Hello and welcome to another blogpost!
Most of the blog is about the gnomes again. This time they got some nice music going on. And some lovely UI updates.
But I do have a special guest for today. Something about Roan, my son, and a game he is working on…
Video
This is my most recent gameplay video. With a lot of minor improvements. And the major improvement of a whole new music composition.
Latest improvements
This brings me to the first item on my lists of things to discuss for today: details on the latest improvements on Find the Gnome.
Most noticeable is the inclusion of a new music composition. And on top of that, there now is a fully dynamic music system that reacts to the tension in the level. The composition is for each level different, with a per level AND a per theme progression. To further support and emphasize the story. For me this was very important, to have the music and story and gameplay have connection with each other. For that reason the map background scene (a captains cabin) is also going to include some of the instruments used in this game, as if the gnomes are playing on their instruments while you are catching these gnomes.
Another major improvement is the updated UI. A lot has changed since blog 40. In blog 40 you could already spot some sketches. But the UI / HUD in a level is now fully flushed out and final, the map UI / HUD is almost final, and the menu’s are also close to completion.
On the note of getting notification about my updates: On January the 9th I released a video showing off some of the new UI already. New updates will always show up on my channel on YouTube first before molding it into a format like this blog. So follow me on YouTube. And get on Discord, because I will post all available content there asap after creation.
Back to the improvements: I also started working on achievements. The support structures are in place currently. To get started, I integrated the ‘level finished’ achievements. The UI is far from completed, but if you look closely at the upper right corner of the video you see an achievement popup on a level completed.
Am I on track
And this brings me to the next item to discuss for today: am I on track with the progress made in the past 4 to 5 weeks since the last blog post?
To be honest: no, I am not on track. I did deliver on some nice features (like music and UI) and I am proud of the overall progress that I did make. However, the plan was to at least have the Stream page up by now, and at the end of this week to have a demo of the game available on this Steam page.
Overall, for me, January was a bit of a downer. After the mediocre results during the holidays, I hoped to get back some lost productivity, but it was the same story all over again during January. I regularly just didn’t feel healthy enough to work on my game besides my main job.
So yeah, mixed feelings about this one. Considering the circumstances I did make good progress on complex area’s (for me at least) such as music and UI. But I didn’t reach my goals set in the roadmap.
Good thing is, the store page is ready. But just not published yet. I still need to create some supporting articles for the launch of the store page. And I want better screenshots… but that requires the game to be more near completion (especially the achievements part) but I do think now further delaying of the store page isn’t going to increase the screenshot qualities by that much.
Icelands, by Roan
From ‘am I on track’ to ‘Icelands, by Roan’. This has more to do with each other than you might expect. But lets start from the beginning.
Roan is creating his own game. Inspired by YouTubers and the game ‘Forager’, he decided to download a 2d sprite pack and craft his own game around it.
This tileset is from 0x72 and can be found on https://0x72.itch.io/16×16-dungeon-tileset.
Roan already has started on modding the tiles, creating new monsters, new tools, new weapons, new items, recipes, overworlds, multiple dungeons… he is going strong!
So thats where daddy comes along: I am making it happen from the technical perspective, facilitating his asset pipeline, and adding the code to make the mechanics come to live.
And yeah, I did have to spend a few evenings on getting things to work. I haven’t created a 2D game yet so I had to research a few things first and/or adapt my scripts from my 3D games to fit his needs.
Here are some more screenshots:
Thanks, and see you next time!
In the mean time, you can join me on Discord. If there is interest for it, I can see if we can create a space for Roan his game if you all want to track his progress too.
GameFeelings 