This Week in the Forest! #118

AYO! Been a couple weeks, so I'll be sure to load it up with goodies!

First! I've included all of the Maverick/Oliver sketches from last month! They were the winner of the sketch poll, and we've got some fun moments to use in TFOL whenever :3

In addition, as some of you saw, I opened for commissions for some car fixing funds,  I've been mainly tackling those the past week! The otter up above is from that batch :> I'll share more as they get finished.

Lastly, one of the TFOL things we've been exploring is revamping more UI stuff! The main things we wanna tackle is the Gossip UI and the Gallery. They are getting too big to conveniently go through. So I needed to rough out some options that would have the solutions we need!

We are leaning towards the top option here, but we do run into some issues here and there. One particular one, is that I think it's ideal to have SOME sort of formatting to the Gossip UI that way if peeps wanna re-experience one, they can roughly recall when it was. BUT, this method kinda falls apart if you went through the entire game, then decided to binge all of the gossips at the end (which is very possible).

We might end up doing some filtering/toggles to have things either chronologically in game, or chronologically as to when you unlocked it. But then if the list isn't consistent between players, things can get complicated for sharing/helping each other... There's definitely a solution, but we need to keep thinking on it! We're getting close :> And we wanna make sure it'll have room for some fun features we've got planned. We've got a lot in store to help gamify the experience and have little "power ups" even for a game like this!

The Gallery is a much needed problem to tackle. We definitely need to be able to filter in the future, but in general, it would be better to be able to navigate faster than just "previous/next". So we will likely be going with a tile format. Filters might be a separate window or a side bar, depending on what feels nice.

The other dimension to consider is, we would want this stuff to work well with mobile too. So something like cramming a bunch of thumbnails into a screen doesn't work that well when the screen is 2.5 x 5 inches.

We do think we have a current solution for this too, but it's honestly nuts how many things to consider before landing on a solution xD! Those who have been with us since the beginning know we've gone through UI iterations for a lot of things. These 2 systems will be their 2.0 rework. But even still I'm considering revamping the dialogue box to a 3.0, something more sleak and flexible, especially something that can aesthetically work with aliased fonts for when we support multi-languages.

It's nuts!

Other than all that, I've been writing up some gossips for critters around the forest. In fact, I'll probably make a public poll to get an idea what critters people wanna learn more about. I do have a few already started, but this can just help influence that.

OK! That's pretty much it on my side. gonna finish out those sketch commissions, do a bit of 3D prep, and go ham with the TFOL stuff this week :> Got a new scene planned that should be pretty fun!

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Now! A Word from Vixel!

4/18 weekly update:

Happy new week, floofs! <3

Small hiccup last week when my UPS ate a power surge and shorted itself out, frying its battery. Computer survived, thankfully. Got the replacement part a few days later and am back in business!

Continuing my work on our v2 code fixes! ^w^ In the last few weeks I've been playtesting and repairing the quests that make up the game's main storyline, to make v2 match with what we're currently publishing in our monthly builds. Most of Act 1 and 2 is playable now in v2, though some parts still have pretty strange issues.

Here's the kind of silliness I run into:

When I find bugs like these, I use my debugging tools to track down the faulty code, and then fix scripts in v2, comparing against the original game running nearby until both copies behave exactly the same. It's been a slooooow process (a lot slower than I expected!) since both versions of the game use fundamentally different systems under the hood. Our oldest code in Act 1 has been particularly challenging.

I've been a little frustrated at the pace this is moving, because I'm eager to continue the next phase of Act 3, start the Steam integration, and add cool features like language translation support! >:O The v2 project is the foundation we need for all of those! The new code is a lot less intertangled, making it possible to upgrade stuff later without breaking things. From a programming POV, the difference between v1 and v2 code is night and day!

I'm rewriting part of our camera controller which will address about half of the remaining bugs in Acts 1 and 2. I also got into Act 3 and verified what works and what's got bugs. Gonna go ham this week and squash bugs in all three acts together. ^w^

Almost there, hang tight. <3