Devlog #24 | Demo creation begin, time, light, project stat and dialogs

This time, I worked on the house system, added interior lighting, and even implemented peeking through the windows :) I also introduced a time system, making lighting depend on the time of day, shared some project stats (Steam, Kickstarter), and talked a bit about what I'll be working on next.

Unfortunately, this is a devlog and I'm not localizing it, so the description below will be for non-English speakers.

I've decided to make a demo for the project. I especially want to have it ready by summer - for the festival. I've already come up with the story, outlined the mechanics that will be included, and started gradually implementing everything that's still missing.

I began with the house.

Now it better matches the intended time period, and it has been completely reworked. Because the house appears small on the world map, I had to implement teleportation to a separate interior space so the inside could actually feel large. Yes, historically houses weren't that big - and visually everything works fine from the outside - but if I kept the interior realistically small, there wouldn't even be space to move around. That didn't work for me, so teleportation became the solution.

Naturally, I also wanted to implement windows. To make that work, I had to create a system that renders the outside world into the interior space - so the player can actually see what's happening outside through the windows. Because of this, the teleportation itself feels almost seamless - and that turned out really well.

Next, I worked on lighting.

Inside the house, I made it more realistic - especially the fire lighting - and added light coming from the windows, which depends on the global lighting outside. I also implemented a global lighting system: one setup for daytime, another for evening, a third for night, and a fourth for morning - all transitioning smoothly between each other.

I also added proper time progression.

Now a full in-game day lasts 24 minutes, and the overall lighting of the level depends on the time of day. So this system is fully integrated - there's day, evening, and night - and the player can clearly understand it at least through the lighting.

As for general updates:

Right now, the game has reached 54 wishlists. The Kickstarter campaign has ended - unfortunately, it wasn't successful. I've also registered on Indiegogo and I'm currently waiting for approval to publish there.

I've also started updating the dialogue system. It already exists in a basic form, but I'll talk more about it in the next devlog.