Major pre-launch announcement - the beta will (has to be) online next Friday. I hope I look like a graceful swan gliding towards the deadline, but much frantic paddling of feet is going on below the surface. First up, the first cut of our trailer!
The amazing Brian (the other dev, the rest of Escape Velocity Studios) made this in a few days while learning Cinemachine and Vegas Movie Studio. Wow!
Things look a lot more complete. I replaced the placeholder signs with hexagonal textured assets, as in the door above.
I also replaced the fountains, which had stretched oddly, and added ambient occlusion to give a more shadowed 3D effect on the models.
I made made nicer posters around the room using screenshots from an environment I made last year.
More importantly, three game breaking bugs are fixed. In the very last week, the player was being ejected from the game, falling into the deep blue sky. I couldn’t even playtest. Fixed by (doh!) re-check the ‘is trigger’ box on a capsule collider.
The player now moves smoothly in the lift, so what you may say but, crucially no longer breaking a game ending. The parenting process rotated the player so, like Hotel California, they could enter the lift but could never leave. Below is a screenshot of the player’s eternal view, trapped in the lift.
I (and my friend) spent hours trying different fixes on - get this - the WRONG SCRIPT. No wonder nothing I did made any difference. This is why tutors are Gods. Working on the script that actually does the thing just ‘may’ be important.
There was also a fatal flaw where in one case, docks received crystals that they were not supposed to. And at that point so close to finish, my brain fried so I take no credit, my tutor simply fixed my code.
And to finish on a high note, you might glimpse some fanart of the Riven moiety dagger I made for #Myst25. I told Cyan I would take it out, and the Director of Development emailed me straight back to say I could keep it in my game. I swooned. So that’ll be just a lovely Easter egg for Riven fans.
Toodle pip, lovely fans! Expect another devlog on launch next week, and follow me on itch where it I’ll launch. (Once I work out how to set up a Discord I would add y’all. Learning goals).
