Still plinking away at the battle system! Actually not going too bad, if I say so myself. The enemy gets a turn to act after the player and then the action goes back to the player! Not 100% happy with everything so far (some of the animations and UI effects are a bit weird), of course, but that’s okay, I’m still going at it.
Time spent on the project so far: 30 hours
Currently working on: Battle system
I feel like we’re going to see the battle screen for a good while, at least until the first introduction fight is over (and then I’ll have more systems to dive into before the second tutorial fight), but right now I’m working on having buttons dynamically generated, helpful tooltips displayed if you hover over them (or hold shift and hit their number) and the buttons doing something if you click them. Tomorrow will be all about the enemy attacking!
Time spent on the project so far: 29 hours
Currently working on: Battle system
Tweaked a few things in the dialogue system today and continued working on the battle system. I didn’t enjoy having all the text be shown at once, so I’m trying to get it to show character by character, but it’s a little issue if you have multiple text blocks and they all need to have different visibility. I also thought about doing some tweaks to the first area of the game you get into because some of my dialogue doesn’t make much sense, but it’s not a high priority at the moment! Let’s keep on pushing through this battle system core!
Time spent on the project so far: 27 hours
Currently working on: Battle system
What’s in a battle system? Loads, lots of stuff. A lot of UI, to begin with, then stats and structures to hold everything. In a RPG with random encounters, you’ll be seeing the battle system a whole lot, so I have to be sure it works and is fun to play around. Don’t mind the placeholder text in that screenshot ;D
Time spent on the project so far: 26 hours
Currently working on: Battle system
Still have a few cutscene glitches to fix, but I started working on the battle system proper. I’m not super happy with the look of my enemy model at the moment, but that’s what I have so far. Creating a battle system requires a lot of moving parts, so it might take a few more days before I have something functional.
Time spent on the project so far: 24 hours
Currently working on: Battle system
You know that battle system? Well. I have a way to ‘start’ a battle right now, but I spent most of today to work on fixing other things I found were interacting weird, like audio playing under text-box noise or events triggering when you start walking unto a tile (instead of when you’re done walking there). I also did lightning tests and stuff like that, because I wanted to see what kind of moods I could get. Now I have (almost) no excuse if I don’t really have the beginning of a battle ready to show tomorrow!
Time spent on the project so far: 23 hours
Currently working on: Battle system
Didn’t feel too well today so I didn’t start the battle system yet, instead working on a few tweaks in the intro cutscene and adding hooks for audio through what I have so far. I sometimes wait until I’m done with everything else before adding audio to my games, and it just feels like such a chore that I then simply just don’t do it, so I took a bit of time and added a few placeholder sound effects, it’ll help with the feel of the game!
Time spent on the project so far: 22 hours
Currently working on: Battle system
Couldn’t start the battle system today because I had to refactor a bit of my interaction system; It just wouldn’t work the way I had made it the first time. I still could create the mansion interior ‘base tiles’ and stuff like that, and everything works like it did before. I almost thought about remaking my new animation system as well, but I think it’s going to work. The battle system will start taking shape… tomorrow!
Time spent on the project so far: 21 hours
Currently working on: Battle system
I spent a few hours figuring out how animations would work and I’m not 100% sure I’m happy with the way things are, but it’s a start! You can now enter the mansion via the front door! I also tweaked the intro cutscene’s visuals to match the rest of the game’s atmosphere (that I have so far) better. I think it kinda works! The next steps are to be the actual entry into the mansion and the introduction of the battle system!
Time spent on the project so far: 19 hours
Currently working on: Mansion interior, battle system
Still working on map interactions a bit today. Replaced all my ScriptableAssets by plain old GameObjects and things seem to be working a bit better. Now I’m questioning myself on the nature of separate MapInteraction components. The bike blocking the road is a combination of Blocker, Visual and TextWithChoice, but is a door also a combination of these things? I decided to make doors their own thing, but it clearly could’ve been a bunch of separate interactions. Maybe I’ll tweak that in the future, it’s no big deal. NOW I’m working on entering the mansion, for real!
Time spent on the project so far: 16 hours
Currently working on: Map system, text systems
Some progress today, but not enough, I went with ScriptableObjects to hold my interaction data, but it seems like unity has some issues with them. I’ll move on to individual GameObjects which will do almost the same thing. I should be able to finish that tomorrow, then move on to entering the mansion! :D
Time spent on the project so far: 15 hours
Currently working on: Map system, text systems
Today I did a bit of work on the text system to make sure I’m not entering huge strings directly into code or in unity and also to make it so the game could be translated at some point if I wanted to. I worked a bit on the map system also, but there’s still work to be done for map interactions. Having very simple interactions is an easy matter, but when I get to more complex ideas it’s clear to me that I need more complex data structures and systems. That’s what I’ll be on in the near future!
Time spent on the project so far: 13 hours
Currently working on: Map system, text systems
Still working on the map and movement systems today! I made it so you can’t walk through walls and can interact with certain tiles. I still need to think a bit about all of this because interacting with a tile is kinda complex, there can be many tile states (closed/open doors) or tiles with multiple interactions (show a text, move to another map, open a door, etc.) so I have to figure something out that is less complicated than what I had done for Castle Of Illvision.
Time spent on the project so far: 11 hours
Currently working on: Map system, movement system
I completed the very basic core of the movement system. You can move with WASD, the directional arrows and even by using the mouse only - you left/right click to move forward/backwards and use the mouse wheel to rotate your character. I also started working on the map itself. On my last project, I made each map tile by hand and it was quite painful and took too much time. In a game like SHOTH where you’ll walk around big maps made of tiles, I can’t do the same thing, so I’m working on ways to make it easier. The best would be to have a map editor, but that feels like too much work, so I’ll try to make myself a nice compromise.
Time spent on the project so far: 10 hours
Currently working on: Map system, movement system
Finished the intro cutscene today and started to think about how the map will work, how character movement will work, things like that. I want the game to be 100% playable with both the mouse and keyboard (without having to click on virtual movement buttons using the mouse) so I have a few challenges here, but I have a few ideas on that end. Having good movement might take a bit of time and I still have to work on object interactions and map interactions next!
Time spent on the project so far: 8 hours
Currently working on: Intro sequence, map system, movement system
I worked on my dialogue system today! It’s going to be useful for the few cutscenes here and there and I love the possibilities offered by TextMeshPro, which I had never used to make a personal project before. The intro cutscene is not super long and you dive right into gameplay pretty quickly, so I’m excited to start working on that tomorrow!
Time spent on the project so far: 6 hours
Currently working on: Intro sequence, dialogue system
Probably overthinking how the intro cutscene will work, but I still want to do some text tricks through the game so I’m taking the time to try them out here. I was a bit torn between having the intro cutscene be part of the main scene or be its own separate thing, but I want to make the game as simple as possible to work on, so I’ll try to separate things whenever I can. Can you recognize what’s supposed to be in that screenshot? If you can I might not completely be a lost case, art-wise :D
Time spent on the project so far: 4 hours
Currently working on: Intro sequence
With many ideas flying around in my head, it was kinda tough to stop on what I wanted to do next. The possibilities are endless, but solo development is always the toughest balance. A project too ambitious might motivate me for a while, but ultimately I’ll end up disappointing myself by being unable to finish it. A too simple project on the other hand, will be easy to finish, but I feel like I’ve done my share of simple projects (and there are always game jams for those).
I wanted to make an RPG, my first idea was to make a party-and-class based RPG where you play robots exploring space stations, inspired by Etrian Odyssey and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. Then I had a few ideas of mechanics I could add in that game and the idea evolved, morphed into what I have now, which I’m calling Sweet Home On The Hill, an horror puzzle RPG! Inspired by the 1988 famicom game ‘Sweet Home’ (which was itself inspired by a novel) you will play an art appraiser hired to value several pieces in the titular ‘Home On The Hill’. Also inspired by The Witcher 3, Octopath Traveler and a few other RPGs I’ve played.
I am obviously still unable to make anything ‘pretty’ on an artistic sense, so I hope you’ll pardon me for the poor voxel art (I’m going with a voxel style for this one!) but I’ll try to make a complete, balanced, fun puzzle/RPG with this one. Wish me luck!
Here’s to a new project!
Time spent on the project so far: 2 hours
Currently working on: Title screen, intro sequence
It’s incredible but the game is almost done! I didn’t have to chop huge parts away like I did with 100RTBD and the scope of this project was still really big! It saddens me a little that I had to take A WHOLE YEAR to do the equivalent of four weeks of full time work on this game, but that’s how things are! This is my last DevLog update since I’m nearly there. Only two rooms to flesh out and then the game is over!
I’ll probably play it from start to finish before declaring it 100% done, of course :)
Time spent on the project so far: 165 hours
Currently working on: Final bosses
% of the game complete according to my current planning: 98.93%
The last few days were quite bad, productivity-wise, but I’m still slowly coming towards the end of this project. I only have two of the four final bosses to create so this shouldn’t take too long. I think my decision not to add sound and music will save me some time as well, but I’ll have to take a few hours to test the completed game when it’s all said and done!
Time spent on the project so far: 160 hours
Currently working on: Final bosses
% of the game complete according to my current planning: 94.66%