#studio respite

[hazzmat-shelter]

Ok! It's been a while! Godoctober days 5-8 were spent working on the guards' brains to make it so that they can come after the little rat. Took me a bit since I took a break Monday to watch Look Back(please watch Look Back). Read on if you want to know more!

If the guards hear a sound, they will begin their search at the location of the sound. It's fairly easy to lure guards away, they aren't the smartest. If they happen to see you, they'll chase you down and squeaky-toy you unless you're able to stay out of their vision long enough.

If you manage to slip away, they'll continue walking past you to check the next room/area for you. If they can't find you there, they'll search the last place they saw you. After that they'll give up and go back to their original positions for now, but I plan on adding alternatives for them if I've got time. They'll stay on high alert for some time after they get back, so you'll have to be careful if you see them again!

Once we start building the levels out, I'll make the different vision cones and mess with the detection values until everything feels nice and crisp, but the systems are in place!

Also don't get grabbed, it isn't comfortable.

[hazzmat-shelter]

Ok, so the month of October decided to go crazy and I haven't been able to work on the game consistently for some time now. BUT! I was able to figure out how I want the visuals and gameplay to co-exist. The walls now fade away as you get closer to the room so that you can spot guards or other disgusting creatures hiding behind them. Should make the stealth aspects feel much nicer.

Choosing to do a 2D game with fake 3D space/perspective was likely a grave mistake that will continue biting me in the ass until long after the game has been shipped, but I will persist! It wasn't even something I'd set out to do, it just kinda happened because that's what I'd seen in my head. Good luck @glitcheli

[hazzmat-shelter]

I got the NPC fading working! ...Mostly. The guards and other NPCs will now fade in and out with the room(s) that they're in, for the most part. I also got the basic layout for the basement of the castle put together!

Now I can work on fine-tuning the guards to make their sight and hearing numbers match up with what the lighting reality will be for the game, or at least close to it.

(I am probably going to branch off into a bunch of nonsense small mechanics and QoL features first because I can't help myself oh god)

[hazzmat-shelter]

So as it turns out I actually didn't like how the visuals looked previously at all, at least as far as how rooms were laid out. Initially I had desired areas that felt 3D and presented as fleshed out, which is not an actual fully thought out desire and is not actionable when making a game. I got stuck on it, but @glitcheli came to the rescue again with this idea.

The solution(s) in my previous posts had so many different little issues that made them not work. The last post felt like a breakthrough but I found that it was very annoying to have the walls fading in and out as you traversed the game. There were too many visible in a small area and it felt like they were all flashing and strobing, it became very distracting.

Part of the solution in this case was to give up on having lower walls be visible at any point, which I didn't like previously because it seemed weird to me that I could see rooms in the distance as the player but they were missing half their walls. Not to mention the gameplay advantage.

The main part of the solution that they suggested was to try making all of the other rooms invisible until you walk into them, which takes care of flashing as well as being able to see "incomplete" rooms in the distance. It also adds some nice claustrophobia to the game, which may be good for tense stealth sequences. Just have to make sure the sound system and sound accessibility sections are on point so that it feels fair when a guard is in your way.

[hazzmat-shelter]

Godoctober days 9 and 10 were spent making a quick and easy pause menu and then creating the inventory, items, and interactivity. My list of tasks for Little Goblin is slowly disappearing and soon I'll be able to start working on levels and content!

[hazzmat-shelter]

Work has been hell recently so Little Goblin production has slowed down but I have Begun Level Design™, so that's something