TBC Log 11/4/2024

    So here we are. Yet another dev log. Time to go into detail for the month of October.

Oh? You’re asking how I am? Oh? Well I am doing good. October was full of frightens and freaks, as it usually is, and I got to go to some nice parties and such.

But let’s talk the real meat of your reading: how’s TBC?

    So much has happened. First off, i have decided to go hardcore into the Bloyce Cheryl Votes thing from last dev log, and we are doing so much better than before. I’ve modeled this device I call “The Crucible” which allows the player to select different creatures from it. The player can no longer select creatures by clicking on them, except through whispers, maybe? Have to playtest that one out a bit ahaha. Along with “The Crucible”, there is another item called “the crystal ball”, which allows the player to rub the crystal ball with either their right or left hand to open either the research or puzzle menu. Then I have the menus fade onto screen as if they are magic being shown to the player. Oh how I love the teal magic. I love neon colors, I used them a ton in my other game, Genome: Gods. In that game I used neon yellow, pink, and teal to represent different levels of diagetic-ness in the user interface and such. But in TBC, the neon teal is meant to represent magic powers that the player character can interact with. Oh, did I mention the player now has two sets of hands? One that interacts with the crucible, and one that interacts with the orb. I want to confuse the player as much as possible as to what they may be, other than the explicit “creepy being in the woods” energy that we’re stealing from Bloyce.

    I’m very happy with these hands, at least in their temporary state. I want to somehow emphasize tot he player more that they have four hands and that they’re not two separate people, which I feel like sort of is how it looks now. Well, we’ll figure it out! The Way we figure out everything!

    I’ve started working with another artist, who goes by Roy. Roy’s going to be doing some tree and landscape art for me, which is really exciting. It does mean that I’m going to have to pump out a good bit of direction work on my end. The landscape is going to be complicated, as it will have many different places where creatures live, eat at, build, solve puzzles, etc. So I need to give a big ol’ list of these things to Roy to be figured out spatially to make a somewhat coherent play space for the player to explore and watch creatures through. Roy also recommended adding some bushes to the bottom of the screen so that the player feels more like they’re in the woods with the animals, which i think is a good idea.

    Forgot to mention, I added a thing where the player can see the selected creature behind all plant life that’s there. Only the selected creature can be seen, though. I want to amplify the visibility process of selecting a creature, an example of this is adding the crucible to the game as a way that feels heavy and important for selecting creatures. I like also the juxtaposition between the technologic aspect of the crucible and the spiritual aspect of the crystal ball. i think its a good balance.

    Oh and another thing, I’ve started working on the campaign/tutorial! So now that all the features are in, I have to Frankenstein them together to work with a linear sequence. Woohoo! It’s taking a lot of heavy lifting mentally but definitely worth it in the long run (because the other circumstance would be never having a campaign???). I’m trying real hard to keep the player from being confused about what to do but also making sure that they are learning and its not me heavy-handedly being like “click on that button”. I want them to explore the space and learn about what they can do, I guess, if that means anything. I’m not going to describe what proceeds and succeeds what in the campaign as i’m still figuring it out, but currently I’m trying to hook the campaign up to the AI behaviour tree while still being able to cancel out of the tree to do more explicit actions outside of the AI tasks. So far the campaign shows the player how to zoom in, pause and unpause, and make a creature do an action. So that’s where we are with that!

    The main like “loop” at this point is that the player wants a creature to do something, uses the crucible to select that creature, zoom in on that creature and get them to do actions, have that creature gain “suspicion” towards the player, have the player zoom out before the creature max’s out its suspicion, and then have the player select another creature, get it to do another action, etc, until all the puzzles are solved and all the research has been researched and all the events of the campaign have come and gone.

    In the sandbox version of the game, I’m just gonna have a bunch of items on the sides of the screen that the player can drag and drop into the world wherever they want and they should be functional. That's an entire other can of worms though, one that I will probably open this month somewhat in order to procrastinate working on the campaign. :P

    Finally, the update on Isaac: they’ve made some pretty good crocodile noises. Yeah so that means they’re working on the first sound pass! Which I am super excited for! Because sound really really helps a game become so much more than it could be without.

    Its been really cool seeing all the features come together. See you all in the next devlog!