#madewithunity3d

Major pre-launch announcement - the beta will (has to be) online next Friday. I hope I look like a graceful swan gliding towards the deadline, but much frantic paddling of feet is going on below the surface. First up, the first cut of our trailer! 

The amazing Brian (the other dev, the rest of Escape Velocity Studios) made this in a few days while learning Cinemachine and Vegas Movie Studio. Wow! 

Things look a lot more complete. I replaced the placeholder signs with hexagonal textured assets, as in the door above. 

 I also replaced the fountains, which had stretched oddly, and  added ambient occlusion to give a more shadowed 3D effect on the models. 

I made made nicer posters around the room using screenshots from an environment I made last year. 

More importantly, three game breaking bugs are fixed. In the very last week, the player was being ejected from the game, falling into the deep blue sky.  I couldn’t even playtest. Fixed by (doh!) re-check the ‘is trigger’ box on a capsule collider.  

The player now moves smoothly in the lift, so what you may say but, crucially no longer breaking a game ending. The parenting process rotated the player so, like Hotel California, they could enter the lift but could never leave. Below is a screenshot of the player’s eternal view, trapped in the lift.

I (and my friend) spent hours trying different fixes on - get this - the WRONG SCRIPT. No wonder nothing I did made any difference. This is why tutors are Gods. Working on the script that actually does the thing just ‘may’ be important.

There was also a fatal flaw where in one case, docks received crystals that they were not supposed to. And at that point so close to finish, my brain fried so I take no credit, my tutor simply fixed my code.

And to finish on a high note, you might glimpse some fanart of the Riven moiety dagger I made for #Myst25. I told Cyan I would take it out, and the Director of Development emailed me straight back to say I could keep it in my game. I swooned. So that’ll be just a lovely Easter egg for Riven fans.

I missed a devlog cos it’s been too (pick your ending) depressing/ frustrating/ embarrassing. But I didn’t choose the skux life, the skux life chose me. So here it is. Gamedev reality time. Skip this section  if you just like actual progress!

--oOo--

I’ve been sick: burnout fatigue, weird viral thing: brain mush, sleep 12 hours/day, feel like sack of wet noodles, no focus. I can barely hold my end up on the dev team. Other interwebs peeps tell of times where just getting up and showing up is a win, so I hope this is relatable.

Every night I take way too long to set up/ code the playtest scene with sellotape and chewing gum. The puzzle logic almost plays, but for one small thing. Every day something breaks it. Gitkraken. New scripts. New prefabs. Missing reference exceptions. Missing.materials. Team says change the layout. I make it again. Rinse and repeat. Here for your viewing pleasure is a sample of prototypes I’ve built.

I made a Hacknplan with stuff we need. Isaac’s doing hero assets, level design and puzzle design. Jordan’s coding required functions and effects. I’ve yet to make: environment assets, decorative features, UI menus, coding navagent functions. I haven’t done anything.  So.. the game is beat the internal demons (self pity, imposter syndrome, inadequacy) and keep moving towards fun, learning and excitement. And..,,

---oOo---

Woo hoo! We done did a playtest. Here’s a video and the t-shirt to prove it (OK I am lying about the t-shirt).

The team all finished the game, and an actual, real live playtester found multiple ways to break it. Thank you @spritersblock, you champ!. Now we have exciting new problems. Should we allow the player to: :

throw away (or otherwise lose) the cube they will need to finish 

and if so, how to provide them with a new cube?

jump down a level onto the button (and what should happen if they do)?

jump over the abyss, out of the game level and wander off into the environment? (and if so, should there be a way to get back in?)