Skookum Arts

Making The Pedestrian game

[skookumarts]

The Pedestrian is now available!

After years of work, it’s finally here!

The Pedestrian is now available!

We’d like to thank everyone who supported and encouraged us during the development.

If you’d like to be a Pedestrian, please follow the links below to our store pages.

Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/466630/The_Pedestrian/

GOG - https://www.gog.com/game/the_pedestrian

[skookumarts]

Hey everyone!

For this month’s update we wanted to do something a little different. Because we’re nearing the end of development, it’s the perfect time to look back on where we came from. So we created a video of us reacting to some of our old builds! We have demos from 2015, 2016, 2017, and one from much earlier! So we’d love it if you gave the video a watch, as our Christmas present to you. Thank you all for your continued support as we push towards the January 29th release!

Merry Christmas!

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[skookumarts]

Special Secret Announcement

Hey guys!

Welcome to the October monthly update! During the time of spooky season and turning leaves, The Pedestrian is nearing completion. We had an internal goal to release the game around the 20th of October. But a couple weeks back we decided we’d rather not rush the marketing portion of the release. Also, as we’re getting close to the holiday season, we wanted to avoid any of the unknowns that come with a release during sales and holidays. So we switched our 20th of October goal to be more of a “Game is complete” deadline. While pushing our actual release date out. So without further ado, The Pedestrian is scheduled to be released in mid January. We’ll have an official teaser trailer before the end of the month for the masses. We just wanted to give you all the inside scoop. Ok, now that the major announcement is out of the way we’ll move on to our normal monthly update!

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Video Devlog

Below is our awesome video version of our update. It contains the contents of our written update just in a more visual format.

Updating a Train

Our train received an update that made the train more useful and prettier. We reallocated some of our gameplay goals to be inside the trains and elevators. The hubs were getting a little cluttered with everything being piled up inside them. So with moving some stuff to the train, it’s helped clean up the hubs quite a bit. We’ve also added in an awesome stylized video while the train is going.

Level Audit Tasks

Downtown level swapped, assigned signs static, improved some internal sign spacing in puzzles and hubs, and tweaked the locations of various signs. All of these were part of a gameplay/level audit. This is where we went around and made notes on sign related changes, we also made changes based on tester feedback.

Puzzle mode Tweaks

Recently we’ve made some improvements to the way that puzzle mode works. Many of the concerns with puzzle mode in the past have been from things happening without being clear what exactly caused it. So now we have a much better system where you are given a preview of what will happen before anything needs to be committed. So if you want to break a connection, just drag the node off and before you release it will show that the puzzle will reset, and which items will move because of it. If you don’t want that outcome, just place the node back in its original location and nothing will change.

Camera Shake

We use this tool called a sequence object to animate many of the movable objects in our game world. This week we added in a function that makes the camera shake while animations are going off. Not only does this help notify the player when things are happening, but it’s also one of those easy wins that improve immersion.

Smashing Bugs

Our virtual controller had some issues when the frame rates would rise above the 150 fps mark. Moving signs around would cause them to fly recklessly across the scene. Apparently you could also walk through closed doors, which wasn’t intended. So those were fixed.

Additional Improvements

We’ve always had a door opening animation, but the ladder opening animation has just been squashing and stretching of the ladder visual. So we now have an actual animation for when you connect two ladders to each other. Another thing is our player is no longer actual mesh, he’s now textures on various quads. This helps make the player fit in better with the rest of the sign visuals. The blending on the edges of our player is now much less harsh because of this.

Kickstarter design

We’ve been working with various kickstarter backers on finalizing their rewards. A few of the big ones are in the works now, but we won’t show anything to refrain from spoilage. It’s something we’re super excited about, with it being the first “secret” thing besides our story.

Feature Videos

Jed has been doing a series, walking us through different features of The Pedestrian. The first video is about how we’ve implemented our end credits system and the second delved into the ins and outs of a virtual cursor, why we chose to use it and how it was implemented. If you’re interested in more detailed behind the scenes updates, then these videos are for you.

So what’s next?

Our plans for now are to wrap up any of the small projects we have going on and continue to put our efforts towards testing. Since we have a little extra time, we’re going to focus on gameplay and user experience. Taking any chance we have to get those easy wins. While we’re doing that, we’ll also put more focus on the actual release process. Getting all our marketing material in order, creating trailers, and pushing forward with the Mac and Linux builds.

Thanks so much, as always, for being an awesome community! We’ll continue to create updates to keep you all in the loop. Bye for now!

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[skookumarts]

Settings, Signs, and Store Page Update

Oh hi there,

I didn’t see you behind all this fantastic progress we’re making. It’s currently a major push period in the Skookum Arts studio, the desk handcuffs have been brought out and the energy liquid of choice is on tap. We’re at the super exciting point of development where things that are finalized, are actually final. And fun things we didn’t realize would be an issue, are actually an issue. So come join us on our guided tour through development during September.

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Devlog -

As always, we’d love it if you would check out the video version of our update. It’s similar to our written update, except in video format. So you basically get to have the update read to you. Click below to watch.

Optimization -

We’ve put The Pedestrian to the test at great risk to our own hardware. Kidding... well kinda. Jed has replaced many of the components from his computer with older pieces in order to test out performance. It’s all been extremely encouraging on what level of computer can handle the game. He’s also picked up a monitor to clean up issues with different aspect ratios and resolutions.

Menu Settings -

Functionality of all our menu items has also been a focus this month. Things like resolution, window mode, graphic settings. All these items seem to be simple but with a couple of our game restrictions it’s caused them to be a bit more time consuming than we originally anticipated. We’ve also updated the menu icons because they just weren’t meshing well with the rest of the visuals.

Visuals Lockdown + Ending -

We’ve done visual tweaks to many of the game’s lacking shots and worked on the top secret section. So along with adding assets into the scenes and updating shots, also comes re-lightmapping the scenes. We have to continue to make sure new stuff merges with the old stuff. One way we make sure is through testing.

Testing Wave -

Speaking of which, we’ve hosted another wave of testing. Thanks so much to those of you who participated in that. It helps so much to finding all those odd bugs and situations that we would never encounter ourselves.

Music Markup -

New tune! Give it a listen, maybe?

Second Playable Character -

The female bathroom symbol has made her return! She was kinda in the game, then not, and now back. She had never been a selectable character, only pickable through the backend. But now she’s selectable, playable, and savable. Rejoice!

Store Page Update -

We’ve given our store page a huge facelift. The screenshot and videos where all from back when our Kickstarter was live. So everything has now been updated to be brand spankin’ new. Check it out here.

While you’re there you might find a thing called a wishlist button. We’d be syked if you were to press it, but I digress.

Creating a Sign Video -

We created a short video about the process behind making a sign in the game. Going from concept to realizing the vision in-game. It’s a quick watch, so check it out here.

Minor updates to improve play experience -

Obviously there’s been a bunch of new random things and tweaks that might not be worth mentioning. Things like the way animations are shown through portals, signs dynamically updating to improve performance, and a new puzzle! Huh, I guess they were worth mentioning.

What’s Next?

Next we have a few player animation edits, more music implementation, ending credits, and a few sign content updates. That plus a few dozen other smaller things, but besides that we’re getting super close. Things are happening, stay tuned so you don’t miss it.

We’d be super pumped if you could follow our social medias and wishlist the Pedestrian on steam so that you don’t miss any news. Until next time, ciao.

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[skookumarts]

The Pedestrian: August Update!!

Hello All!   

So it’s late August now, and that means it's The Pedestrian update time! We didn’t have an official update last month, mostly because there wasn’t much to share at that point in development. But this month we’re switching back to the normal update structure. Some fun stuff has been happening that we’re excited to share.

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Monthly Update Video!

First and foremost, if you’d like to see this update in video form than please click the link and enjoy. Otherwise, continue reading below.

So, what have we been doing?

Music

We had a big leap in Pedestrian music implementation. Just a couple weeks ago our sound guy, Logan, came down to Skookum Headquarters for about a week. During that time we delved into the ins and outs of implementing the music with all of our game systems. One of the big hurdles that was solved is how the music interacts with the save system. We needed to make sure that if you load into any part of the game, then the appropriate music piece starts. It’s so crazy to think that our game will have sound in it, since we’ve been playing silent for years. We have a nice little preview of a song that will be in The Pedestrian. Click the devlog video above to listen to the sweet tune!

Story

Our story points are mostly good to go. The majority of the story used to be told at the end of the game. But now we’ve integrated a key story element into the gameplay to help guide the player towards our story’s finale. The story remains very minimal, so it is non intrusive on your experience. But we’re excited to see how players will interpret the story if they choose to pay attention. And really all that’s left for story is some animations and visual/audio effects to support some of the bigger story sections.

Area transitions

We also worked on the loading between area sequences. Before when you were switching between areas there would be a distinct change in the way some of the objects looked. Lighting settings were different from scene to scene, which caused an odd lighting switch when scenes loaded and unloaded. Now everything is consistent and you visually can’t tell that anything has changed. This really is crucial for one of our design goals of seamless gameplay. We’ve also added more visual effects on top of the loading to give some visual feedback on what’s happening during the transition.

Working on more testing feedback

One of the main puzzle mechanics wasn’t as clear as we’d liked. This made a later section of the game much more difficult because of this poor communication. So we added in some animations and visuals that should help players learn what they were missing.The rooftop mechanic has gotten an upgrade! We worked to get the rooftops mechanic up to snuff. Meaning we tweaked it to use rules and design choices that are more consistent with the rest of the game. This should help players use the rules that they have learned up until now, but in a different and more interesting way. 

What are the next major steps?

Implement or fulfill Kickstarter rewards

Continue to add in sweet sweet musical goodness

Create fun marketing stuff (like updating the steam store page and an official trailer)

Optimize the game

Conduct a bit more testing

The minor tweaking and testing of the rooftops puzzle mechanic change is our highest gameplay priority. And the rest of the listed items should wrap up the game nicely. So thank you all so much for reading and/or watching our August update. Keep an eye out for future updates on our socials and wishlist The Pedestrian on Steam to be sure to be notified of release.

Be safe out there.

[skookumarts]

Surviving Game Development!

Hello people,

Thanks for coming back to the monthly update of The Pedestrian. This one is a little different. Like we've mentioned before, we're at the stage of development where the changes that are happening are relatively small. So we don't have a crazy amount to show. However, there is a surprise video that we're happy to share about the life of The Pedestrian and Skookum Arts! So be sure to check that out below.

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Video

Click the video above to watch our journey!

What Have We Been Up To?

That being said we're continuing to go through our beta waves, writing down all bug reports, taking notes on all the gameplay videos, and recording all the suggestions. These are being discussed and potentially added to the next sprint for the next beta wave.

So What's Next?

Continuing our implementation of music and audio. We have a big audio push coming up. So we’re really excited to see how well that goes and hopefully we'll be able to share some more awesome music soon.

Beta testing revealed that our Rooftops mechanic wasn’t as clear as we’d like it. So we believe we have a solution that solves a couple problems, while also making it more understandable.

Some slight gameplay and visual improvements! Things like making nodes easier to connect, having sign contents update before you can see them, and making sure each quality setting looks good.

Thank you all so much! If you didn't check out the video, be sure to scroll back up and give it a watch to see where The Pedestrian came from. We'll catch you all next month!

Peace!

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[skookumarts]

Start of Summer - Mid Beta Update!

Hello All!

Welcome to our June monthly update!  It’s the first official day of summer, but we’re not breaking out our swimming trunks quite yet. We’re busy working on the ends and outs of The Pedestrian. The game’s development is currently in the middle of beta testing and refining. Many meaningful improvements are being made now based on player feedback, and some lingering systems are being implemented.

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Video

What we've been doing

Lightmaps! They’ve been a major item for the last couple weeks. We all sat down and worked on a single area until it’s lighting was blemish free, and had the correct lighting structure. There are some minor color adjustments and optimizations that still can be done, but otherwise things are good to go.

Music! Wait this game is going to have music and audio?! You’re darn right! We’ve implemented the first third of the games music and it is sounding fresh. We can’t wait to get the rest of it in.

Baked Specular! Our more recent bakes had lost specularity, and something just didn’t look quite right. So during the overhaul of lightmaps that setting was turned back on. In real life everything is reflecting at least some light, and the way it reflects it gives your eyes some information about the object. Whether it has a glossy finish or a rough look can hint at what the object is made of. So with baked specularity turned on, more objects have baked in lighting information. They reflect lighting and those lights reveal smudges and imperfections on their surface. This helps our objects become more integrated into the environment.

Beta fixes! Some puzzle and mechanic changes to make things more player friendly. Many of these came from the last wave of beta testers. Such as sometimes carried objects would clip with stuff and get pulled from you. We made slight tweaks to puzzles for navigation purposes. Our newest mechanic, depth portals, had some really nice usability upgrades, with more communication to the player about what’s going on. Hiding the mouse when it’s not needed. Updating our rooftop hub to be more clear.

Prepped for the next beta wave that went out last week. We updated our surveys, our bug reporting system, moved the save file, and rebaked occlusion culling for the whole game.

What’s next

Continued implementation of music and audio! With the first third 'musified', I think we’re understanding the process a bit more. We’re so excited to hear more of the game.

More story points! The progression and story are in the works. Giving the player reachable milestones to keep them motivated and interested.

Rooftop mechanic! Beta testing revealed that our Rooftops mechanic wasn’t as clear as we’d like it. So we believe we have a solution that solves a couple problems, while also making it more understandable.

Some slight gameplay and visual improvements! Things like making nodes easier to connect, having sign contents update before you can see them, finalizing the positions of all our in-game Kickstarter rewards, and making sure each quality setting looks good.

Shout Out

Just wanted to give a quick shout out to the game Luckless Seven. It’s a narrative-driven card game, inspired by Knights of the Old Republic’s Pazaak, with branching dialogue all wrapped up in a 3d world. You’ll have to try their demo out to really understand, it’s been recently updated and you can find on Steam.

Click to check out Luckless Seven on Steam!

Thanks!

Thanks so much to all the current beta testers for being extremely helpful in improving The Pedestrian. We still have more waves coming so if you’re in the beta tier and haven’t been contacted yet, then you’re likely in a later wave. Hope you’re having a good June and here’s to an awesome summer!

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[skookumarts]

May Flowers

The Pedestrian May Update

Thanks for joining us for this month’s update of The Pedestrian development. May has been flying by at an astounding rate and game development has been keeping pace. We mentioned last month about starting official beta testing and that continues to be a focus. Getting the game into player’s hands and making decisions and adjustments based on their feedback. We’re still continuing with more phases of beta testing as it’s just unbelievably beneficial. To read more about what’s happening with development please enjoy the rest of the update.

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Video -

Normally this video is an alternative to reading the text version of the update. But this month we thought we’d do something a little different. It’s a bit more casual and conversational. Give it a watch.

Continued Lightmap Journey -

Lightmaps are like the frosting on our Pedestrian cake, mmm cake. In order to maintain your suspension of disbelief and immersion, the backgrounds have to be convincing. Having a nice glaze of interesting lighting situations is crucial to creating a consistent and believable environment. So this month we were able to light a few more areas to roughly how we want them. Most of the grunt work is getting it set up and getting a clean bake. Once there, the values can be fiddled with and there you have it, a finished cake.

Current lighting for the Rooftops and Subway areas.

Fun shadows in the Inner City and Campus areas

Beta Mechanic Finds -

Having playtesting sessions is one of the most exciting experiences for us. It allows us to bring the game out of our isolated little studio and give it some sun. When people understand and enjoy the game, it’s so encouraging. But, It’s also awesome to see when they find bugs, struggle, or have suggestions because it helps improve the game as a whole and we can see different playstyles. So because of the beta phase there have been some fixes and design tweaks to help make things cleaner and more intuitive.

Beta Visual Finds -

Playtesters have those fresh eyes that can pick out visual oddities. So it’s been nice to have a few art issues highlighted so that we can fix them. Our Pedestrian seasoned eyes are sometimes better than we’d like at overlooking things like unfinished textures or floating props.

Some objects that need fixed. Some cups with a seam and just color as a texture and a toaster with an outdated texture.

Options Menus work -

Our menus have had some more work on them, updating the art style, getting it working with keyboard and controller inputs. Still working out what to put in it and the best way to display them, but they’re improving.

Current state of our in-game options menu. Going for the classic look on these old tube TVs.

Kickstarter campaign game assets -

We’re continuing to add in all the in-game Kickstarter rewards, should be pretty close to being done with those. It’s fun to play around the game and see all these brands and decals filling up the world. The world has so much more life now, instead of just having our signature Butts™ brand we have a fun variety of different graphics.

Kickstarter brands and decals in the Downtown area. Really helps to add color and interest.

Kickstarter brands and decals as graffiti in the Inner City area.

Rewired -

We recently implemented a plugin called Rewired. This plugin takes inputs from a ton of different controllers and mouse/keyboard, standardizes the buttons and maps them to a set of actions we define. We can then use those actions in our code. It’s a night and day difference using this instead of Unity’s built-in input system.

One of the interfaces of the Rewired plugin. Showing the devices on the left, then narrowing down to the action on the right.

Graph -

We've noticed recently, that the old graph doesn't do a very good job of portraying the current state of the game. That chart was started during a time when we were still filling out the areas with content. Now that we are past that stage, the percentages barely change because most of the work being done is on the back-end or is beta testing fixes. We are in the process of figuring out a better way to visually showcase progress. For now you can continue to check out our Task Manager export  on Google Drive.

Shout out - Unbound: Worlds Apart

One of our Kickstarter backers just recently launched a campaign of his own. You can obviously tell he is a fan of puzzle games when he supports games like ours and is now making his own! I have a feeling that if you like our game, you’ll like Unbound as well. From what it shows in the demo and the campaign page, it looks like it’s going to be a pretty awesome experience. Let’s show him some love and give him support, guys!

Thanks -

So next steps are to continue with beta testing, new wave coming soon, and making changes based on the feedback. Along with that we’re also moving along with our already created list of tasks. The big ones being story enhancement and music implementation. Thank you all for being supportive and patient while we finish up The Pedestrian.

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[skookumarts]

Optimization, Animation, and Navigation!

Welcome to Spring! We are here with another Pedestrian monthly update! Giving you a behind-the-scenes look into where we’re at in production. This month we worked on optimizations, area colors, story, and more.

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Update Video -

Hot new update video for you to get your eyes and ears on. It contains all the same info as the text version of the update. Watch or read, you won’t miss out on anything either way.

Save system -

Our save system is complete! Well, besides implementing auto-save. But everything else is all ready to go! What is saved is actually extremely small. It’s just an area code, the puzzle’s name, and a number that represents the current state of the area. So for example, if I quit the game in the puzzle ‘Thrice,’ after completing two other puzzles in that area your save file will look like this:

Pretty neat huh. Let me run you through it. The first 4 lines are just labels for the file itself. The A line is the label for the ‘A’rea code, which for the downtown is 199 (shhh don’t tell anyone.) L is for ‘L’evel name, in this case is thrice. And D is the area ‘D’ata, which I won’t go into how it’s calculated to be 861, but let’s just say it states that you’ve completed everything up to the downtown hub and beat 2 of the levels there.

Optimizations -

Continuing our journey of optimizing the game. Jed’s been going through the project with a mop and cleaning up excessive garbage production, texture resolution, and draw calls. We’ve been pretty satisfied with the improvements so far, but we still have more we can do to improve it further.

Music -

More progress has gone into The Pedestrian music and I gotta say, it’s sounding pretty dope. Here’s an exclusive sneak peak at a track that’ll be playing in the Subway.

Check it out on Soundcloud

Master Scene Area Navigation -

It started to become a hassle to navigate our dozens of scenes. So we added in a little tool to our editor so that different areas could be loaded quickly. While this might not seem overly beneficial, when you’re switching between areas 40+ times a day, grabbing the half dozen scenes that make up an area every time is a little tedious. But no more we say, now with just one click we can open and close all the scenes we need!

Last of our In-person Playthroughs -

We had our last in-person playthrough earlier this month and it went extremely smoothly with minimal hiccups. We still had 30 or so tasks added to our list, which is fine because they are all more polish type tasks and not the larger scale issues of past playthroughs. So it’s exciting to see our refinements making the playthroughs smoother.

Female Animations -

Up until now our main character has been the male bathroom symbol, but we’ve always had in mind to include the female bathroom symbol. Well she finally made it in! I’d like to introduce you to our female protagonist!

Color and Lighting Pass -

We’ve begun the color and lighting pass that was briefly mentioned in the last update. The pass starts similar to the other passes we’ve done, screenshots are taken of various areas in the game and then edited in Photoshop to how we want it to look. We then edit our light values, post processing effects, and baking settings to match the Photoshop edits. We see great value using color not only to make things pretty, but also as a storytelling technique. Check out Daniel’s awesome video where he explains how color is used in film and games.

Options Menu Placement -

In The Pedestrian we have this design rule where everything is a part of the world. From tutorials to story to options menus, everything is placed into the environments. This month we added and moved around TVs that hold the options menus. These are scattered around so that no matter where the player is in the game, there will be a TV options menu nearby.

Many Sign Navigation Updates -

We ran through the game and made improvements to all the in-sign platforming elements. Meaning we made tweaks like giving a jump more head space, adding in some challenge to boring signs, and removing annoying toe stubbing parts. Everything with the purpose of making the gameplay flow smoother between and inside of puzzles.

Story -

We’ve added in numerous elements into our environments that hint towards our story. Like our other design decision, the story is meant to be non-intrusive. You’ll be exposed to elements of it throughout your playthrough but it’s up to you to put them all together. And if you’re not into connecting the dots, then that’s OK too! We won’t make you skim walls of text or skip cutscenes, it’ll all just happen in the background and you might not even notice it.

Graph -

Here’s our monthly progress graph! It shows the state of each of our areas as well as the progress since our last update. Most of the work this month was on non area specific tasks, which does not translate well into the Area Progress graph. So while single areas didn’t receive as much of boost, the game as a whole has improved greatly.

Task Manager Export -

You can find the complete list of finished tasks over at our Google Drive spreadsheet.

Here we are at the end! We are really happy with this month’s progress. It has been so nice to hit a couple milestones like female animations, finishing the save system, and completing the last in-person playthrough session. So what’s next? Well, we have to finish the color and lighting pass, continue adding story elements, and finalize the beginning and ending sequences. We’ll keep pushing towards completion and you all keep being you. Thanks so much!

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[skookumarts]

February Update: Testing and more Testing

Hey everyone, welcome to the newest installment of The Pedestrian Monthly Update! Wooo! We’re making progress on the last portions of the game, while also continuing with our playthrough sessions. These have been invaluable for us to see any faults in our game that we’ve become blind to, as well as being a great source of encouragement.

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Video

As per usual, we have an update video for you to get your eyes on! It contains all the info from this text update, but in a conveniently less texty format. Check it out below.

Graph

Here’s our monthly progress graph containing all our area progress. The red parts are improvements since our last update.

Depth Portal

One issue we’ve come across while doing playthroughs was a dead spot at about the midpoint of the game. This occurred because players were used to learning new mechanics in the early portion of the game, then it slowed down at the midpoint and picked back up later in the game. So to remedy this midway sag, we added in a new puzzle mechanic, and labeled it Depth Portals.

More New Puzzles!

To support this new mechanic we created 6 new puzzles and a couple tutorials, and scattered them around the midpoint of the game. This should keep everything fresh and interesting throughout.

Last Three Area’s Paintovers

The Apartment, Finale, and Inner City received their paintovers this month. That wraps up the visual content pass for the game! Next passes will be faster as one will be on lighting and color finalization while the other will be for story elements.

Numerous Playthrough Tweaks

After each of our playthroughs we have multiple sheets of notes with comments, bugs, and suggestions. These end up making their way into our task manager for us to claim and complete. So dozens and dozens of small improvements to puzzles, navigation, visuals.

Turntable

Here’s a little selection of assets Daniel has created during his paintover pass. A guitar, lawn chair, some clothes, and a notebook.

Task manager

You can find the complete list of finished tasks over at our Google Drive spreadsheet.

Thanks

Our next main steps are finishing the ending’s functionality, implementing audio, and adding in our story elements.Thanks so much for all the continued support!

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[skookumarts]

A Fresh Update for 2019

Hey y’all, welcome to the first update of 2019! This update is a combination of highlights from December and January since we didn’t have our regular update last month. We’ve recently started a schedule of biweekly playthroughs. These support our current focus of improving gameplay and player experience. In addition we continued our regular sprints, which consisted primarily of the downtown, campus, inner city, and rooftops areas. As always, feel free to watch the update video or continue reading below. Thank you all!

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Video

Newest video update! Click above to watch.

Graph

The red bits is progress made since our last update.

Electrical updates

Our electrical puzzle mechanic has been one of our least tested systems. It shows up later in the game so our demo hasn’t showcased it. By having these full game playthroughs, it’s been invaluable for improving and getting opinions on the more advanced mechanics. We recently did an overhaul on the electric and rooftop systems to be much more user-friendly than it was previously.

Our electrical system in action

New puzzles!

There have been four brand new puzzles added since the last update. We’ve added one in both the Downtown and Campus, and two in the Rooftops area. The additional Rooftops puzzles were implemented to help explain the mechanic a bit more thoroughly before players get to the more difficult puzzles. The Downtown and Campus ones were made to fill out areas and showcase simpler mechanics that were a little under used.

Our newest puzzles, ‘Buzz and a Pop’ and ‘Jumpy.’ All of our puzzles have quirky names.

These fine gentlemen are named ‘Bait’ and ‘Sherbet,’

New paintovers

We’ve been going through our final paintover passes. These are the last visual area passes we’ll do before our final lighting pass. It’s extremely exciting to see the visuals get just about wrapped up. While the lighting might not be exactly right, here’s some snaps of what we’ve been working on.

Screenshots of various areas that have had a visual upgrade.

Improved progression and navigation system

Some of the people that have played the later portions of the game found confusion in our open hub system. We’ve helped remedy this by adding in some directional sticky notes into the game world. These point to various hub goals and are dynamically updated to reflect the current state of the hub. This helps to keep player goals within view so they’re not as easily forgotten.

Our sticky notes and notepad paper is used to help guide the player.

Optimizations

We created a tool that teleports us to every level spawn where we can record performance information with the Unity profiler. This helps reveal any of the game’s problematic locations. Through reducing texture sizes, controlling the number and size of lights, and adding in occlusion culling we’ve seen a huge increase in performance across the game.

Unity’s profiler display when used on our Warehouse area.

Save system

Continued progress on finalizing the save system to work with all of our systems. It now does everything you’d expect it to, keeps your progress! Yay!

Music and audio

We’ve begun to refocus on music and audio. Nothing is set in stone yet, but there has been much progress on refining our sound. Expect to hear more in the future.

Many many gameplay improvements

Our rigorous testing schedule has thankfully revealed many ways we can improve the player experience. So much of our work these past months have been: refining puzzles, player controller, and smoothing the difficulty curve.

Task manager

You can find the complete list of finished tasks over at our Google Drive spreadsheet.

Thank you!

Our next steps consist of working on the Inner City, Finale, and Apartment areas. Still continuing with our testing and implementing story and music. We’re getting closer than ever and we’re excitedly pursuing the finish line. I know we say it every time, but we are so grateful to have you all supporting us and The Pedestrian. Thank you.

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[skookumarts]

Studio Tour and Q&A

Merry Christmas everyone!

For this month, instead of doing our normal update structure, we decided to make a studio tour and Q&A video. We still have our progress graph and task manager export for you to peruse.

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Video

Area Progress

Here’s a graph showing the progress of our areas. The red bits are changes since last month.

Task Export

Feel free to rummage our task list to see all the little bits and bobs we’ve completed! Click here!  

We hope you enjoyed watching our little studio tour and listening to us ramble through the Q&A. If you have any questions we didn’t answer, please leave a comment below. Thanks so much for your continued support! Have a very Merry Christmas!

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[skookumarts]

Spoiler Free

Welcome to the November Update of The Pedestrian. We hope all of you are having a wonderful Autumn season! This past month we spent the majority of our time on the last two areas of the game, the Rooftops and Finale. The Rooftops had a much needed flow update and the Finale visuals/mechanics were brought to a playtesting level. Unfortunately we can’t show much of the Finale to avoid spoilers, so you won’t see a lot of it in this update.

Well, enough of that, let’s get straight into the meat and potatoes!

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Video

Here is the video version of our written update. It’s a quick 4 minute video that goes over this update.

Graph

The graphical representation of our progress and how it contributes to the completion of the areas. The red is progress since last month.

Blueprint Signs

New look for our signs! We’re continuing with customizing our sign meshes. Earlier we showed bending signs and altering the shader to add scratches and grunge. Now we’ve progressed farther with unique textures to change the look of the entire sign.

Link to video: Custom Mesh Video

Finale

Last month we worked primarily on the Inner City area, this month we shifted focus onto the next areas, the Rooftops and Finale. We worked towards getting them functionally complete so that we can continue testing. The Finale received some interesting visual upgrades, fixing up the main area mechanic, and a touch of player tutorial.

Rooftops

We’ve reworked two puzzles in the Rooftops and added a new one. The overall flow of the area was altered to give players more options on what puzzles you want to play. If you get stuck on a particular puzzle you’ll have alternatives to choose from. The idea of giving options to you is a theme we have throughout the game, but up until now the Rooftops was linear.

Assets

A little gif of some custom assets made this month.

Our Tasks

Here is the export directly from our task manager. Feel free to browse around. You might find something interesting… or not. Who knows. Task List

We’ve had fun working on the areas that were lacking. As you saw in our graph, the Finale was the area that needed the most work. Mainly, because it’s the newest and hasn’t had as much testing/iteration. The levels and gameplay of the Rooftops have improved significantly, next steps for that area are testing and visual cleanup. If you read all the way to the end, thank you! We appreciate all the amazing support you have given us in this ongoing journey. You’re the best, Pedestrians!

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[skookumarts]

The Pedestrian Devlog : October Update

Welcome back to this month’s update for The Pedestrian! We started off this month by taking a much needed family vacation, after which we all came down with the flu :) But neither of those things kept us from making progress! Our main focus was on finalizing gameplay for the game’s third act. We wanted to make sure that the more advanced puzzle mechanics were explained well and utilized effectively. So most of our efforts were in the Inner City and Rooftops areas. We added new puzzles and greatly improved the usability of existing ones and their flow between each other. We also gave a little visual love to one of the last transition areas in the game.

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Video Update

Click above to watch the video version of this month’s update.Youtube channel

If you all don’t know. A couple months ago we started posting weekly videos on Youtube. They range dramatically in topic, from technical to the artsy/design side. If you wanna see more of the behind the scenes in video form, head on over there!

Skookum Arts Youtube!

Area Progress

Here’s the numerical representation of our progress. The red bits are work done to the individual areas since our last update.

Hallway

This particular hallway is from a later portion of the game. Up until now, it was blocked out with whatever props we had on hand at the time. Daniel did a fantastic job of bringing the visuals up to the level of the rest of the game by creating new models, textures and lighting. Finalizing this transition area.

Innercity

We did a lot of work with the Inner City puzzles. The mechanic that is introduced in the Inner City wasn’t clearly explained, and when trying to solve puzzles, the goal was oftentimes difficult to find. So we made modifications to two of the puzzles in the area and added another to help more comprehensively use and explain the mechanic. We also rejigged the puzzles to fit into the area better, by bringing them closer together. Now that they’re in closer vicinity we need to do less visual work and the player will have less distance to travel.

New Puzzles

This month we added two new puzzles, one in the Inner City and one in the Rooftops with plans for three or four more puzzles throughout the game. Experimenting with new puzzles is always fun in the studio, because we get to experience each other’s puzzles for the first time. And actually solve a puzzle, instead of going through the motions of our memory.

Created Assets

Created and animated some puzzle supporting props. Electrical load is an asset we’ve created to standardize electrical interactions. Hydraulic piston movement prop used as a barrier in some puzzles. Inner City gate interaction with a gate locking mechanism.

Task Spreadsheet

Here’s the old task spreadsheet for those of you that want to see all the little unedited progress points. Click here!

Overall we’re pretty happy with the progress made, the third act is getting ever closer to being testable. With new puzzles and improved existing puzzles the game as a whole is improving to a state that is more finished than ever before. Thank you all so much for your continued support, and if you haven’t already, please subscribe, follow, and like all of our socials.

[skookumarts]

Internal Testing

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Welcome to the September monthly update. During this month, we spruced up some visuals, and really improved the first half of the game. We had some friends test the game and designed changes based on those testing sessions. While the progress that happened doesn’t translate well into the Monthly Area Progress graph, what we plan to implement from the testing should greatly improve player experience. Enjoy!

Video Update

We started creating a quick video version of our update if reading isn’t really your thing ;)

Area progress

Here’s the numerical representation of our progress. The red bits are work done to the individual areas since our last update.

Gameplay Testing

Most of the work this month was done to the first half of the game. We prepared this section of the game to be tested, which meant cleaning up any visual oddities, baking lightmaps, fixing bugs, and making sure all the areas/levels were connected properly. We then had some friends test it and received some valuable feedback on usability and player communication. We mostly focused on the tutorial portion of the warehouse and how it could be improved for new players. After a few tweaks, the intro experience should be greatly improved.

New Section in the Rooftops

The rooftops is an area that adds in an additional puzzle mechanic. We realized we don’t have enough puzzles in this area to fully explore the mechanic. So in order to add in a few more puzzles we needed to create space on a previously underdeveloped rooftop section.

Sewer Level Up

The sewer was one of the the more bland sections of the Downtown. As you’ve probably guessed from our many screenshots of the Downtown, we like the look of it a lot. Yet it had a secret ugly underbelly, the sewer. But no more! We filled it with fog and light shafts, and adjusted the colors to greatly improve our little sewer.

University Trees

We created some new trees for the university and downtown areas, the old ones had serious issues with lightmapping. The new trees are also modular to be able to create the exact tree we need for a shot.

Created Assets

Here’s a variety of assets we’ve created. A catwalk, a bench, ivy, fruit, and other objects.

Downtown comparison

It’s always fun and encouraging to look back at old screenshots and video of the game. Here’s a little comparison we did of the Downtown area, and the before shot wasn’t even all that long ago.

Level Editor

A little snapshot of our lovely colorful (work in progress) puzzle editor! We’ve been making changes to create a more user friendly experience when everyone gets their hands on it. The editor was a stretch goal from our Kickstarter.

Task Spreadsheet

To see the spreadsheet of completed tasks from this month, click here.

This month consisted of a little bit of everything! While the main focus this month was testing, we still made progress in other areas. We hope you’re enjoying the videos we’ve been putting out, if you haven’t seen them yet, please hop over to our YouTube channel and give a look. Thanks for the continued support!

[skookumarts]

Trying out video devlogs

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We’re well into August already and it seems like the summer is flying by! This month had a wide variety of activities, ranging from new tools to shiny assets. So without further ado, enjoy the August update.

From this update forward we’re going to make a companion version of the update in video form. If you’d rather watch a nicely edited video instead of this boring text version, Watch the video below. And consider subscribing :).

Development Progress

Here is our graph showing the progress on the project. The red is this month’s completed progress.

Task Manager

We’ve changed up our task management multiple times over the course of development, to try and find something that works well with us. Our newest iteration is a task manager built into Unity. The tool contains a list of tasks that we can organize, assign, filter and place deadlines on. We’re also able to mark assets in the scenes with a task, as a visual reminder.

Sign Shaders

Continued work has gone into making signs fit the environment by using shaders. We can add metallic maps and additional albedo maps on a per-sign basis so that each sign can uniquely fit it’s surroundings. The new maps mixed with the custom meshes will create a more realistic look to our signs.

Elevator & Train

The elevator and train areas have gotten a little facelift this month. We’re on a continued mission to add in more visual feedback, such as camera shake, flashing indicators, and animated dials. All these elements combine to create a more understandable transition.

Rooftops

More life and differentiation in the rooftops. All of our backgrounds were looking samey, so we spruced it up a bit. We added in more strategic lighting, steam, and animated some of the background elements.

Downtown

The downtown is another area that is roughly done visually with just some places that looked a little bare and unrealistic. So we added in some more decals on things to break up monotony, specifically on the road.

Assets

A cluster of assets that we created this month.

Here is a link to a spreadsheet that is a direct export from our task manager. They are the completed tasks from our last month in all it’s nitty gritty glory.

That’s it for this month. So far our projected timeline is still on track and good progress is being made. Thanks for reading through our update. If you have any ideas or suggestion feel free to leave a comment.

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[skookumarts]

A month of progress

Hi all!

Welcome to the July update! We are going to try something new from this update forward. While we’ve been fairly transparent with the work we’re doing each month, it’s hard to tell how close we actually are to completing the game. So we slapped on the ol’ thinkin’ cap and have decided to create a graph that showcases what’s been done already, and what’s left to do! The graph is broken up into all the game’s areas and we’ve estimated each area’s percentage to completion. The percentages came from a average of visual, level, and function completion.  We’ll continue to update this graph from month to month, this way you’ll be able to see actual monthly progress, instead of just a list of what we did. So here’s our up-until-now progress graphic! Next month we’ll show how that month’s progress effects the graph.

Another exciting introduction to this month’s update is our BRAND SPANKIN’ NEW WEBSITE! Yeah, we like it, really promotes sign culture. Click on the image and us know what you think.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program, the ‘what we did this month’ list.

Act 1 Paintovers - These are screenshots of each sign placement area that we made edit notes on. Most of our game is puzzle locations, so we went and took screenshots of every spot and made notes on edits that needed done.

A ton of work in one of our secret area 2 visuals. It went from being just blocked out to nearing completion in just a few short weeks. We’ll give you a little sneak peek.

Updated and improved our save system. It had fallen into disarray as time has gone on.

Continued to replace our sprite signs with new and improved mesh ones. Now with more bendy signs!

Improved feedback on the puzzle mode mechanics. Signs now lift off the wall and stack on each other. No more losing signs merged together in Frankensign’s Monster!

Created a new set of pipe props. We had 3-4 versions of pipes that we created at different times during production and they were becoming a mess.

And that’s it! We continue to thank for your patience and support. Hopefully with this new progress graph you’ll be able to see progress easier, and we’ll be able to stay on track! We’ll be updating the graph and release date estimate monthly as we advance. Thanks all!

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