Browser-Playable-Update and Future of the Project

As the Title says I updated the Version that run on this Website too. So the Changes are mostly the same as in the Update for the Windows build I made two days ago. I know much of you prefer to not download it so ~ Happy Christmas ^^

I will elaborate on how I got it finally small enough to work on this Website and some technical stuff regarding the web-versions performance later but just for the sake of completeness here is what got added - after that I'll talk a bit about the future of this project:

• 6 more Animals to play arround with - tho be it just "reskins" of the already existing ones - I wanted to test if I'm able to expand on my system - makes it a total of 9
• one can duck/ crouch pressing ctrl - which also is the button for gliding when in Bat-Form
• final scene got expanded so you can play arround a bit with the movement system

  much changed beyond the scenes to get rid of some activation bugs in the second scene - tho that might introduce some new bugs I did not yet disvover added the snoots- can be disabled in the option menu but there might be a bug there - I still have to look into that

------------ Future of this Project! ------------

----------- Story ------------

So this is a difficult topic to put in words as my english is not the best and further there is a lot of different stuff to tackle here, but let me try:

Currently the Story is quite the most "generic" one can think of which was not my initial intention, but since the game started for a game jam it was also not my Top-Priority. Expanding on it with the use of the things I can achieve (I probably can't make intricate animations and cutscenes) with my current skillset will be challenging but I still want to give it a try nevertheless. 

That brings me to the current state of the Story and whats expected to change. Current synopsis: Guy goes into the woods, finds strange Altar, plays arround with it, has a dream and wakes up as an animal -> booooooooring. It's just the way it is because it serves the purpose.

To be more precise I was thinking about what makes a good transformation- story itself and if I want to do it systematically it can be split into 3 pieces and the feeling each invokes which is:

• Before the Transformation (Feeling of anticipation)
• During the Transformation (Here is maybe the most mix of different "feelings" to be expected, be it wonder, fear, exitement ...)
• After the Transformation (Also a nice mix one can tackle here ~ like confusion, exitement, wonder, fear, even anger, grief ... )

Anyways you don't want me to ramble about this stuff too much and I don't want to spoil the fun with how systematically I try to solve some of the issues the current story has. 

I personally enjoy the middle and the after-part of most stories the most, however to make them work the first part has to be there too. Which means: there has to be a good reason the guy goes into the forrest and finds a strange ritual site. I have to come up with some good motivation to do so. 

Stories of that kind are often a form of escapism which is ultimatively the thing I want to do with this game. To be fair most computer games are escapism as well so it's kinda fitting. That brings me back to one of the very first things I wrote for this project which is the influence of the Games "The Long Dark" and "Firewatch". While I play The Long Dark often as a form of "Winter Holiday"- walk to say so I enjoy the challenge it comes with it and Firewatch in my opinion is the best game that handles the topic "escapism" while being escapism itself (almost every character in this game tries to escape their lifes and is there in the wilderness to hide - building on that idea the game tackles the problems that come with that and ultimately forces the player to realise that they are also playing it as a form of escapism that cannot last forever). 

I hope I don't digress too much here, but I think writing this down helps me sort some stuff I've been thinking about the story of this game recently. So what does that mean about the Story?

• The Player-Character needs some good reasons to be "escaping" into the transformation scenario
• The Scenario has to tackle those reasons in a way that makes sense
• Ultimatively there should be the question if the transformation solves the problem, or just delays them (but no answer of course - thats something the player has to decide on their own ^^)

Further while I really enjoy the "mid part" of every transformation story (during the transformation) the most it is systematically speaking always the shortest. I could stretch it with some text and animations but that of course would probably mean a lot of work. In the current version I tried something like that with the dream sequences the Bat, Wolf and Roo have. I was thinking about delaying it a bit to the cave scene and do the geradual transfomation there instead of starting  completely transformed , so that is something that might happen too in the future.

Some Transformation- Stories play arround with the idea of changing back and forth between the forms ~ like classical werewolf tropes. I also was thinking about implementing some of that somehow so that the different forms can solve different problems in the ame world - which would be kinda the aproach Metroidvanias do - tho that comes with the problem of pulling some "weight" from the transformation itself - do something too often and you get used to it. So I don't know yet if I want to go that route.

I think I currently want tohave the decision on the form "final" in a way to have the opportunity to explore the consequences a bit more. Like questions "How can I grab anything with my Bat wings/ Hooves?!" , "Damn why can't I walk backwards?!" (Kangaroo) , "It's difficult to reach stuff - I'm so small." (Fennec), which would ultimately loose a lot of weight If the player just could choose to be another species to solve these problems. 

The part after the transformation is also by design most likely the "longest" - so therefor I want to put much weight into this- epand on the world. Tackle the feelings and problems of the Player-Character in their new changed-state.

-----------Gameplay ------------

So much for the story let's get to the things the player has to do to succeed.

As said before I am heavily laying an eye on the long dark and its mechanics here and I think it could work with the visions I have for this game. That means I want to implement some suvival mechanics. Which of course would be:

• Hunger
• Thirst
• Rest
• Temperature

Boooooooooooring. Yep :3 So there should be more. I plan to spice things up a bit with some of the unique features that come with the animal forms - so e.g. If you eat meat as a herbivore species or plants as a carnivore it would be less good for you - maybe even cause some afflictions. Survival-Games are often a bit of Stat-Management-Games and I want to go that Route.

I was also thinking about some stats that relate directly to the transformation and increase the impact of the species the player has ~ call it acclimatization or habituation. Btw. If you have any ideas to spice things up here I'm open for suggestions ^^

That of course lead to gathering ressources, Inventory Management and crafting - don't expect that too soon since those are comlicated systems.

Further I have some neat ideas about the world I'm throwing the Player into after the transformation but I don't want to talk too much about that since that is something people should explore on their own then. 

-----------New Species? ------------

Yes, No, Maybe... Can you repeat the Question? ~

I know you people are exited to play as everything and everyone but I can't promise anything here as this has the potential of getting out of hand reaaaaaaaaaally fast. ^^ The system is quite expandable however I have to consider that If I ever make a change regarding the species system - for example drawing a transformation animation for a species I have to do it on every other species as well - and the more there are the higher the hurdle becomes...

-----And Finally as Promised some technical stuff about the current Web-Build---

I found out when importing the textures the Godot-Engine automatically generates Mip-Maps. Usually this is fine and it would improve performance. Small detour- "What are Mip-Maps?": Mip Maps are different versions of a texture usually in a lower resolution. You may have noticed that in some games when you are far away from objects or especially terrain it looks "blurry" that is a Mip-Map texture the game uses there - it reduces the computing cost on your GPU and therefor improves performance. 

So nice thing right? Yes. BUT... I nmy case the textrues we are talking about look like this 

The texture is 173 Kilobytes in size but when imported and generated with mip-Maps it gets to the size of 3 Megabytes. The Assets for the First-Person View all together are roughly 5 Megabytes of Images which are getting blown up through the generation of the Mip-Maps to almost 80 Megabyte. Funny Enough the pck-File, which was my main Problem here on Itch even got 200 Megabytes bigger because of that.  The texture I am using for the first person view are roughly 60 -85% empty space and always the same distance to the camera which means they don't need low-res Mip-Maps to be viewed from the distance. While Mip-Maps are usually a good thing in that case we can easily life without them. :3

Browser-Build Performance in General:

As I already said in the past the problem with the Browser build are manifold~ Shadows don't work right, it's flippping some normals for unknown reason, Shadow-Bias is messed up, Fog is non Existent and the overall framerate drops nevertheless to slideshow-levels on weaker pcs.

I figured out that on my notebook the performance tanks due to it using it's on-Board graphic chip and not it's graphics card which obviously is a bit too weak for that ~ 

I frankly don't know if I can get rid of allthose issues or if it's just a limitation of Web-GL itself but I think I want to threat the web-build more as a Demo for the game in the future~ As said maintaining 2 different Game-Versions is a task that I might not be able to handly as a solo-developer.

Thats all for now I think. :) Hope you found it interesting,

Greetings,

Luno Wroo