Level design

Weekly development log #170723 / # 170730

Monday

  • Increased the main island’s size.
  • Designed more bridge tiles.

Tuesday

  • Still some bridge work.

Wednesday

  • Kind of sick.

Thursday

  • Nothing.

Friday

  • Friends.

Saturday

  • Thumper with Friends.

Sunday

  • Nothing.

Monday

  • No idea.

Tuesday

  • Additional beach and ocean design.

Wednesday

  • More seashore terraforming.
  • Noticed the map might be freaking huge.
  • Considered breaking down the map into several smaller maps.

Thursday

  • Remembered the map was supposed to include some cliffs.
  • Started to design rock tiles.

Saturday

  • Designed a shitload of rock tiles.
  • Enjoyed the result quite a lot.

Sunday

  • Started to redesign most of the map to include rock tiles.

Weekly development log #170716

 

Monday

  • Not quite sure. Probably some Pillars of Eternity.

Tuesday

  • Friends.

Wednesday

  • Friends.

Thursday

  • More friends.

Friday

  • Finally found a bit of time to get back to… sand tiles design.

Saturday

  • Managed to fix all of the sand tiles needed for the new map.
  • Added more details to the map, which of course implied to create even more new sand tiles.

Sunday

  • Ran into a few technical problems linked to tile grouping.
  • Started to design bridge tiles.
  • Increased the global height of the islands.

Weekly development log #170709

 

Monday

  • More sand tiles wickedness.
  • Managed to make the whole beach walkable (it wasn’t the case on some curved corners).
  • Noticed there are still some missing curved sand tiles to design in order to reach navigational perfection.

Tuesday

  • Wrote June’s travelogue for A Road to Awe.
  • Designed more sand tiles. Yes, I know.
  • Managed to corrupt the beach map beyond repair, precisely when I was thinking I hadn’t backed up my files properly since a while.
  • Asked Justin for help.

Wednesday

  • Hailed Sir Justin, The Backup Paladin, who boldly found a way to raise my map file from the dead (to extract it from and older build, in fact).

Thursday

Friday

  • Watched some Black Mirror.

Saturday

  • Back to serious business: sand tiles.

Sunday

  • More sand tiles.
  • Kill me now before I do it myself, please.

Weekly development log #170702

 

Monday

  • Designed more sand tiles, because the beach needed more sand tiles, and still does.
  • Noticed the massive quantity of sand tiles involved in the new map will probably limit its size and content.
  • Came to the conclusion that such limitations would in fact be a good thing given the already insanely big scope of the game.
  • Finally managed to build a slope long enough to join the sand and the sea.

Tuesday

  • Set up another dev blog for Second Garden. Yes, I know, I’m crazy.

Wednesday

  • More web design tweaks.
  • Went to bed early.

Thursday

  • Designed three more sand tiles. YES, SAND TILES. THREE OF THEM.

Friday

  • A bit more web design.
  • Struggled with feed syndication for an automated development log to gather all my projects.

Saturday

  • Built an underground farm tree in Minecraft.

Sunday

  • More sand tiles. Possibly the last of them, at least for now.
  • Finally completed a first test map of a small island with a house.
  • Howled at the uncaring dark skies in despair, knowing I’d need to make more islands and connect them with bridges.

Weekly development log #170625

 

Monday

  • Pillars of Eternity.

Tuesday

  • Designed a bunch of new sand tiles.
  • Thought about the necessity to design even more sand tiles.

Wednesday

  • Got increasingly annoyed with a few minor problems with the game’s website.
  • Started to redesign the game’s website and to migrate to another CMS.

Thursday

  • More web design.

Friday

  • More web design.

Saturday

  • And… more web design.

Sunday

  • Unsurprisingly, still more web design.
  • Replaced the old website with the new one.

Weekly development log #170618

 

Monday

  • Made some actual tile tiles. Yes, for the roof.

Tuesday

  • More roof tweaking and tinkering.
  • Some wall moving and rebuilding.
  • Started to design some balcony intricacies.

Wednesday

  • A little bit of balcony tweaking.

Thursday

  • Not quite sure. Some Pillars of Eternity?

Friday

  • Beach design and enhancement.

Saturday

  • More work on the beach.
  • A bit of editor debug related to resources replacement with Justin Arnold.

Sunday

  • Even more sand tiles design.

Weekly development log #170604 / #170611

 

Monday (#170529)

  • Discovered that level design could get way easier with a bit of simplification regarding the curved slopes.
  • Also discovered in horror that on the other hand, navigation paths on said curved slopes will probably be nightmarish to set up properly.

Tuesday

  • Various navigation-related tests with the help of Justin.
  • Concluded it will indeed be nightmarish to set up, but doable.

Wednesday

  • Pillars of Eternity

Thursday

  • More struggle with navigation paths. More specialized tiles will probably be required to avoid blocked paths in some specific cases of layered tiles.

Friday

  • Real life road trip

Saturday

  • Real life road trip

Sunday

  • Real life road trip

Monday (#170605)

  • Real life road trip

Tuesday

  • Designed four new sand tiles that fixed the many navigation problems encountered earlier. Yeah, just like that.
  • Stared in horror at the near-infinite roadmap.

Wednesday

  • Pillars of Eternity

Thursday

  • Started to build the second house. On the beach.

Friday

  • More house building.
  • Noticed a dire need for a bunch of new tiles.

Saturday

  • Real life obligations.

Sunday

  • Real life obligations.

Weekly development log #170528

 

Monday

  • Increased the player’s speed by 33%.
  • Fixed some camera glitch.

Tuesday

  • Used some brand new script functions (props to Justin Arnold) to hide or show the inventory icon when needed.
  • Fixed a couple of issues where the player kept walking after a dialogue thanks to another brand new function.
  • Started to work on the second big map.

Wednesday

  • More tiles placed on the new map.
  • Despaired at the potentially insane complexity of said new map.

Thursday

  • Real life obligations.

Friday

  • Real life obligations, part 2.
  • Also, beach, sun, that sort of things. For real.

Saturday

  • Real life obligations, part 3.
  • Managed to create a few curved sand tiles for the new map.

Sunday

  • Pulled some hair out due to the indeed very complicated set of tiles required to build the new map as intended.
  • Boldly started to create many more tiles.

Weekly development log #170514

 

Monday

  • Added stupid but possibly funny tweaks and changes involving the cat.
  • Door scripting, door scripting and also door scripting.

Tuesday

  • Pretty much nothing done.

Wednesday

  • Created more silly dialogues and useless stuff.
  • Fixed a few scripts (mostly doors scripts, surprisingly).

Thursday

  • Added some furniture.
  • Tweaked some tiles.
  • Some scripting related to the last dialogue of the map.

Friday

  • A few tweaks.
  • A lot of Tyranny.

Saturday

  • Various dialogues updates.
  • Lots of cut-scene scripting.
  • Started to integrate the relationship system.

Sunday

  • More dialogues updates.
  • Managed to finally make the first part of the game actually playable from start to finish.
  • As Konstantinos would say, huzzah!

Weekly development log #170423

 

Monday

  • Wrote a few dialogue lines for the next scene.
  • Set up the first floor of the Cxohà Domà, which is currently without any furniture or decoration.
  • Defined each first floor room’s function (or mostly, rooms which will be used in the first part of the game).

Tuesday

  • Decided to actually maintain and update a weekly dev log. You’re reading it now!
  • Cleaned up some navigation paths on the first floor. Some, like owls, weren’t what they seemed.
  • Scripted for opening and closing curtains on the first floor.
  • Fixed treacherous stairs.

Wednesday

  • Had to repress a sudden urge to start working on a new cooperative strategy game.
  • Thought about Suùnian bedroom furniture and hypothetical carpets.
  • Wondered if tribal doom hardstyle was a good idea for Nékromegà’s soundtrack.
  • Felt an usual brief moment of rage and despair regarding the upcoming French presidential elections and mankind’s general stupidity.
  • Discovered the whole first floor was in fact a terrible mess of old invisible corrupt navigation paths and fixed it.
  • Noticed the curtains script had mysteriously vanished, then remembered it wasn’t working anyway, and made a new script that didn’t work either.

Thursday

  • Discovered the curtains fiasco was due to a misplaced plural in the variables.
  • Open and closed the now working upstairs curtains with awe.
  • Designed a Suùnian bed.
  • Started to set up bedrooms.

Friday

  • Thought again about that cooperative strategy game.
  • Designed a small Suùnian table.
  • Added furniture in all upstairs rooms for the first part of the game.

Saturday

  • Started to script the doors of the first floor, since no rooms were accessible.
  • Scripted the relocation of some characters depending on the story’s progress.

Sunday

  • More door scripting.
  • Some stuff involving the cat.