📰 The PixelCount Post - Issue #14
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ISSUE #14 THE VALE, QUILL 5 JAN 2018 ONE BRASS
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This week I finally addressed an issue I had been putting off: sorting out the level known as 'ruins'. The Vale has 14 regions (there's actually going to be 15 in the Early Access version) and only 1 of those 14 hadn't been touched.
I had copy pasted some scraps in to try to get something going but it just wasn't working, mainly as we have no actual ruins assets. Then I had an epiphany...
This week we took delivery of new dirt, mud, and grass patches - which look great. So I decided to make a much muddier region, with more water, and defined by our largest rocks. This then transitions into a mini maze of shrubbery, before leading onward to a mysterious Fae area. The actual ruins part themselves will be separated off and only reachable after The Prologue, saving me having to do that bit.
So what else has been dribbling out of my unidentifiable brain this week? Item descriptions! Puns! Task descriptions! Puns! Books! Puns! Dialogue tweaks! Puns!
I think maybe puns might have been written. Oh, I also prettied up the mines a bit! They all look reasonably nice if you make it night time and shut your eyes and cover your face with towels. Lastly, I think the team is addicted to Honeycam, which is not a porno site, but a very cool GIF making program.
I don't endorse adverts in here but it ain't no ham when you use Honeycam. Honeycam: GIF's in a jiffy. Brought to you by Vigrus & Shandy Marketing. |
This week in code I have been mostly darting around all over the place doing random bits that have little relation to one another. Now that we have reached a point where there isn't as much new, in terms of code features for the The Prologue, I've been starting to refactor a bit so that new code is easier to fit in. The lack of new systems has also given the opportunity to start returning to older systems that haven't been touched that much since the Kickstarter prototype version. The time away is quite a good thing both for revisiting the design and the code as it's easier to see afresh where we might tweak and adjust to smooth the setup.
There were also a few bits I was happy about this week! So at #3, there was navigation which is now manually customisable and a good first pass is in place courtesy of Charlie. This fixes the broad stroke errors in the prototype where characters were going through walls/fences/large objects (along with paving the way for preferential routes on paths)! At #2, there's automatically generating a list of items across the whole game and where they can be found which makes it easy to see what's missing or what is in the wrong place (and a quick further step to do shortly will allow clicking on this list to go to the item in question to see where it is!). At #1, getting in some more animations from Gary (aka armyoftrolls) - in particular, pig riding and fishing animations which should hopefully feel quite satisfying to players. There's definitely more polish needed though, so I must be getting back to it! |
2018 is finally here! With renewed energy I can start on what is to be another amazing year! And then I get the flu...
It's no biggy, just an inconvenience really. In spite of it, work on sound effects continues, which I consider to be a challenge. I get the feeling it sometimes takes me longer to make a 2 second effect than it does to make a 5 minute song - but I'm sure I'll get faster as I do it more often. Though, just to keep sane, I re-did a track I made for the ruins that Charlie referred to earlier. The first version I made was nice, but for the wrong reasons in my opinion. It had been bothering me for ages. So I finally did something about it. I have yet to find out when writing this if the new version will be liked by the others, so as usual, I keep my fingers crossed. Now it's back to sound effects for me, as a few yet remain for me to do. After that I have to convert the whole soundtrack to the right format, as I've been saving them in uncompressed WAV for maximum quality. However, we're going for a more file-size-friendly format for the Early Access build of the game. The uncompressed soundtrack is over a gigabyte currently. So that won't do.
On the side, I've entered a composing competition as it's always nice to put your craft to the test. To anyone in the pursuit of a creative craft I'd recommend entering competitions, even if you feel you stand no chance of winning. It's a great way to get better and to find out where you're at. Besides, being your own toughest critic can easily result in you winning and not having seen it coming at all. As always, fingers crossed! |
Another year has graced our calendars (or perhaps stumbled is a better word for it) and we find ourselves 17 years behind schedule for our Discovery One mission to Jupiter. Ah well, maybe next year.
This week I've been busy preparing fancy words and fancy images for our recently released backer update. For anyone that missed it, I recommend giving it a look as we've revealed the second character that you can choose from when starting the game! In it we also show off two brand new pieces of music, both of which are fast becoming my favorite tracks in the game.
My other area of focus this week has been preparing behind the scenes stuff for Kynseed to integrate with some of the sales platforms that it'll be releasing on. In fact, we may be using one of these platforms to send out internal builds to each other. This'll be much handier than our current method which is, rather unexcitingly, just sending a ZIP file to each other.
In the coming months my attention is going to shift almost exclusively to spreading the good word about Kynseed all over the internet. In addition to that, it's time for me to start thinking about some rather important marketing materials, such as the official launch trailer! It's still a bit of a ways away until a fully finished trailer will be needed, but for now I'll be capturing test footage in the engine to see what interesting shots I can find. Doing test capturing like that will also be helpful as I'll be able to tell Neal if there's any engine tools that I need to help make my life easier when recording shots (such as setting manual pathfinding for NPC's, controlling the weather, and other sundry things).
This week we're keeping our updates short and to the point (like a dagger!), as we wanted to ensure we hit the ground running for the first week of the year. Which is to say, we've been incredibly busy! Busy is good though. We like busy. It means we're making meaningful progress on things. Check back next week - same time, same place. |
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