Isometric - Blog Posts
Character Switching
So until this point, you could only play as Alice. But now you can play as the other six! Still need to work on their field abilities haha. I want one of them to do a ground pound move, but the animation I cooked up looks pretty bad... most of my animations look pretty bad tbh...
Wishlist -> as if I would give you the link to this game's Steam page that easily.
hmm, you really thought I would hide it here? Wouldn't that be way too simple...?
Explosives Cont.
Physics objects are really fun to play with! Another reason you should just make a 3D game with an isometric perspective instead of a pure 2D one. Not to say you couldn't do this in pure 2D...
Anyway, I guess this means I need to come up with a reason you'd find a ton of crates lying around. Maybe a warehouse level... and a quest to find a needle in a crate stack...?
⚠️TRADE OFFER ⚠️ i receive: a wishlist -> https://store.steampowered.com/app/3163190 you receive: an email on release!
Explosives
So I sorta like to develop by copying Zelda's homework. In this case, that means adding a bomb object. You can bomb jump with it, although not as crazy as the BOTW speedrun tech shenanigans lol.
I plan for the player to use this when they need MORE destructive power to proceed. I guess I should work on a breakable wall model.
You can wishlist this game on Steam! -> https://store.steampowered.com/app/3163190
Personalization
I dream of adding alternate character skins and whatnot, but that's a lot of work and I should focus on other things. So for now all you can change is the X-ray color.
Dialogue and Camera
So this is really basic but also really cool. Once you get displaying text sorted, a cool feature you should add to your dialogue system is the ability for it to move the camera around, with good application I think you can get really cinematic with it haha. In-game cutscenes are kinda crazy now that I think about it. I wonder if there are any resources diving into how studios tackle making them. I need to hit up the GDC vault lol.
Stacking
Very useful feature, totally not a pain to work with due to the submenus needed to select what you're acting on and then select what you're doing... I plan to make this a gimmick in at least one dungeon but maybe I should look into streamlining the process before that haha.
Busting
Don't mind me, just bustin' up some crates.
Selective Interaction
Very simple, yet super useful, feature, now you can directly choose what to interact with when surrounded by multiple options. Don't ask what happens if you have more than 26 things nearby...
Dungeon
I present to you my first block out for a dungeon level. Yea, it isn't great lol. But with these pieces in mind, I was able to make a proper sketch
It still needs some work but I'm getting somewhere with it. If only writing the story was this easy...
NPC
How much is an NPC supposed to be capable of? I know some suggest giving them the player's capabilities, but does that help when they exist mostly for narrative rather than aiding core gameplay? I feel like mine are lacklustre... but maybe I just need more animations lol.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter?
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Needs some VFX, but at least how I built my system lets me turn any rigid body into something you can push around like this. Just need to set up another system to encourage you to move stuff around...
Camera Zone
Made this invisible trigger to move the camera around. All it does is tell my camera to focus on a new position and has settings to create a new focus point between the player and a defined position around the trigger. The transition could use some work tho haha.
Switches and doors... ignore the chest.
Tutorial Rooms
Both of these ended up getting scraped. oof
Objective UI and Quest System
Mostly backend. As usual, it's a pretty jank system but it works. No quest markers atm but I've been considering them. I also want to look into optional objectives. This is the first time I've seriously considered how quest systems work and it's quite interesting. I need to find more references to study haha.
I am NOT stoked to create building textures, but I am stoked to see a textured building... so I guess I have to make textures one of these days.
More Inventory UI
Still incomplete but now I can look at the items I have without using the debug console.
Platforming
Finally, put these guys back in here. They all have names, although I haven't brought it up much. Up front with the black hair and a weird mask is Alice Nor, Behind her in the poorly drawn armor is Jordan Flibeki, and lastly underneath the large hat is Phoebe Quin. These three are the first of 7 playable characters. I haven't really drawn the other 4 yet but I do know what I want them to look like. You can find the names of the other 4 on my very broken website which is not mobile-optimized -> https://pearlessential.webflow.io/
Snow
Proof of concept, not sure if it will have any mechanical functions beyond maybe decreasing movement and jump speed and removing the ability to dash. I really need to get on making assets for snowy areas... I need to make more assets in general actually. Thank you to the super genius who posted this shader on godotshaders.com. This is practically witchcraft to me.
Obscured Objects
Not sure how well this will pan out but since the environment is in 3D and there is hella depth to work with I want to try hiding some interactable objects behind stuff or in an obscured fashion. Since you can't rotate the camera and the scene is orthographic I need to notify the player somehow that they have stumbled upon something hence the cool x-ray effect when you get close. I could add this to NPCs also which could be interesting.