Last blog I said I was going to work on the gameplay and story sides of the project, but I haven't made as much progress there as I'd hoped. I've done some heavy thinking on where that's going but haven't managed to write much down. The main thing I have been up to is spritework! I've been grinding out sprites to get to the state where I can start feeling what the end might look like. Here are some screens:
I've also mucked around with some of the game logic and programming (as you can see in the last picture above). I adjusted some render and image compression settings to get a crisper, true pixel 2D look using some instructions from the Unity blog, and a downloaded 2D camera preset. I want to avoid using presets and plugins where it makes sense, so I can learn as much as possible myself, but for now the camera is extremely lightweight and useful. It handles adjusting the game pixel mapping to the screen resolution, which involves a lot of finicky maths that I'm happy to outsource - especially as testing the results across multiple resolutions is already painful enough without having the debug my own code as well.
I had a lot of fun with the sprites, and got to flex my creativity a little in some of them, however seeing the results from my work is a little underwhelming. I haven't magically improved over time without practice, so I will need to focus and try hard with the sprite work. I anticipate I will require many animations later on as well, some very complex. The natural sprites in particular will need some movement from wind if I want to use a complex soundscape with wind audio while outside. Leaves rustling, grass blowing in waves. I'm not sure if I can pull that off yet, but I'd like to try it.
I did a little more programming on my game too. If you thought I was insecure about my spritework well... the programming is much worse. Every decision I make, at every point, I second guess whether I'm laying down a landmine for myself that will cause massive issues later! I'm finding it really really hard to even write anything at all, which is a huge problem that's causing me to work slowly. I need to remind myself constantly that writing buggy difficult code is better than writing nothing at all, but I don't know if I even believe it myself. The code I have been writing was around transitioning from room to room, and some changes to my collision system.
Going forward now, I will continue on the trajectory I'm on, producing sprites and building test rooms to try out basic logic and layouts. I firmly believe now that I shouldn't begin on the actual game until I've ironed out my systems and artwork in test rooms. This has come about after observing the number of times I've had to totally rebuild vast sections of my Unity project layouts, my sprite/tilemaps, and my programming structures. If I was attempting to build my actual game at the same time I was doing these re-writes I would be throwing about hours and hours of work and shattering my motivation.
So for now, sprites and logic programming in test rooms. I think it will take another few months at this rate before I start to work on the actual game proper.
I've been listening to some 80s synthpop music recently while working on this project, but I don't think the tone totally suits the setting. Which is a shame, because the music is extremely evocative and I would love to use it if I could.
I also listened closely to the Far Cry 5 soundtrack. One of the tracks from the game stood out to me. It plays in a few loading screens, and sometimes as distant ambient music. It sets an incredible mood and tone, and I feel my Arcadians would match the tone very well. I know a few people who play guitar and I might be able to pull a similar sound off myself with clever mixing. It's an avenue I want to explore. I like the idea of any music in the game being natural to the world. Union music would come from speakers and be pop focused - expertly mixed crackling vinyl, while Arcadian music would be performed live with guitars and voices, wafting gently though the misty forests.
