Leaps and Strides [24/07/2023]

 Welcome back!

In just the first week of uni I have felt great senses of health, accomplishment and harmony. With every task scheduled and ever hour of the day delegated, but loosely enough so that the rules can be broken as wished, I feel as though I have, for the first time in a long time, achieved a truly satisfied work/life balance. I work often and hard, and make great progresses everyday, and yet simultaneously have an appropriate amount of rest and recreational time. I feel motivated but not pressured. It's not easy, but its not impossible. I am realizing that my dreams and desires could infact be achievable and even realisitc not with constant, torturous work but exact and proper planning.

So in this week, much has been done. First off; progress on The Den!

After trashing the Hospital set, I immediately felt a burst of inspiration for The Den set. These designs were based straight from a sketch I included in my GDD, with the inclusion of the Lower and Upper Floors, Bathroom and Freezer Room as well as elements like scenery moving past the windows of the caravan, small environmental animations like fans running, and oportunities for Splash vignettes like on the TV, in the cupboards or freezer, in the bathroom mirror, in packmates belongings, and so on. At the moment, my prioity has been furnishing and texturing the lower floor rooms first, starting with the Freezer where the game would now begin. Almost all of the sets furnishing is taken from Sketchfab, courtesy of the generous creators. A couple models will get retextured though, like the couch in the living room ("Corner Sofa" (https://skfb.ly/onozG) by Nick Broad) due to UV issues and also due to me needing them in different colours or patterns to match the tone and aesthetic of the scene and its real-world references.

The Freezer Room is the most important piece of the set, with it being the players first introduction to the games world and also being a reference for me to take the style of the rest of the games environments looks from. I textured the walls and floor in Substance, trying very hard to make it look very overused and undercleaned, with dark bloody smudges on the floor from unsuccessful mopping attempts. In the end, even though the room is not yet properly lit in Unity, it looks fantasic with Cliffs model and exactly how I would love for the rest of the game to look. 

In my schedule, I've given myself 3 weeks to complete the Den scene. Left to do is the wall and couch textures of the Lower Floor, retexturing most of the Bathroom, and completing decorations and texturing on the Upper Floor, which is still under development. Then lighting and lighting settings, changing the skybox, scrolling lights and imagery out the windows, and interactive pieces like Items and Splashes, which will all be done in the 3rd week.

In the Unity side, almost all mechanics have been replicated and brought over to this new set (except for camera zones and smell). New to the mechanics is Icon Changes! When Cliff talks, his icon can now change eye or mouth sprites independently of eachother so that he can express his feelings. The next step will be to give these sprites animations so that he can blink and babble.

Also, animations are finally implemented! It's a roundabout process, but it works. Cliff can now Idle and Walk. But what else? We've made significant progress in the programming side. Thanks to James and Masaya, Dialogue Events are up and running. This means that inside each line of dialogue inside each dialogue scriptable object, Events can be called on such as sounds, animations, stat changes, timelines, effects, scene changes, and anything that can be imagined! Here I've been testing it by letting Cliff do a special dance for Lang when he talks to him.

... Actually putting it all together, it's not as much work as I thought. But it's still exactly what I sought out to accomplish this week (and more). So I both did... more and less than what I expected. Next up is completing the total layout of the Den, scripting out in writing the opening scene and dialogue, then turning that script into a playable cutscene using timelines and dialogue events. The future is beautiful!

Happy sailing!

- Monkeydog