#indy dev

OK, so here's my first post of what amount to spoilers in reality, but are also kind of things that people in the imaginary world I am half-pretending this game was originally released in would know, as it is like... The third or fourth game in the series in that world, being the jump to 3D. As this is intended to be basically the OoT for the series, the narrative does stand on its own, and explains itself. But certain things, like Link being one of the people the Triforce is attuned to, were known to people who played earlier games, kind of. Even though OoT was also the earliest in the series at the time, my game definitely is not the first in the timeline of this nonexistent series of predecessors. This cycle has happened before. I will keep spoiler stuff hidden beneath a keep reading thing though, so anyone who doesn't want to know, like it's your first experience with the series like OoT basically was for me, don't bother I guess and wait until we actually get to like, plot stuff in the dev videos, I guess.

Hey everyone, it's been a while. Around mid-October I announced my getting started on recording. And to be fair, I did get everything set up that day for it. Everything was ready to go, got my N64 controller hooked up to my computer, as Journey Through Loguo is honestly going to be built to be playable on one, although of course supporting controllers made this century!

However, what really caused this new direction in my game development (which, coincidentally, it turns out I made the first post on it in August when this all started I had no idea I was remapping so quickly) is basically life collapse. Since August, things have not been good, and honestly getting worse as it's gone on. My social life basically fell apart in August, and then as time has gone on, deaths in the family, losing my social circle at work, work *incoherent gesturing*, being bedridden for half of a month over the last two, and losing a roommate so like, how do rent?

Throughout February though, and more so now, I've felt I've finally caught a foothold and can actually start doing things again. This month is currently frantic preparation for a new roommate if we find one, but when that calms down, and I have an evening to myself, I am making my video.

I haven't spoken about it much, because honestly I haven't had time, but I have continued to learn more about Godot, mostly idle tinkering as I get ready for work. Have I mastered it? Of course not, it's been... Ugh, 7-ish months of light tinkering. But I in theory know how to do everything I plan to do with Journey Through Loguo presently.

I wanted to throw the concept art I've been doing of our protagonist, Locca, into this announcement. But in addition to the lack of time, I've only been like, halfway into the art headspace at best here, so she's just rough lineart that only kind of shows a vague idea. I'm not going to put any of that out until like, I have a face at least that is more than "outlines of eyes, nose is here, here's a mouth." I was always planning on having her concept art done after the first video anyways, because she's just going to be a little capsule at the beginning as I build the "move through the world" parts of the code first.

So, I had March 23rd listed in my calendar as "Apocalypse Commences" which seems to be cancelled at this point. So, good news for me actually getting to do the series I've announced. It started with the 22nd kind of having a disaster, which stopped part of the apocalypse, and then over the week the dominoes from that landed in a way that "Oh yes, I'm definitely getting to stay living in my current residence" which was kind of up in the air until, um, Thursday I think?

There's still a bit of settling down that needs to happen, but my cough is finally going down (It's been months) and I am getting nights to myself again. It's looking like soon is an accurate description for the first Journey Through Loguo dev video!

So, I downloaded Godot earlier today in preparation to learn it, a bit ago I went to install it, and it just opens in its folder that contains only two .exe files. I really wasn't expecting a complete lack of installation. I definitely do not know what I'm doing yet. But on my initial looking through the documentation, I'm already liking what Godot seems to do with scene transition in comparison to Unity.

Like, honestly, Unity's scene transition is unwieldy enough that I would just make a save file of the information I wanted to transfer to the new scene, and load that up in the new scene. Which feels wasteful. Godot has "signals" though, which it can pass between Scenes, although I sure don't know much of anything about them yet! But I am excited!

I'll probably post some "learning project" stuff here over the next couple days, and then actually start on the video series I announced so unfortunately right before Unity did its thing.

I got my tablet working again. So, of course, I have started working on the graphic I wanted in my pinned post. In the local culture, the Sun/Moon logo that definitely needs some fine tuning is roughly comparable to their equivalent of the taijitu (the yin-yang symbol) and has a... related philosophy where things are associated with either the solar, or the lunar side of the universe. As the emperor is the sun, solar associations tend to be seen as better culturally. That's not to say that the moon is bad necessarily, although more things with negative connotation fall there.

The 6 symbols here besides the Sun/Moon symbol that I need a name for represent the 6 primary elements, which you will be going around collecting the support of the lead sages of each element. If you know Chinese or Japanese you'll probably see some inspiration from the characters that mean what each of these elements are, but I specifically wanted to not use real language for these, LoGuo is not China. These are the only characters that exist of "LoGuoan" right now. The circle around the sun are the 5 traditional Chinese elements (Wuxing). From the top and clockwise, we have Water, Wood, Fire, Metal and Earth. And then alone on the top we have the element of Time which, like... Part of my idea for this game is it is like it was made by an American company in some alternate timeline where the video game crash didn't happen. The studio in addition to definitely being like... East-Asiaboos, absolutely made this game in response to OoT, and oh we need Locca to be an adult too. Hence quickly appending Time to tradition, or whatever. In the final "medallion" screen, I plan on Time kind of being... The background or something like that. I'm still tinkering with this and this was like, first pass, but I really wanted to actually make a post.

I have finished the tutorials for Godot, and I am very happy with some of the utility that is already obvious to me here!

Honestly, the only thing I am currently "missing" from Unity is the whole "animation layer" system. It was nice to be able to have multiple animations playing for an entity at once in J'ardscape, so that the arms and legs could be up to different things. Also those blend trees so it seemlessly shifts between running and walking... So far I haven't seen an obvious way for that to happen in Godot, but the 3D tutorial wasn't exactly all that involved with regards to animation.

While that'll mostly be important to figure out with when I inevitably port J'ardscape over to Godot, it is something that I would like for my video devlog project. Like, the idea is that it's a theoretical N64-era game, sure, but... The best part of retro-design is taking the nice things that you remember about those old games, but being able to skirt a bit on the exact limitations. Like, I think animation bones weren't quite a thing yet, but I am sure animating Locca with them...

But like, blending animations wasn't really a thing back then, I think, so like... If I want Locca to put her weapon away while moving, I suppose I can make a unique animation for that as opposed to scripting an extra animation to override her arms or something? But we'll see as I dive in further.

So, I have the apartment to myself, and I have learned Godot enough to start my dev vlog series on the Journey through Loguo, as I guess I'll call it for now still. I work tomorrow, so I am not entirely sure that I can finish recording tonight, but we'll see where I get!