25072020
Finally, a productive day. I spent most of the time cleaning up the edges of the stream and setting up the audio masks proper. I also recorded some new audio (technically yesterday…) for water (the previous sounds suggested way too much depth – I’ll probably reuse them later though), as well as the pack rattle while walking, and the generic walking. It sounds much better now and I’m pleased with how much it improves the feeling of just walking around.
One of the more significant visual changes I’ve implemented in a while is the rendering of distant backgrounds in greyscale. I struggled for a long while to figure out if I should actually do it, given my otherwise rigid adherence to the hard two-tone palette; but the results look way too good to not implement it properly and also, there’s a pretty solid canonical justification for it as well.
Speaking of which, I started drafting out a proper step-by-step walkthrough of the game’s plot today and made decent progress. I’ve realised just now how vague the game’s beginning is, especially since I’ve made the firm decision to not build a formal tutorial in the traditional sense. I think over the next few days I’ll split the work between building new environments, and figuring out how the plot flow will work, as it’s gonna be difficult I think to strike a fine balance between intrigue and outright obfuscation.