#thepedestrian

[literategamer]

Platformer Short: the Pedestrian

Jonathan discusses The Pedestrian, a fun little platformer puzzle game, light and bite-size, reminiscent of Framed, and available now on Steam. Listen on ZenCast.fm or Patreon.com/LiterateGamer.

[haeaster16]

Okay so when I was a senior, my English teacher had us read “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. When we were all done he was stood up and said “When I first started having my students read this story, I could tell when they reached the Part because it was all over their faces. It’s a testament to how much you are all exposed to the horrible things that people do because I had no clue when any of you got there. You showed no emotion.” And man, that hit different.

[christophermoonlightproductions]

#SocialDistancing is fine for now but it must not become the norm. #RayBradbury's story #ThePedestrian is already coming true in England and the world of #Fahrenheit451 is one where everyone stays shut in at home watching TV because their afraid of the world. To quote the man, "'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me.' stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said,'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no garantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there was, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in atree all day every day, sleeping it's life away. To hell with that,' he said,'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'" https://www.instagram.com/p/B-X_ZDvlaKI/?igshid=8ysxz4l53qwt

[tomorrowedblog]

First look at The Pedestrian

A new trailer has been released for The Pedestrian. No release date was specified.

I can see the signs in my sleep now, always guiding me closer. Will this really work? Have we almost achieved the impossible?

[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!

Twitter- Facebook- Website- Steam Page

[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.