an upcoming blog post). One of those affected the release of the video itself as well, because the upload was cancelled right before the scheduled release; which was supposedly a few days ago last week.

After finishing the music for the first NPC, it was time to start animating the corresponding models. One of which was this gate of the "universe", through which the NPC will enter the realm of the living.

The new track is called "Brighter than life" and can be listened to here (Bandcamp). As always, you can also browse the entire album on Bandcamp and support this endeavor there!

Furthermore, there's already another blog update in the works, where this new addition (and many others talked about beforehand in previous in-between updates) will be showcased alongside with all the behind-the-scenes stuff as usual; in more detail that is. The latter might get a bit on the sour side of things (definitely in a more poetic way, as a short story is being written for this occasion), as the extreme pressure, years of constant crunch and neglect has finally caught up with me. But that is another story for another time. Until then,

Take care,

theaaronstory

You can listen to it here.

Suffice to say that composing this piece was more difficult than the first two, and proved to be more of a challenge than first thought. Mainly because of the "drought". Something that will be touched on, to a degree, in the next blog post. But first, have to finish modeling/animating a gate and a deity.

Although the meat of the game, the actual part where you can talk to people (and experience the game in its "entirety") is yet to come (with the first two "talk-able" characters already in the making), a brief side job needed attention first: namely the in-game menu, as it's yet to be implemented (boring stuff, but it's needed for the underlying mechanisms/code).

That's why this small underground scene of a dungeon was created, to serve as a backdrop for the Pause Menu. Cobwebs, tight corridors and rooms, chains, water dripping from the ceiling, and bones scattered across will greet the unfortunate.