Posted September 18, 2018 by smitleu
This week I wanted to focus on finishing a bit of that accessibility list I left myself last week (see the week 4 devlog), as well as putting in a new BIG, ROUND bird friend (who I actually started working on a couple of weeks ago).
The first thing I did this week was put in some more sticky note notifications... and I'm talking A LOT of new sticky note notifications. The first one I did was for the holding of pigeons - instead of having the players press h to hold and l to stop holding, I wanted to simply change it to a button press to start and stop holding the pigeons. These are just some UI objects that flash between two drawings I did. Here's how they work!
As you might have noticed, I also added a little sticky note button thing for players to click to stop petting the birds - although in my mind right click to leave petting seemed pretty straightforward, right click is actually a pretty unnatural action for lots of players. Adding the button in there just made things a little more simple, which was much needed honestly (I still need to get rid of that 'right click to stop petting' text).
You //also// might have noticed that I updated the bird book icon and the press B reminder! I think it fits the mood of the game much better now (fun fact - the book in the pic is my actual notebook wow cool). The 'Press B' notification shows until the player opens the book for the first time, after which it goes away to make the book icon a little more inconspicuous. Side note: these notifications were super fun to make! Recently I've found it a little hard to get started working on Pigeon Game, because I feel like I have so much to do. Working on something physical and a little crafty has been a really great way for me to make sure I'm having fun with the project, and keep my motivated. Big love for the notification creation! Anyway, here's how the bird book notification works now :~0
In this GIF you can also see the click to close book button. Players can still toggle with 'b' to open and close the book, but it seemed to make it a little more straightforward if there was a button there as well - I figured it couldn't hurt to pop it in there. After putting it in, no players have used 'b' to close the book (including myself lol), so maybe I'm onto something there?
The holding looks a little different now! That's because that holding has had a bit of an overhaul! In my previous playtests, players got confused by having to use WASD to rotate the hands, and one of my playtesters suggested having the hand rotate depending on the mouse position (thanks grace). I thought this was a really great idea, and this week I finally got around to implementing it! Yahoo! I've had some great results! ! ! Because the hands start rotating as soon as players enter the holding mode now, there's no confusion about what's going on (as they can instantly see it). Here it is :)))
(sorry I dunno why that GIF came out so smol) (also sorry for the terrible framerate I have like 50720 things open on my computer at the moment and you K N O W I'm too lazy to close anything so)
I also brought the hands much closer the the camera, as I kinda hate how weird and spooky the hands look when you can see where the wrists end. Also I like being able to see the pigeons up close :-) ALSO I changes the angle a little, so now it actually makes sense when the pigeons fall out of the hands. Another part of the reason I brought the hands closer to the camera was so that you can see this beautiful birdy up close. MEET MY NEW BEST FRIEND :~)
This is the big pigeon! It is very big and squishy and that's about it really but I'm very excited about having it properly in the game! Here it is in comparison to the other birds. It's a big bird!!!!
(man sorry for that framerate I really need to close some programs)
Anyway that's pretty much it for this week! I was very excited to get big bird in there, but I still need to write it up a bird book entry so that'll be next week's job. I also really want to put an outline shader on the hands so they're not so prominent - I think having them up close makes them a little less weird but I have a suspicion it would be a good call for me to just make them an outline. I also really wanna get a new bird in there! I'm thinking of making posh bird next!! yahoo!! big week planned next week! oh my!
Thanks for reading!! Cya later!