Identity
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Dev Diary – August 2025
🕑 Added 2025-08-08 11:17:29 +0000 UTCHello everyone, it's Baku here!
About Baku
I went by the name "Lone_Wanderer" previously. I am the lead designer and currently also the main programmer for this project.
My personal career path involved me going to university and study a field called "Computer Visualisation". It's a regular Computer Science path, but instead of mandated business classes, I got to take lectures that taught me about image processing and GPU coding.
Why am I formally introducing myself like this? I haven't really done so yet, and a lot of the decisions I made over the recent months were due to my personal experiences. It's different to code for uni, for a job and then to do coding on a full game project, created by yourself.
I have done practice every now and then on personal, self-contained projects, but none of them (except for one) were ever released. So, I have finally gotten confident and experienced enough to trailblaze a complete and total rework of the entire game engine behind Identity.
Engine Rework
The very early versions of Identity were written in Ren'Py where it quickly became apparent just how limiting the program is. It is a great program, however, if you want to do any custom functions, including changing the UI, you will need to do regular Python coding.
The question became... if we basically need to do an entire thing on our own, anyway, why not just choose a different engine? That is how we decided to go with Godot. Unity had a better reputation back then, but for our purposes, it is far too bloated. And Godot being Open Source is actually quite a blessing, which means that unlike any other proprietary game engine or program, it has the stability that it will always be available to you in its current form.
However, the version of the visual novel engine that the current public version of the game uses, was written by someone else who was a novice programmer at the time. He has gotten better, too, but he isn't with us, anymore.
So, I was faced with the choice: Do I try to keep patching recurring bugs in the Godot 3 version that our current game runs on... or do I rewrite the entire thing from the ground up?
These recurring bugs that consistently pop up (namely audio and sprites) keep demanding our time which we could instead use to work on new features.
I chose to go with a rewrite, given that this way we can also switch over to Godot 4. It offers a lot of new functionality and also inherent bug fixes on top of being a bit more efficient.
I have been at it for over two months, but a lot of it involves boring stuff that I can't show off, unfortunately. Thankfully, I made enough progress that you can see what it enables in the following segments.
Engine Rework Progress
BB-Code improvements and ability to add literally any text character:
Independent Colour-Modulation of every background layer and sprite without affecting the UI:
Different Languages:
Cheat Menu – Content Selection:
Arrangement of 2 Objects on a 3D plane:
And the progress I made with the functionality shown with the gif just above, is what lead to the four images you see at the very top of this post.
The orange circle overlay has existed for a long time, but we haven't gotten around to write the functionality yet to have animated overlays.
The palm tree model is made by rezashams313 (Source). I only used that 3D object to see how it would look like, but the goal I've always had is to use my knowledge of shading and graphics programming in order to enhance the aesthetics of the game. 3D models won't replace the painted style.
Adventuring Content
Visionaries and above can still find our design post we made about adventuring content... two years ago, damn.
Here is one excerpt from that post in order to explain what our plan is: We are wanting to add event-driven content, which will also include combat. Think of games like Arkham Horror, World of Horror, or even the Oregon Trail what we want to accomplish.
The systems will be relatively simple, and will be more designed with specific puzzles in mind. We are not intending to make a full-on RPG with levelling up mechanics, etc.
Basically, this kind of system allows us to put Yarin and his friends into a hostile environment and have mistakes or actions in general have a cost attached to them. But failure doesn't lead to a "Game Over", immediately. That's why there are three bars that you'll need to deal with.
The above is an excerpt how the node structure looks like when the game starts. Even though they have 3D in their name, these are more just planes (images) that are assembled together. The camera placement creates the illusion that it's all 2D.
What I want to draw your attention to is the entities.
Each entity will keep track of its own state, which makes it far more extensible. Theoretically, we could add hundreds to a scene, but that would probably be rough on the mobile phone version.
Closing Words
I still have a long ways to go until we can properly switch the game over, but I hope that I was able to give you an overview at least, why this entire engine rewrite is important to the future of the game.
Let us know your thoughts and until next time!
