It's been a while since my last post.
Today, the 10th of April 2024, marks two years since I started this unexpected adventure and I thought I should let you know what's going on.
Firstly, in case you wondered, let me put your mind at ease, I'm still working on this game and I will finish it.
That being said, I'm a little behind the schedule I originally planned.
I imagined that by this time I would be pretty close to having an alpha build of all 6 chapters.
But the past year brought a lot of ups and downs for me on so many levels and that affected my creativity and productivity, so I wasn't able to put in all the time I wanted and planned to.
In January 2024 the new year brought in a breeze of fresh air under my wings.
I was starting to get my mojo back.
I still wasn't fully at it, but I slowly started getting back into it and it grew from day to day.
And now, April 2024, I was hoping I could say that chapter 4 is completed, it's not, but it is very close and it should be ready for alpha testing within a week or so!
Chapter 4 brought some challenges with it.
It got a pinnacle point of the story line, which will affect the following chapters of the story.
Now, as I mentioned before, I am working on this game chapter by chapter. That includes everything, writing the story and dialogues, coming up with scenes and characters, designing the puzzles, doing the art, sound, music demos, coding... Everything.
While I did have ideas for the general story arch of the whole game. Nothing was set in stone and a lot of times things changed as I got to work on them.
Since this chapter is very crucial to the progression of the story, I felt like I needed to explore all possibilities before committing and start doing the actual work.
This was on my mind for the entirety of the last 9 months. Mostly in my head, coming up with a direction, fleshing out the idea, finding any possible holes in the story. Then doing it again and again... and again.
By the time I sat down to work in January, I already decided and knew where it was going, so I just needed to make it happen.
I'm not going to share a lot from chapters 3-6 as I did with chapters 1-2, because they contain spoilers. But I will share a little.
Here's one of the new characters in chapter 4, meet Aaron.
Another thing I'll share, which I think is pretty cool.
In chapter 4 there is one location you're exploring with a bunch of sub locations.
My initial plan and go-to idea was to make a map to let you travel between those sub locations.
Eventually I decided to try something new and make a big round structure with a round corridor and doors leading to those sub locations.
This is what you call an endless scrolling looping scene.
This brought up some new challenges, as I couldn't use the standard controls used throughout the game on an endless looping scene.
What I ended up doing, is keeping the player centered, and scrolling the scene around him.
That basically means I had to code a separated control scheme just for this scene and get around lots of issues. But hey, it was worth it :)
The scene art is still work in progress, but you can get the idea of where it's going.
Some general updates:
I finally got around to working on my shadow system. Previously the players' shadows were skewed in a fixed angle, the only thing that was changing was the opacity as they moved closer and away from a light source.
Now the shadows' are changing the skew angle in run-time.
There are still some tweaks to be done in my math, but it's pretty much there.
Another thing I changed is how you use Grover when you are teamed.
In the game there are some sections where Mikey and Grover are separated. you control each of them separately, each with his own inventory, locations and puzzles.
The rest of the time, they stick together and Mikey takes the lead.
Previously if and when you needed help from Grover, you would first need to find out you can't do something by yourself, that would trigger a new conversation topic for Grover. Then you had to talk to him and ask him to help with that.
I didn't like that approach for many reasons. So I decided to switch it up and add an inventory item that represents Grover and you just use that on whatever hotspot you like. This also opens some possibility for funny responses from Grover, though I haven't added any yet.
So, what's next?
As soon as I finish chapter 4, I'm going to send it out for testing and immediately jump on chapter 5 which is also a pretty long one.
If all goes well I should be able to finish chapter 5 and 6 around September 2024 and then it's polish and soundtrack time.
There is still a possibility of a late 2024 release, but I'm not making any promises.