Development Update

For video-based devlogs see my YouTube channel. The updates will also be published in written form here in Steam. These updates follow approximately every 4 weeks.

New Features

Scene Manager

I have been working on a new system that helps me manage scenes. Automatically a loading screen is switched in between and the resources are loaded in the background. I had to search a bit to find out how to load stuff in the background in Godot 4, since it has changed from Godot 3.

Namely, I implemented three methods. The first and simple one is to switch from one scene to another. The second is that when switching to another scene, a cutscene is played in between. The third method is that a cutscene is played, the current scene is put into the background and after the cutscene it continues where you left off.

The technique implemented here is not to be confused with streaming 3D models. I would like to optimize this later in my case, but this does not work yet, because despite the data loading in the background lags occur.

Cutscenes

Already mentioned, there are now cutscenes in my game. It's implemented very simply, with the cutscene technically being a class with simple methods and signals for handling. For the cutscene itself I use an AnimationPlayer, which starts automatically. Once the animation has finished playing, or the cutscene is cancelled, the signal is triggered that the cutscene has finished. When I started this, I wanted to try it out with the intro of the game, which you can see in the background. If you are interested in the complete intro, you can find it in my videos, where I have uploaded it completely. For cutscenes in the game, I will prepare them mainly in Godot. Whereas I will do all animations in Blender.

Shadow World

In the background you can see a first version of the shadow world. It will be further revised. Also, I haven't gotten around to implementing Ryan's soul yet. The shadow world consists of three islands located in a sea of fog. They are connected by small wooden bridges. On the first island there is an area where Ryan's soul will teach him how to use his abilities properly. During the game Ryan will enter this world again and again to ask for a second chance after death or to learn new abilities. On the second island there is a small ruin. Here Ryan's soul is waiting to communicate with him. But it is also used for rituals. On the third and smallest island you will find a big tree. In front of the tree a special merchant. I will talk about this merchant and his offer as soon as it is relevant.

New tiling textures

As you might have already seen, not all textures are known anymore, which were used. I’ve been busy renewing my current tiling textures, which you can see in the background next to the old ones. On the left side the previous textures and on the right side the new textures. There are also a few new ones, which I need later. In my opinion, the new textures are more understandable and visually appealing. In contrast to the old textures, where I created them using Substance Painter, I created them procedurally with MaterialMaker.

Alpha 13 & Alpha 14

Godot has released two new alphas during the time since the last devlog. There are only a few new features coming out. They are mostly fixes and stabilizations for an upcoming beta.

Just to mention, Alpha 13 was very stable and pleasant to work with. Only Label3D elements were broken and the font had to be re-set. Alpha 14 on the other hand was more critical. OGG files for music had to be re-imported because the class name was slightly adjusted. But mostly it broke the shaders in the game for me. Some shader settings were completely reset. I assume this is related to the fact that the methods for handling shader parameters have been renamed. What we also noticed is that this version is much more unstable. Godot crashed on me a few times after playing audio files and when reimporting images. Mainly EXR files, which I use partly for roughness textures and normal maps.

While we are talking about changes to Godot, I would like to mention that some important people from the community have created a commercial company W4 Games. This, according to my understanding, is for Godot to continue to grow up. It provides a company for support for large companies. Also, later on, they offer the possibility that we can publish our games on consoles more easily. Godot itself could never do this, because of the open source strategy. As a first act, they provided Direct3D 12 as an alternative to Vulkan. This is needed for the export to XBOX. As of now, this change still needs to be merged into the branch for Godot.

Further

Still briefly mentioned, since I can not show these things:

• Final concepts of the boss for Old Library Dungeon

• Course taken to make better animations

• Several things are revised besides the shown new textures

What are my plans for the coming weeks?

The following things are planned to be implemented in the coming weeks.

• Finish the shadow world

• Finish Ryan's soul

• Continue to work on the Old Library Dungeon and its Boss

• Continue to improve 3D models with new know-how

• Integrate soul abilities into the game