More work on the sinkhole. I’m investigating an idea that I think may have a somewhat interesting effect, of zooming out the camera in certain locations to showcase a much larger sense of relative scale. I’ve implemented the “framework” (if something so rudimentary could even be addressed as such) in the room with the larger sinkhole, which I think I’ll tie to a user-specified trigger: maybe as simple as a manual interaction prompt, although I’m gonna try tomorrow as well to have it trigger automatically when the player steps over it. My only concern is that that would be mildly disorienting… although I think that has just as much to do with how haphazard the current camera zoom implementation is.
Continued work on the sinkhole, focusing on the smaller indentation. I decided to develop into a pond-like structure, filled with leaves and other natural debris. The general area around it is now more or less complete, tomorrow’s work will start with cleaning it up a bit before moving onto the larger hole. I still haven’t fully made up my mind as to the extent to which the player will be able to access this latter area – or honestly, whether they’ll even be able to see it in full at all – although I suppose that’s best left for tomorrow to figure out.
I feel completely drained right now for some reason, and suffered from minor nervous shakes and palpitation all throughout the day. One part of it was no doubt the cold – it snowed a few days ago and everything froze over, it’s the coldest it’s been this year so far I think – but there’s a distinct probability that I’m still suffering from the effects of the caffeine I most likely overdosed on yesterday morning.
Didn’t get any work done today at all. This morning I drank a bunch of coffee too quickly and all throughout the day I suffered from a continuous aftershock of anxiety and vague nausea. I was simultaneously exhausted yet also completely unhinged. My hands and feet felt unnaturally cold, and my body febrile. It was like the worst parts of being high: my senses rapidly dilating and contracting, lurching from one moment to the next, unable to make sense of any of it. I felt like absolute shit; and yet another day without any progress just made it feel even worse. I’ve gotta collect myself tomorrow and set things straight.
Didn’t quite finish the sinkhole like I’d hoped I’d be able to, but I did successfully map out all the collisions, and am about halfway through placing down vegetation. Originally I wanted the area to remain relatively treeless, something like an open campground; but I’ve come to realise that barrenness is probably not the best choice with these kinds of visuals, the starkness rarely comes across feeling like little more than unintentional lack of meticulousness. Best to just stick with what works…
No in-engine work today, decided to take a break and instead focused on gathering and sketching new locations. I finished up a bunch of tents today along with a few other miscellaneous structures/objects to place around the sinkhole, which should be ready to be put in tomorrow. I hope to be able to finish up the sinkhole tomorrow completely and start working on getting it integrated seamlessly into the existing geography.
Got a good amount of work done today finally. I produced nearly twenty new rooms, most of which are occupied by a massive sinkhole. The sinkhole itself has been incorporated into the map along with basic grass placement, although I still have to get the collisions sorted out completely tomorrow. I also have to figure out how I’m going to handle the upper and lower bounds of it in terms of how they relate to the rest of the environment geographically… but overall, I’m feeling optimistic about it, I think (hope) it’ll end up being interesting in its final implementation.
Implemented full animations and audio for using the lantern, with the exception of the lighting and extinguishing animations, which I would like to get to tomorrow. At some point I’d also like to record some audio for the lantern moving around slightly while walking – light mechanical squeaking, a little bit of rattling every once in a while. I think it’ll really help improve the mood, especially at night.
I also created a dynamic shadow system that’s visible when lights are active in the world. Objects such as trees and various mid-sized flora will spawn in casters automatically, while casters must be manually placed for buildings and large structures. The visibility of the shadows is tied to the time of day, and will gradually fade to full transparency. I’m not that confident with the effect yet and honestly I think it kinda looks like shit right now, but I’ll keep it in just in case somewhere down the line I come up with something better.
Got virtually nothing done either today or yesterday. I can’t even remember really what happened yesterday, or if in fact yesterday was really the day before, or… I’ve just been feeling extremely tired all the time, even though I’m getting enough sleep all things considered. I just wish I didn’t feel so bad all the time…
Recovered a bit of progress today. I got the idle and walk animations done for the lamp with no pack equipped; now I just have to make animations for equipping it and unequipping it, and duplicate the entire set for when the pack is equipped. Not a huge step or anything, but good enough for now. I also implemented fifteen generic cells, filling out the bottom-left corner of the map completely. I’ll probably go back at some point and change the spawn algorithms on those rooms a bit – I want the forests to grow consistently heavier and more difficult to navigate the closer she gets to the game’s “border” – but for now I’m actually surprisingly okay with the results as is. Now, to see if I can match my pace again tomorrow…
Spent the day researching options for the medical kit and outpost storage UI. And by that, I basically mean I accomplished nothing of worth. I have a few leads, but ultimately I wasn’t able to act on any of them, and instead just spent the day Googling images trying to convince myself I was getting something done. I did spend about twenty minutes spamming a bunch of generic rooms in-game but I don’t feel like that was worth much of anything at all, considering I’ll probably regret their placement later this week. Man, I gotta get it together, I haven’t done anything meaningful in days…
Another slow day. Continued planning out the item weights and volumes, put them in a spreadsheet this afternoon and started figuring out how I want to distribute stuff. It was a lot of tedious, morale-sapping work that’s definitely taken a toll on my motivation… Next week – well, tomorrow – I’m gonna get back to working on environments full-time and relegate what’s left of the inventory back to secondary priority.
Finished and published the update for this month. I decided to take the rest of the day’s work off my computer and instead spent the afternoon working on conceptual stuff – mostly setting up the weights and volumes of all the items, as well as sketching the descriptions. A part of wishes I had just done it on the computer to begin with, but I think stepping away for a bit was a good call. I feel like I have a better sense of perspective now on my work recently, even if just by a little bit.
Unproductive day. I was able to get barely any work done, I just felt distracted the entire day by… honestly, nothing, just a kind of free-floating sense of disruption. I spent an hour or so cleaning up the audio sequence on the container interactions, which now (more or less) have full audio. One more thing I’d like to add is container-specific audio cues that change depending on the nature of the container (ie a metal toolbox will sound different from a wood cabinet which’ll sound different from a plastic bin, etc).
I’m also investigating the possibility of developing a kind of “tag” system that’ll allow each item to have a different icon next to its name in the container UI, with an associated sound effect that plays when that item is transferred. Those small sounds would also play when picking up the item for the first time (either through foraging or from a container). It shouldn’t be too difficult, I think; but it will be incredibly boring, mind-numbing work. I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing I should be attempting right now…
I also started working on the Kickstarter update for this month, which I originally intended to get done and published today; but I’m just not satisfied at all with the way the inventory UI looks, and I don’t really want to publish it. Really though, I should’ve just written it yesterday and had it ready. Now that I wasn’t able to complete it today, I have to finish and publish it tomorrow within a reasonable timeframe. I kinda squeezed myself into a corner here, but what else is new…
Another somewhat slow day. I wanted to finish up the inventory today completely – which was really just the audio – but I once again just felt incredibly tired so I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped. Nonetheless, I was able to (mostly) accomplish the baseline for the rest of the audio work today, including finishing up all the mixing, and setting up the enter/exit audio for opening and closing the inventory. I also made a set of new animations for using containers, although I’ll definitely have to re-mix new audio tracks for them (shouldn’t be too bad, that kind of stuff is really just busywork). The animations and audio could probably also be reused for just checking the inventory out in the world in general, which is useful.
Lastly, I made a very minor adjustment that prevents the player from foraging and accessing container inventories if the pack isn’t equipped. It saves me a lot of trouble moving forward as I won’t have to segregate items stored in Avery’s harness “inventory” (which is really just a few fixed items) and the items stored in her pack based on carry weight and capacity. It also has the added benefit of incentivising the player to constantly keep track of their pack and bring it with them instead of just running around without it on. I think in turn, somewhere down the line, I’ll also try to come up with a few actions that can only be performed with the pack off. Right now, resting is one of them; I think having tool-based actions restricted to unencumbered movement might also be worth looking into. Hopefully these will result in interesting dynamics and tradeoffs rather than frustration…
Ended up basically just taking the day off. I felt oddly drained all throughout the day. I woke around noon and wasted a few hours supposedly working on audio for the inventory UI, but truthfully I just got distracted and played Fallout 4 for nearly the entire afternoon instead. I’m gonna have to double-time tomorrow and work Sunday to make up the lost work.
I think one of the biggest issues I’m facing now really in regards to the map is a total absence of sense for how to populate the lower-right corner of the map. Obviously I need it to be filled in some way, but just spamming forest grids feels cheap and ineffective, like I’m deliberately just bloating the sense of space with effectively “empty” stretches.
I think I need to just take a step back one of these days to plot out points of interest before I can proceed much further. I still have just under 200 rooms to get done, at least 80 of which I’d like to be unique; That’s at least a month’s worth of work, being generous; and I’m already halfway through January, meaning that unless I really accelerate my progress, I’m not gonna make this month’s goal….
Managed to fully finish the backend for the inventory system, including transferring objects, and saving both the player inventory and any containers within the world based on room. It took a bit longer than I had initially hoped – the latter required me to completely redo the save/load system for player data, which was a bit of work – but it seems to work solidly now, which is all I suppose I can really ask for at the end of the day.
Storage weight and capacity also now adapt properly on the fly. This too involved a bit of work as I had to redo the grid structures storing the player inventory, which is now no longer segregated by type, but is instead stored in one single universal list (this has inevitably caused some problems with the firestarter kit, which I have to fix soon: maybe tomorrow). I’m concerned a bit about potential performance degradation over time as there are still a few necessary free-floating data structures which aren’t cleared until the program itself terminates; but I guess it’s best not to worry about those now and deal with them later if necessary.
There’s still a bit of work to get done on it before I feel it’s good enough to show – mainly the item description/properties window, and improved UI VFX and audio, although I’m still also considering adding the item stack feature I talked about yesterday – but I’m confident I can get it done tomorrow in time for this month’s update.
Spent half of the day in a state of extreme agitation, and the other working steadily on the inventory system. Today I managed to successfully implement item weight and volume for all currently available resources. The hardest part, without question, was figuring out how to manipulate the ds_grids to properly store calculated values. I’ve effectively ended up with the equivalent of a(n extremely basic) spreadsheet… So far, it seems to be working as intended, although I have yet to test it outside of the confines of the test room, or with multiple object containers.
Regardless, I’m just glad that I got it working at all. I’m actually pretty impressed with myself to be quite honest. At many times it just felt completely above my skill level, and yet I somehow persisted through it and even managed to end up with a solution that, while probably not elegant, is definitely flexible and legible enough to be reused later in a more modular contexts.
Tomorrow I hope to get item transferral set up and hopefully maybe even finished. I’m probably gonna have to start by revamping the way items are generated, and reducing the pack_add_item script to a simpler form that allows items to be generated using only the item names. I’m currently trying to decide whether I want to do that with a CSV or external text file, or just load it in via a massive switch statement at the beginning. I’m leaning towards the latter, but we’ll see…
I don’t think it’ll be too bad once I get going on it, especially since I feel I’ve set up a pretty decent framework today to dynamically handle weight/space calculations, but we’ll see. There are also a few fringe cases, like transferring item counts over certain quantities: right now, I’m thinking I’m just gonna lift the implementation from Fallout once again, and have it so that if the player attempts to transfer more than 10 of the same item, it’ll open up a prompt that allows them to manually select a custom quantity. I’m not sure how the input for that will work right now, but again, we’ll see…
I hope that I’m stable enough tomorrow so I can get this done, and get back to work on environments.
A productive day. Got a bunch of rooms done, and started work on the inventory system. I was able to set up the foundation for it, including basic navigation and all the general GUI elements. There are still a few things I’d like to expand upon in that direction beyond just making it look better – namely, additional information about storage capacity and weight – but overall it’s a good start, and I’m surprised I was able to get it done so quickly.
After that, I have to implement functionality – basically just transferring items, and properly calculating combined weights and storage space – but that requires me to first build in those systems, as well as potentially revamp the original inventory system pretty substantially to account for, and properly calculate total combined resource values (meaning that the previous implementation, which segregates resources by category, has to be either redone or seriously reconsidered).
All in all, it’s simultaneously a lot of work, yet not as much as I originally thought. I’ve learned that as long as I’m able to find the patience to slow down and concentrate, visualise things in the right order, I’ll be okay with these kinds of things. I hope I can finish by the middle of next week.
Took the day off today. I’ve been having particularly unpleasant dreams these past two nights for some strange reason. When I wake I no longer feel rested…
Nothing really that interesting, just continued working on new rooms. I also implemented a very basic spawner for certain trees – really, just the tall ones – whose bases previously didn’t mesh that well with the ground, that spawns in a few shrubs around the base to blend it a bit better.
Today was the first day I actually got my five rooms done! Hopefully I’m able to continue with this.
I also got a lot of additional work done, improving the procgen system used to generate the generic forest sections. I added a few new variations of dead trees and various brambles for the underbrush, and rebalanced the placement algorithm a bit. The result is a much more “natural”-looking forest I think, with a lot more diversity in terms of both distribution and types of flora: now I just gotta work a bit more on improving overall legibility for the player…
Didn’t get as much done today, unusually tired for some reason tonight. However, the area around the observatory’s road is functionally complete now, including sound masking (along with new audio for footsteps on hard surfaces, although they still need a lot of work I think). The Capitol Building was temporarily stormed today, which is probably why I had such difficulty concentrating. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to get back on track.
Resumed work on environments, starting with the area around the observatory. Although I didn’t technically get five new rooms done today, I significantly redid the terrain around it (as well as added some additional visuals such as vines to the building itself): the “road” system leading up to it is now more or less finished in terms of layout, it’s just a matter of improving legibility in a few of the rooms and adjusting the precise placement of the observatory itself on the larger map with respect to distribution and density of PoIs. Figuring out how to (mostly, for now) resolve the issue of the observatory’s previously sudden and jarring occurrence has significantly eased some of my frustrations in this area and particular, and once I finish up the road complete, I think I’ll feel much better prepared to expand eastwards, equipped with a better understanding of the scale and shape of the terrain relative to early major landmarks.
A slower day, didn’t get around to doing my rooms for the day after all. I did however finish up the sub-lighting effect that I started yesterday – most light sources, but most noticeably the torch, now have a soft darkened gradient around their edges, which fades out appropriately according to the time of day – as well as the visibility system for interactions: interaction prompts will still appear, but the text will be dimmer and potentially even illegible in the absence of nearby light sources, whether that’s the player-mounted ones, or exterior ones such as fires. I spent some time figuring out whether I wanted to just hide the visibility of the prompts, or completely disable interaction altogether. Ultimately I ended up going with the former, as the latter proved to be a bit too cumbersome to implement properly, both design-wise, and technically due to the weird masking issues on the light textures themselves.
I hope tomorrow I can get back to working on the environment.
A dim, snowy day. Spent the afternoon and evening working on fire and lighting. I finally implemented something I should have done a long time ago: fires now burn differently depending on environmental circumstances, particularly humidity, and precipitation. For example, fires lit during heavy rain are much more difficult to ignite, take longer to build up, and burn both shorter, and less brightly (meaning less available light). In contrast, fires lit during clear or cloudy weather are much easier to light and give off a lot more light, allowing Avery to perform a greater range of activities (tomorrow I’m gonna finally implement the light restriction system, another one of those things I had planned out long ago but never got around to doing for some reason). However, larger fires also increase the possibility of attracting potentially unwanted contact, which makes them riskier, and encourages the player to extinguish their fires early.
I also started implementing a sub-lighting surface that adds a bit of a gradient to the lighting at night. It’ll be toggle-able, as with all the other features; I’m not sure yet if I’m gonna have it enabled by default, or left as an option. Lastly, I implemented a visible in-world lighting object for sparks when using the lighter and ferro rod.
Pretty productive day today (although I still didn’t get my five rooms done…). I started by working on the dirtiness effects like I said I would yesterday. It ended up being a little bit trickier than I initially projected: since the game is running at true resolution, the texture, which previously worked fine on a much larger sprite in a different project, had to be manually adjusted in order to not appear blotchy/weird on Avery’s character model. Nonetheless though it turned out fine and everything works as intended now: dirt and grime naturally accumulate while outdoors but particularly during rainfall, and can be washed away in the decontamination shower. I think I’m gonna have the regular shower give a substantial mood buff, which is countered by a long wait time in between available usages (maybe a day or two, as new water gets filtered in).
While coming up with ways to make the two work together well, I also came up with the idea for a small underground area, accessible via a hatch in the ground in the outpost room, leading to an interior cell containing the water and power sources for the outpost. I’m not entirely sure yet what the point of those would necessarily serve beyond demonstrating the functional construction of the outpost, but it’s an oddly exciting idea that I’m gonna work a bit with more tomorrow.
I also started working on directional sprites for the idle animations: now, Avery will stay in whatever position she was facing when she stops walking. It’s a relatively small change, but significantly improves the feeling of the movement overall.
Lastly, I got rid of the alternate lighting system entirely after discovering some gross incompatibilities with the design of the outpost, and implemented an alternate light source instead: a miniature storm lantern, which, instead of casting a beam like the hand torch, casts a small radius around Avery. I’m thinking it’ll be powered by fuel tablets (also used for starting fires), although I’m not yet sure what its advantages over the torch are yet. I’ll think about it a bit more in the coming days and hopefully arrive at a satisfactory solution.
Started off the year on a bit of slow note. Last night I took a sleeping pill so I could try to fix my sleep schedule (I’ve been going to bed around 0600 the past week or so for some reason), but I guess it ended up just being too strong as I was overcome by an intense lethargy early in the afternoon, and ended up falling asleep until around 1900.
Nonetheless I spent the morning reacquainting myself with my previous progress, and ended up working on some minor QoL fixes and visual updates, especially around the outpost. This weekend, I’d like to implement the dirtiness system. It shouldn’t be difficult or time-consuming at all: a fairly straightforward accumulation meter, and a shader-based visual overlay that I already have pre-assembled from another project I worked on last year. I’m also resuming my five-rooms-a-day schedule tomorrow.
Well, here we are, at the end of yet another year. I decided the day before Christmas that, instead of forcibly hitting my head against the wall for the rest of the year getting nothing done, I’d just take the time off instead to try to enjoy the holiday and recuperate my attention and energy.
Truth be told, I actually think it’s worked a bit: I think I do feel a little bit better, and taking a step back has granted me a greater perspective of, and desire to improve upon my efforts, that I lacked before because I guess I was just too stuck in it. I hope tomorrow I’ll be able to return with a stronger and clearer sense of both purpose and motivation alike.
Overall, I think that, despite everything else that happened at large, this year was a good one for me: probably the best in a good while, actually. I feel like I gained a certain sense of clarity over myself and the things that I believe, the things that I desire, that I’ve been hoping to find for a very long time now, but was unable to achieve because I was constantly blinded by distractions before. For the first time, probably ever, I feel at peace most days, untroubled by the noise of the world.
As for the subject of wishes and resolutions… well, I suppose there’s a lot I could say but at the end of the day, all I really hope is that I can continue to get better. In the meantime, I’ll continue to put in the effort all the days I can, and in time, hopefully learn how to better recognise and deal with the days I can’t. And so it goes.
Peace be with you.
