BodBloat
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Project Vault Game Dev Log 05
🕑 Added 2024-09-30 15:39:00 +0000 UTCAlright time for a big update! Been spending a lot of time on various things this month, but first and foremost I finally get to show yah the first test build! It's full of jank, has a lot of things left and right that need cleanup but hey I'm finally getting to the point where something a bit more coherent is starting to come together! At the moment the current build mainly focuses on the introduction of pushing mechanics in general. Played around with a lot of stuff involving boxes over the last few months and this is sort of the product of it all!
Here is the current Dev build for folks to tinker around with! The game should have a bit of a controls help menu you can pop up by pressing "H". In general it is a pretty small little level with a bunch of salvage piles you can pick up and cash in at the junkstore/workbench at the beginning to unlock special traits such as thicc hips, belly mode, and perma thick haha. Once these are unlocked they should show up in the options menu! You can then reset the level from the main menu to play around with options in a fresh level and see how the salvage effects that slender form of Bod's >:3c!
Here is the current Build! To Play it all you need to do is extract the folder and start up the "Project Vault" game program.
In general I'd love to hear any feedback folks have! What broke, what doesn't feel good, what does feel good, what would you like to see, ect. There are plenty of things that need work for the game, but I very much like seeing what sort of things people think would be cool to see in the game!
Now on to general updates!
Sensor Puppet Design Docs: Finally got the lines for this guy wrapped up! Working on colors next for them, but I at least have a good start I think :3! These guys are gonna end up being one of the major enemy types found in most parts of the game. Usually slow and a bit cumbersome, they patrol a lot of the old ruins. Just don't get spotted by them, as they tend to get a lot more aggressive when you activate them ;u;!!!
Enemy AI: I've finally started learning how to make enemies haha! It is so interesting how a behavior tree works when it comes to AI in games. I've gotten a rough things set up for now that I can have patrol, but it's pretty barebones and sort of clunky. Hoping to spend a bit more time with it this week so I can flesh it out a bit! Going to be using it to work with the Sensor puppets for future builds!
Game Systems: Lot of time has gone into working on some of the menu's and how they work this last month. Been trying to clean up some stuff so that it's not a complete pain in the butt to navigate and work with stuff but it's definitely been a learning experience! Been getting the framework for Bod's inventory system fleshed out so that it includes Bod's Loadout. They are connecting well so far, but need a bit of stuff wrapped up before they are functioning as intended in the game X3!
Game Mechanics: Mechanic wise the biggest thing I've been working on incorporating is Bod's Gadget/equipment system. So far I've gotten at least a rough kick in that you can play around with using the little can in the level X3! In addition I got at least a rough falling animation in. Gonna need to do some cleanup with that over time once I get some of the other animations and actions working with Bod!
Block Models: Lastly been working on learning how to build assets in the game! At the moment this has mainly been some of the pushing blocks you'll see in the test build! Need to work on actually doing some texture work for them next, so that is gonna be a fun thing to play with :3!
Comments
BodBloat
Yeah a lot of tweaks need to be done on the little can XD. Was a very quick thing put together in an afternoon... and it has issues haha!
dementrious
Bod is delet by can :P
BodBloat
Yeeee the controller thing has definitely been a reoccurring thing if folks have something plugged in! And yep it's gonna be fun to figure out how the camera stuff works!
Beard Face
Gotchas. I did go back to recheck. I did have a controller connected even though it was not in use. Unplugging the controller fixed the issue. And I like those ideas for the more dynamic camera angles~ I could even see it working to have 3rd person mixed with dynamic/fixed camera angles for when you're in bigger rooms or traversing a stealth section. All in all, I really like what you have goin' so far and am excited to see the progress~
BodBloat
Thank you for the feedback! Interesting that it got stuck moving forward, the only time I've heard of that so far has been when folks tried to play with a controller. I've not been able to setup controller support yet, so that can tend to bug it out a bit with the character moving forward I think. For first person it is very much bugged out at the moment XD. I sort of got it setup, but haven't had the time to clean it up or start updating it yet. Hoping to do so before the next test build tho! Then the camera angle stuff X'D! Yeah that has been a considerable challenge. One of the things especially with Bod is that their height/size makes it feel like Bod is the focus, so I really do need to pull it back a bit. In addition I'm probably going to eventually move on to playing with more fixed/dynamic cameras to break away from the typical 3rd person view point. Need a lot of work before I'm comfy with that tho, so will probably come in a future update!
Beard Face
Was a little late in being able to play around with it, but got to try it out a little and am impressed with what it has goin so far! :D I did have a little bug where Bod was stuck moving forward that I wasn't sure how to fix that, but was still able to play the whole build and unlock all the fun little artifacts cx Trying not to repeat anything iDev mentioned, I did notice a couple of things. Seemed like the first person mode only let you move the camera in a limited cone. That might be intentional, but it felt a little weird when I first tried it. The other thing that stuck out to me was the camera angle. Might seem like a smaller thing, but I think it could really improve the feel if the camera was maybe slightly more zoomed out or that bod sat a little lower on the screen. Right now, the camera kinda focuses on Bod rather than what's in front of him it felt like. Other than that, it seemed to feel and play pretty intuitively! Awesome stuff :D
iDev
Really great looking alpha! I'll hit you with a couple things I noticed about the controls and gamefeel that you may want to address. - When you do a camera transition, you want to maintain the direction the character is moving so that they don't sheer off to the side. This can be a bit of a tricky fix, but I think this unity discussion page may help: https://discussions.unity.com/t/keep-player-movement-direction-on-camera-switch-until-movement-stop/809816 - I'm presuming the kick is very, very early in it's implementation, as there is no cooldown to it's use and that it can be used whilst pushing boxes. These are really easy fixes but I think are worth mentioning - The lower inclined runs that the boxes run through are a really nice touch towards guiding the player to move the box's into places they're intended to be in, but I found myself getting caught on their lips sometimes, which can really make the game feel clunky. This almost always happened whilst I was leaving a room, hit the doorway, and then just didn't have the momentum to get over the lip. I don't know every trick in the book, but I'd presume you could fix this by either making them less deep, or by providing small ramps at their edges which can only be interacted with by the player model. I presume there's many other solutions but that's what immediately comes to mind for me. - Pushing and pulling the boxes feels exactly as you'd expect them to! However, the boxes seem to be set at either a really low mass or unity has some weird physics stuff, because if you run into the box normally you can get it to bounce around. I presume you're aware of this issue, but I think it's worth repeating because I did have an incident when I ran into a box at an angle, and I was able to make it shoot backwards. This didn't cause a "soft lock", but its certainly unintentional behavior that could cause issues. - The shop UI seemed to bug out for me, where the cost of an item just remained on screen indefinitely until I quit to the main menu. - Very small, but sometimes it isn't obvious to me what size boxes can be clambered and what not. This could just be me, but if it's something you thing is worth pursing, maybe a visual change between boxes that can be clambered at floor level can look different? Something like maybe a colored lip that stands out? - Lastly, when you push a box and it falls into the small chasm, you're still in the push and pull state even though it's clearly out of the range for that. I'm certain you know that's an issue, but I think is worth documenting just in case. That's kind of an exhaustive list of the weird stuff with the alpha. Honestly I think it's really, really solid. I can't say I had any issue with how it felt to control bod, nor the feel of pushing and pulling the boxes. The motion of the camera whilst clambering felt natural and I never had an issue regarding those mechanics. The pressure pads acted exactly as I expected them to, and I think their implementation made sense. The tutorial hints were really intelligently made, being both in game so it didn't feel like getting menus thrown at you, but also having text that was very readable in the environment. Most of my comment is focusing on the negatives, but that isn't a reflection of the quality of the alpha. Being completely frank, I'm shocked you got this level of stuff done in this short of a time!
BodBloat
Thanks! and yeah hope it's fun to play around with :3!
Beard Face
Love the designs for all of the puppet variants! Am looking forward to trying out the test build later after work. c:
BodBloat
Thankies :D!
BodBloat
Yeah! So in the main menu there should be a button at the very bottom called "reset Level". It should reset Bod back to the original size, although the scrap in general won't cause Bod to grow unless there are really high quantities! The salvage in the inventory is going to be the main thing that causes any size changes. But you should be able to play around with it a bit with that level reset :3!
Drake Vanders
Really well done for an initial alpha. I'll be keeping my eyes open for future content. Having done a brief run of the test build so far, I'd assume there's a size limit in place right now, currently only managed to get upto 100 scrap. Is there a way to reset the scrap while in-game to test size increases.
Jadeghost
This looks AMAZING!!!!
