Single Player
We’ve made progress on the VFX for multiple different abilities! Here’s an example of a new projectile called Aqua Launcher.
We’ve been working on descriptions for each Kinfolk’s Compendium entry. They’re generally similar to the one we showed in the previous example with Shovlet, and they’re a good opportunity to convey aspects of a Kinfolk that might be less apparent when you first encounter them in the game.
As a part of this, we’ve also been determining the average heights for all Kinfolk. We’re pretty happy with the overall range we have!
There’s now an easier way to create story mission dialogue for Kinfolk on your team. Essentially, we’re able to write lines for all applicable personalities in a single node, which conserves a vast amount of space in the xNode graphs.
We’ve created some new shouts for Kinfolk on your team to use when you cook for them. They’ll be based on things like personality and whether or not you fed them their favorite flavor.
The colors for our Character Creation models have been corrected to use the intended color scheme. Previously, everything was too light and de-saturated due to an issue importing them into Unity. There’s still some slight fine tuning to be done, but all in all it’s a massive improvement.
There are two outfits in the works for the child human models. After finalizing the shape of the clothing models, our next step here will be making the textures for them.
The materials for the houses in town are coming along nicely! At the moment we’re focusing on creating the materials for the climbing ivy plants that will cover many of the houses in town.
The story boards for some cut scenes are making great progress! After years of only having mental images for these scenes, it’s both thrilling and eerie to see them before our eyes. It’s also interesting to discover the variations in how different people have envisioned the same moments!
We currently have a handful of Null Type Kinfolk (Big_Bandit, Short_Sword, and Tender_Foot) in the concept art phase, as well as one Gaia Type, Briar_Stomper. We’re finishing up the model for Little_Bandit, and the model for Briar_Heart is coming along well. The unnamed Gaia Type that was in the modeling phase last time is now in the rigging phase. Puddle_Hopper’s attack animations are in progress, as well as Tide_Walker’s standard animations.
The concept art for the dungeon’s interior overview has been completed, so we’ve moved onto creating more detailed concept sheets for the set pieces that will be in the dungeon. It’s important that we get the feel of these smaller details right to achieve the desired atmosphere.
While working on the artistic side of the dungeon, we’re also fleshing out the design aspects. Now that we have the interior overview, we can start planning the layout for the path through the dungeon. The 2D design plans are finished, and we’re starting work on gray boxing.
We began working on something called “pooling” for our abilities. Essentially, instead of creating a brand new instance of an ability every time you use it and then disposing of it after, we save it and hide it after use. Then, when that ability is next used, we just dust off that old one and repurpose it. This is a huge performance saver, and should reduce stuttering and lag in instances with a lot of abilities firing.
We’ve added support for assigning distinct locations and regions within the over world. Essentially, we can draw a polygon around an area and give it a name. This is useful for things like showing where you met your Kinfolk or their final resting place. We also implemented the logic that causes an area’s name to show on the screen when you enter its boundaries. It’s a small detail, but it’s exciting to see an addition to the UI that builds out the exploration side of the game.
We started an early implementation for characters orienting themselves correctly on sloped terrain. Now both the human player and Kinfolk should tilt to fit the terrain's natural curvature much more believably.
Our process for updating low poly terrain tiles has been streamlined to take much less time. It used to be that once we finished sculpting in an area, we had to go through a somewhat long and complicated process to make the low poly version of the tile match the high quality version. That way we can load in a less detailed terrain tile when you’re far away from it to save on performance. Now we can achieve the same result by clicking one button. So much better.
We’ve continued working on mission code for one of the single player's story missions. Part of that during this sprint has been making an NPC with unique behaviors and logic.
Community
Earlier this week, we sent out the information for Tailors/Cryptic Journal backers. If you haven’t yet, be sure to check your email for this message. You can also find the information in this post.
One small addition to the information we already gave: If you’re working on your entry for the Cryptic Journal, images without backgrounds are preferred, but not required.
Thanks for stopping by, everyone! We’ll see you next time, on April 7.
