Like Overcooked and Octodad [14/08/2023]

Hiya,

I've been thinking about what it feels like to be a solo game dev. Not that I'm any kind of professional, but it must be somewhat universal. To me, it's like cooking what looks like a very simple dish. But the process of creating the dish requires eight things done at once and 12 hours preparation time. There's something on every element, there's something in the oven, you're still chopping stuff on the cutting board, you've got to stir this one every 5 minutes and watch the heat on this one and you can't add that to this until such is such. It's like Overcooked and Octodad. It's a lonely and confusing endeavor, especially when you haven't done alot of this before and there's no recipe. But I solider on!

Big changes have been made to the Den because I'm Sick of It. I'm done looking at this glorified tutorial level. Most drastically, the upstairs floor is gone. Why? Well, one I could never crack the issue of the stair colliders teleporting the player wrong. Two, I found my design of the upper floor ugly and bare, and had nothing much left to fill in that space at the front of the room. And three, I would rather just let the player move on as fast as possible to exploration and the meat of the game. Therefore, the player will now meet Naomi outside rather than upstairs. Lang will let you explore the Den and there will be little things to do, but otherwise it's straight to the next level, maybe once you've picked up an object or cleaned yourself up in the shower. The drivers area door will now change to the next scene. Currently it's empty, but I way prefer being able to think about this now rather than thinking of it as far in the future. I also textured the bathroom, but thats not as cool.

I also tried to experiemnt with some Unity Store shaders and effects, but turns out URP is absolutely not compatible with anything. So I thought I'd try converting the project to SRP to see what difference it would make.

SRP is above, URP is below. Honestly, I don't like SRP at all as much as the URP look. But I did, however get to work with those shaders. What I wanted most was a retro/PSX post-processing look and an outline shader for either overall black outlines or for outines that only turn on on trigger. But... I don't know. I definitely like the look of the black outlines, so I think I'll try and make my own black lineart shader to URP sometime, and another custom shader for OnTriggerEnter smell outlines to replace the smell particle effect.

I've also been sketching alot of concepts for both the opening cutscene and the general UI. I took alot of reference from https://www.gameuidatabase.com/ to further explore the UI design, because previously I've just sucked at it and struggled to do anything interesting or easy to read. I'm getting closer, but I still need more feedback.

Next week is playtesting, and I'm scared. By then, I wanted to have the first level finished, and it is. But it still feels like I don't have enough. This week, I want to implement a new UI design, even if its just in sketch form. I want to greybox the next level and write out what is going to happen, or atleast how it's going to start. I want to finalise the inventory system so that the player cna pick up an object in the Den, and thats about it! 

Just keep on moving, Jake.

- Monkeydog