The Mill Hideout Is Done And Ready For 0.5.3

 

Willows, Willows, Willows

 

Working On Map Section 03

 

Daytime Exploration = Lore Exploration

 And lore can be explored by listening to your environment:

Expand - Consolidate - Optimize

 

I'm really miserable about the state of the game world right now. I imagined it would be different with a larger game world .... but it feels like a strange type of Subnautica, where the fish only come out at night. And I hate that.

Walking around the world at daytime is just .... boring .... and it feels pointless. There needs to be an element of danger during daytime as well. And I don't know how to implement that. It's like I navigated myself into a corner by making the shadows the prime enemy type of the game. They are bound by light level, time of day and location. And that means, that naturally they can't spawn during daytime and they also can't hinder the player's exploration. If the player is dumb enough to get seen by the spirits at daytime and doesn't realize that the siren is following, he'll get the bill at sunset. But that is definitely too late.

The lore requires an absence of animals, since the world is located in the Bardo Thodol. There are no beings of definitive form. There can be bodies of light and bodies with an absence of light, but these bodies can't be like the ones we encounter in our day to day life.

So I'm stuck. If I add shadows at daytime I break one of the fundamental rules of the game. If I add other creatures at daytime, I am subverting the initial premise of the lore.

So the question becomes: What are elements of danger during daytime, that are naturally arising from the basic premise of the game?

Building Map Section 02 - Hideouts & Resources

Horizontal Expansion

 

Vertical Expansion

 

Item / Resource Distribution

I recently optimized a ton of blueprints and items so they could be distributed across the world with minimal FPS loss. I also added shadow spawns to every single building across the world, because if players attempt to hide inside at night (hoping to skip shadow encounters or escape the siren) I want them to be in for a rude awakening. To make up for that I also added fireplaces to these non-hideout buildings, that can be used in emergency situations. However they are all under the open sky, so when it starts raining they will be extinguished. But if that happens, the siren's view will be clouded by the weather effect, so the player's main concern in these situations will be the shadows close to him.

Testing has shown that the item/resource distribution was always unbalanced. In order to alleviate this, I added text render components to each blueprint, so I could check the distribution from afar. Each resource and location now has a massive colour-coded sign on top, which makes it easy to immediately determine where a specific resource is missing.

This looks chaotic, but it's actually incredibly informative. Red font is related to firewood spawns, green is related to tinder, and yellow indicates a hut filled with additional resources, such as matches, a lighter, vinegar or keys.

I also did a complete overhaul of all light beings in the world. They will now spawn in small groups of 1 - 10 and are treated as a natural resource across the world.

The biggest issue, that remains is related to the difficulty of finding specific resources on a densely foliage populated forest ground. Depending on light and shadow distribution and time of day, these items are incredibly difficult to perceive. I added an ambient light halo to the main player character blueprint and each resource has emissive material, but even then it's difficult to detect specific items.

Nonetheless, the world looks pretty and it feels great to see a hut or dilapidated building from afar to explore it and discover valuable items and resources. By adding these special campfires I'm also giving players a choice between "just surviving" with minimal resources, or committing to a hideout and making a serious attempt at a chess piece or valuable item (clock, compass, cage, protection, health container a.s.o)

The main goal is to get three map sections ready for 0.5.3 and then record gameplay videos during testing. These gameplay videos can then be used as social media fodder and with extensive testing I'll also discover a bunch of other gameplay issues I may not have been aware of up until this point.

2:02 AM - 28 Hideouts Done

 

Who is dumb enough to spend 20+ hours (also known as one full weekend relaxation value) on adjusting code segments?

...

Bishop Boss Music

I got so sick of working on adding protection pillars to each hideout I started to simultaneously build up the Bishop boss fight. I always write the soundtrack first before I create a new location or scene.

This is the link to the soundtrack:

https://on.soundcloud.com/ZuHG2

The fight will be based around an intricate clock system, that pulls the moon towards it. The bishops will try to prevent the player from destroying the clock ....

Yea I know it's insane. But fuck it. That won't stop me.