RE-DEVELOPMENT LOG : Part 1

Howdy, Whitaker Meta-fam. You might recall that this title recently went into Maintenance Mode, or you're a sane person who is not a sadist and would rather enjoy the games they play.

Turns out, the engine I used upgraded partway through development and I was also a VERY green developer when I started it, so I have been rebuilding the codebase from the ground up. I got pretty tired of things breaking every patch.

Basically, I am also going to take this time to make the game more fun. But I'll try to post these updates periodically so those who do care can see the effort being put in.

Here is what has been done so far.

• The first change? The lead. Her face and eyes are more defined now and her animations have been cleaned up. Also she has brown eyes now, because they just look better against the red and purple motifs of the game. In addition, there is now a visual indicator when you are in a hazard with an audio cue to alert you. When exhausted, Lydia now flashes instead of the stamina bar - which may or may not return.

• Physics overhaul. The Physics were not too intense originally, nor are they now, but how Collisions happen and not has been re-coded, ground up. This has led to a much less glitchy enemy and has made movement more consistent overall. It's a lot you won't see, but you'll "feel" it, if that makes sense?Steam post image

• More Input options. Mouse support has been added for navigation now, with interact on the left click and hold/hide/sit on the right click. And oh yeah, hide is now a separate button. I felt this was a good idea as hide is probably the most important button in chase scenes. It needs its own button.

• New Eventing system. The areas you would enter to open interactive elements had major problems with overlapping and sometimes "Eating" each other. This entire system, from prompts to mechanics, has been completely re-coded. Overlaps no longer exist and a global manager now handles which event is current, versus just character placement.

• Distanced audio has been improved. Thanks to new elements in Godot 4, random sound selection and audio processing by distance overall just works better. The audio buses also are spaced more efficiently now, allowing for better spacing of audio sections.

• Scrollable text in Lore-reading scenes. I honestly built most of these scenes in vector editors and while they look great, I am not sure if people are reading them. Putting scrollable text allows these scenes to be more reader-friendly and allows them to be called remotely much more easily. It will also (hopefully) make translations less work - as text is clearly easier to process than images.

• Dynamic lighting and shadows. This had been on my to-do for a while and now it's happening. Lydia and Patches now cast shadows in front of lights and lights are actually active rather than static sprites. I don't think I need to detail why this looks better.

• Bigger, better text. Text overall is larger, has background shadows and outlines and is more legible. You'll also see a nice carat in dialogue boxes when it's time to input for a progression.

• Leveling Up. A great early review with some constructive criticism (no, not the reviewer I cussed out on Instagram) mentioned that rewards were sometimes not clear when completing major events. I also had static functions upping the speed of the enemy as the player progressed further in the game. However, this difficulty arc was not only unbalanced, but the curve was dramatic after the first half of the game. We will now be moving to a new Perk system that will give the player abilities of their choosing, with new ones appearing each milestone you pass in the game. However, you will also pick an Enemy perk as well - so you choose how the game's difficulty shifts.

There's still a ways to go, but a lot of very hard and boring (well, not for me) stuff has been finished. Thanks for all who have been guinea pigs for this nightmare. I promise you will all enjoy it soon.

xoxoxo,

negDev / dr Tentacles