Version 0.0.2. Now Online!

I promised my Tweeter folks (like, all ten of them), that I would have the new version out by the end of this week. Going out of town this weekend put me in a bit of a time crunch but I was able to push it through a day early so happy, happy day!

What I find absolutely ridiculous is the amount of additions I was able to push through since the last major update compared to the amount of time I spent on it. I think the only day last week I committed the entire day the game was Monday, the rest was either working on the baby's room or getting ready for family to come in town. I got more done piddling around with the game a few hours here and there than I usually do putting 40+ hours into it. I'm sure this is some kind of fallacy or theory prefaced with a hard to pronounce philosopher's name, or perhaps just simple "less is more".

Whats New

• Graphical Changes
  • 3D Effect. One of the most tremendous additions that changed how this game looks and feels. I was playing Octopath Traveler a while back and was absolutely amazed and inspired at it's use of 2D images made to look like 3D and knew that's what I wanted to do. Using a parallax effect loosely based on Matharoo's shader tutorial with a few tweaks, I was able to create a few scripts that selectively control this shader to give us a 3D illusion. I say selectively because there are a few caveats. Some objects simply don't look great with this effect, probably due to my sprite drawings being designed only for 2D. Some objects don't play with depth very well, and you'll see further on that depth changes was one of the major overhauls. But for tall objects that reach into the sky, it looks great! Check out the video I posted to Twitter showing it off (file was too big to upload directly and gifs didn't do the effect justice) .
  • 3D Effect Side-Effects. The more I stared at the Parallax Effect the more I couldn't decide if it either looked amazing or made me sick to look at. Never in between. The first thing I did was making the effect a setting that could be turned on and off. Second was a slider that adjusted the value of the effect, whether you wanted minimum amounts of it or to go absolutely crazy and literally bend reality. There was also a few issues with a few drawn items, particularly things drawn by vectors or anything using the draw_line functions which GameMaker is unable to compensate for due to the myriad of different ways GPU's handle that. For the most part they have been fixed.
  • Depth Ordering. I mentioned this in the first DevLog I think as something I knew had to be done. I was hoping it could wait until the polishing stage but at the end of the day I'm glad I went ahead and did it. This change came as a necessity else the above effect wouldn't work. Now instead of objects being drawn in front of or behind the player based on the player's position, now MOST objects drawn based on their y location. More specifically the bottom of their bounding box. I say most because there are still a few objects here and there that are intentionally designed to always be drawn up front or behind at all times.
  • More Vertex Drawing. Tweaked the grass a bit further to pretty it up but getting the hang of vertex drawings really open up a some new doors. Now we have vertex drawn gravel roads and trees for the map.
  • Tileset additions. With the addition of a new room came the need to draw a new tileset for it. I took the time to doll up some of the recycled assets, particularly sidewalks, and replaced them with the better versions in the other rooms.
  • Selection GUI. The previous outline system was simply drawing a white rectangle around the object. Now we have a much more obvious selector that draws on an object to let you know it's interactable. Added this effect across pretty much all applicable objects and parent objects.
• Objects
  • Utility Poles with street lamps.
  • Vending Machine.
• GUI
  • Settings. Mentioned before the Phone Menu now has a few different settings added. The ability to turn on/off and adjust the parallax effect or sound volume.
  • Sounds. Clicking sound when navigating the Phone.
• Mechanics
  • Time Costs for Travel. With the time overhaul from last week, it was super easy adding in the code to add a time costs for travel. It uses 1 mile = 1 minute (after all, when you are the only human left on the planet you don't exactly have to worry about travel.). This time advance does not current affect things that drain over time like hunger, thirst, or fire burn times but may be included in the future.
  • Sound. Still working on how I exactly I want this to be but along with the clicking sounds with the phone mentioned above now you have some nice bird tweets to remind you of your existential crisis.
• Rooms
  • Work/Pawn Shop. New room accessible on the map. Still working on adding interior objects to it but it's a nice break from only having the House and Gas Station to travel to.
• Legal and Developmental Processes
• Website. For some bloody reason, ICANN (more like UCANT) took my website down for contact verification. That's all fine and dandy, got it submitted and the website now said something along the lines of "this website was pending verification but has since been verified. Give it 24-48 hours to come back online." Let me just say, bullshit. It was taken down last Thursday and just came back up today. I'm no math guru but I am confident that has crossed the 48 hour mark by a few multiples.
• Email. With the domain suspension mentioned above, email went down as well. But with it coming back up today I was able to add this itch page to my signature, so that's something.

Beyond that, it's really just financial concerns. For those of you who don't know, I got laid off from my job of 6 years back in April due to reduction in force from the coronavirus. Without getting into the semantics and emotions, it was a sigh of relief and one of the best things that ever happened to me. It allowed me to pursue my dream of game dev full time and open up my own LLC, and for the first time in a very long time my mental health was recovering and I started to be happy again. There's just one problem, currently I am not generating any income. I've been sitting on a decent savings that will make up for my lack of contribution to the household but it's getting difficult for me to ask more from my pregnant wife who has already given so much. Especially when the baby comes, I am absolutely terrified that I will have no choice but to put this dream to the side and bring in an income, which comes with a mental health concern as a lingering side-effect from the previous job. At the end of it all, my family means everything and I will do everything I have to do for them. Even if it means giving up my dream. But I'd be lying if I told you making income from my dream isn't absolutely hashtag goals. So I'm going to try researching some funding options like publishers or indiefund in hopes that I might be able to continue my dreams and provide for my family at the same time.

And that's all I have for you today my dudes and dudettes. Any and all feedback would be a million times appreciated. 

Until Next Time,

 Arctyx