pdotjpg

Had some real life distractions the last few days, but I've repainted the skybox, implemented a treasure digging animation, modelled all the props and finished populating the environment with them. And I finished off today by working on music. I don't really know how to write music, and I'm super strapped on time, so I just noodled on my guitar for a bit and made some little loops that'll kick in at some points in the game. Here's a taste. Sunday is the summer solstice celebration - a holiday on par with Christmas here in Latvia -, which means that I'm not sure if I'll have time to work on this beyond, like, Friday afternoon. With that in mind, I'm hoping to have this totally playable by tomorrow night. That means putting in all the treasure items, adding invisible walls to the environment, a menu/title screen, sfx and music, aaand figuring out the ending (don't have enough time to implement my initial idea for this). Tomorrow's gonna be a busy day.

Didn't know that's a thing! Very good solution. Thanks for sharing the file.

Thanks! Wish I could say I came up with a solution myself, but actually I'm just using this water shader by Lin Reid. Only worked on this for a couple of hours today. I painted the textures: And started to work on the treasure hunting logic: 1) Pressing a button opens the map/hint (right now a camera overlay, but I want to do an over-the-shoulder view of a physical piece of paper in the character's hands): 2) Interacting with the treasure spot activates the next spot and changes the hint:

I've never used UE, but I'm guessing that a piece of code which chooses the next head position randomly from a list/array would be the way to automate this, right? In any case, the result looks terrific!

That looks great! Really crunchy feedback. How are you checking for valid words? Some dictionary API?

Today was spent on texture alignment. Time-consuming but relaxing work. I'll spend the first half of tomorrow on texture painting, after which it's time to jump back into some coding.

Thanks! Yep, Maya LT. Didn't have any time at all to work on this yesterday, but today I basically finished the environment geo. Still on the to-do list: 1) fixing all the UVs, 2) prettying up the geo a bit - angle the 90-degree cliff faces, add some detail to the flat areas. I'll do this if I have time at the end of the jam. Starting on texturing this thing tomorrow. Hopefully that can be done by Sunday or Monday, at which point it's time to implement the treasure hunting gameplay. That should be trivial, code-wise. I can move on to prop and animation work after that.

Thanks! Progress was indeed good today. I'm quite happy with the decision to hand model the terrain, though I did throw out yesterday's work and start from scratch this morning. The only annoying part is having to fix the UVs from time to time, but that's par for the course, I suppose. Also sketched a placeholder skybox, added some light post-processing and pilfered another Lin Reid shader. Won't have a whole lot of time to work on this tomorrow, so I think I'll finish the skybox painting and do some placeholder texturing to see if that's going to work nicely.

Realistic goals, nice updates and excellent progress! Looking forward to seeing how this shapes up.

You can really easily animate a material with this script. It's been years since I used it myself though, so I'm not sure 1)if it'll fully fit your needs, and 2)how well it plays with newer versions of Unity.

Was busy for most of today, but I did start working on my environment. Started out by getting a nice island shape in Photoshop with the Clouds filter. From that, this sketch was born: I experimented with the Unity terrain system, but wasn't really feeling it. The sculpting feels too loose and it seems kinda ugly with anything except for rolling hills. Probably works better with heightmaps sourced from the real world. Also experienced technical problems: couldn't get my heightmap to import nicely, weird lighting bugs, Moiré patterning. After struggling with that for like 2 hours, I looked up a bit of Wind Waker gameplay and was struck by the very angular, low-poly environments. So I decided to emulate that. I'll populate this environment with some placeholder props tomorrow and see if I should scale the whole thing down. Deciding to hand model the terrain might be a decision that comes back to bite me in the ass, but I think that if I have the basic geo done by the weekend, I'm well on track to finish this project up nicely.

Thanks for the kind words and for the suggestion! I've seen some gameplay videos of that (and listened to the Idle Thumbs discussions). It does seem very cool, but as far as I can tell, the treasure hunting there relies on actual, accurate maps. I'm hoping to go more for sketches of landmarks, triangulation and so on. Got my character fully up and running! I might refine the run animation if I have time towards the end of the jam - right now it's functional at best -, but for the time being, super satisfied with the fact that everything is working smoothly. Also slapped this cel shader by Lin Reid onto the character. It's not perfect (wouldn't be surprised if that was because of modelling errors), but it nonetheless goes a long way towards improving the visuals. Gonna try to go for a sorta Wind Waker look.

Cool gameplay concept! Will you be limiting the commands to fairly large increments - only using integers with the move command, for example? I love the rough movement in that last gif. It already goes a long way in evoking that low-tech aesthetic you're going for. Now just slap a CRT shader over the whole thing and you're good This is an excellent idea, though it's understandable if it's beyond the scope of the project right now.

The example scenario and the last few gifs (in particular the one with the throwable distraction) are really evocative. Can't wait to play this.

This looks bonkers in the best way possible. That aquarium simulation is mesmerizing. Can't wait to see how this shapes up!

Maaaan, I'm a sucker for isometric graphics and 90 degree camera turns. Seems promising, above gif already looks fun!

Thanks for the words of encouragement! Glad I'm not the only one who gets a kick out of this sort of gameplay. It is almost 1AM and, after many frustrating hours of trying to come to grips with rigging in Maya LT, I managed to get my first animation up and running! Tomorrow: implementing controls and a walk cycle. Fingers crossed.

Yesss, glad I didn't miss this one. Very excited to participate again.

Released: https://pdotjpg.itch.io/super-hollyweedland === Idle Thumbs 296: https://www.idlethumbs.net/idlethumbs/episodes/super-hollyweedland It's going to be a small, chill walking simulator. You'd think the name would warrant something over the top ridiculous, but I had some very calm images come to mind as I was thinking about that title. Using this as an opportunity to learn super basic 3D modelling. Really hoping to finish something despite a full time job and lack of gamedev skills.

Thanks to both of you! Really nice comment, thank you! I'm glad you got that vibe - was hoping to capture that hazy, youthful slacker feeling. Fair point about the second area. I was so reluctant to turn up the lights since it revealed the ugliness of the geometry and how haphazardly thrown together the scene was. Probably pushed it too far.

Fine for me as well. I really like the surreal, desolate, apocalyptic atmosphere you have here. The echoing dog barks, the crazy art style and the surprisingly large levels create a very strange vibe. Game mechanics were cool, but I agree with Ben about brute forcing it. Still a cool space to inhabit and poke around in.

Cool game mechanic, though I didn't get it on the first run and on the second one the game bugged out (the revolutionaries stopped being guillotined and just stood around; and the tower only came halfway down at which point I had to Alt+F4). It's a bit annoying when you don't get the acccoutrement that you need and have to waste shots and kill your combo. Other than that, nice gameplay and cute presentation! Might be my favourite "Suddenly, the King of France" yet.

I agree with Ben, this has tons of potential. The aestethics are already there - it looks and sounds great. I especially appreciate the polish put into the audio and visual feedback. All the little sound and particle effects, etc. That stuff is often lacking in game jam games, nice to see it here. I like the clunkiness of the controls too. Flipping through the ingredient book and then rummaging the shelves feels nicely physical. I had fun with this despite the jankiness. Really impressive work!

Nice! I wish there was a bit more variety to the combos and that it'd be less button mashy, but you have an effective little prototype here, I'd say. Well tuned for its current button mashing state too - narrowly won when the bear had 3 hot dogs left. Love the little animation of the psyched bear.

Agreed, this was cool! The start in particular was weirdly affecting. Reminded me of the lodge stuff in the first 2 episodes of the new Twin Peaks, hah.