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April 4th 2025
First blog post on my devlog! Specifically waited until after April Fools to upload this, since I didn't want people thinking it was a joke dhjgfdsk
I've decided to change this blog, and what it displays, to primarily just be me making devlog updates about the progress of my webcomic. Animations, game development, website code, music, writing, 3D models...you name it! This is mostly to help me feel like I'm actually moving forward (it's very, very easy to get lost in all the code, modeling, writing, and everything else that goes into this) but also so that other people can see the status of my webcomic.
Everything here will be unfinished work in progress, while finished pieces and major updates will be posted on my various social media accounts. I'm very excited to jump right into it - so here's some WIP updates so far!
UPDATE #1: Character models
This is one I've been working on for some time, alongside Wattson (more on him in a second) but not the first model I've worked on... which is kind of hilarious since he actually is the first main character who appears in the entire webcomic! But now he's almost finished, which puts me on track to also start finishing up the animations he's part of. I still need to work on his wings, legs, and cloak - most of which are fairly simple. The cloak will probably be the most complicated thing about that, gonna be real - separate clothing in low-poly 3D is nothing short of a nightmare.
Really happy with how he's turning out so far. And now, on to... Wattson!
This one, as evidenced, still needs a lot of work. I'm still trying to figure out how to properly simplify his arms (they're almost fine, but still a bit over-complicated which makes modeling and animations difficult) and I still need to model his battery pack, legs, and eyebrow. He doesn't show up until a decent ways later on in the comic, so there's not much pressure for him to be finished at the moment... but I would definitely like to have him done in time for Art Fight!
Of all the designs, this one is probably the most complex and tends to stump me the most on how to proceed, even more than Radion and his now (thankfully) updated arm. And that one was a nightmare!
(I will still never get over how ungodly complicated I made the previous one. So many stewart platforms...)
I've had Wattson on the back burner for some time because of this, but hopefully I will sort out how I want to simplify things soon enough.
I'm also working on getting the flora and fauna models ready for the Encyclopedia, so here's a little example Oleyve!
UPDATE #2: Prop and world models
This is one that I don't have too much information on yet, as I'm still working on figuring out how I want to set up large-scale world models. However, I do have some small props to show off!
UPDATE #3: EoA gameplay preview
Now for some fun stuff that directly relates to my game dev!
I have posted this gameplay footage elsewhere, but in case anyone hasn't seen it yet, here's five minutes of playtesting footage from my dev build of EoA. It's not final gameplay footage by any means and there is SO much I need to add, but this gives a pretty good example of how gameplay works and what the visual style will be.
This is also the second version of my TEST_LEVEL world, which was originally a bunch of grey and white checkerboard tiles - something a select few of you might have seen in old updates on other sites.
A tiny bit more progress has been made since I actually took this footage - mostly just small edits to the entry room, throwing sounds, and room shadow effects.
Larger and more notable updates I have on the current todo list include:
- animating and adding the lift sprite for picking up objects
- animating and adding the 'take out weapon' and 'put away weapon' sprites
- updating room entry commentary scripts for world changes (things the main character will/won't comment on when they enter a new/old room)
- modeling Sir Maxwell and adding his player interactivity
- optimizing some interaction/cutscene codes a little bit more
- adding the tilesets for both intro sequences
- adding secrets... [ ^]
- fixing effects for noclip mode
- adding elemental abilities and their specific MP/HP drains
- adding the ability to die
- modeling and adding in enemy sprites/attack animations
- improved entity pathfinding/combat intelligence
- adding the tilesets for both intro sequences
- adding inventory
- adding quest-triggered world events
- adding the store/store interaction
- dialogue events for items given, items taken, interrupted dialogue, etc
- perform another thorough HTML5-export bug test to see if I can find any script errors, collision failures, export conflicts, or memory leaks
Current bugs I'm working on squashing:
- player throws held objects at npc when entering dialogue (does not continue holding object, likely issue with entity detection in free state)
- reflective entities cause lag on player touching the mask sprite (likely a surface duplication issue)
- speaker-dialogue that runs after no-speaker-dialogue refuses to draw the NextPage indicator sprite in the right place, and will instead draw it where it would be in no-speaker-dialogue
- lumo indicator spawns in the top left wall of the deep caves room for literally no apparent reason
- footstep sounds continue to be active during cutscene, need to remember to disable footstep audio during ALL locked states
- npcs cannot comment on player held items... due to the player throwing the items in their faces upon speaking to them
- need to sort out activating cutscene dialogue without timers, so that dialogue can be clicked through – possibly through textbox trigger and a secondary global cutscene variable (need to do this for opening a door cutscenes that clip through multiple viewpoints)
Other than that, not much to report on the game development side of things. I've been pretty nose to the grindstone for a while with getting existing bugs figured out and solving HTML5 exporting errors, so that's taken up a large majority of my time.
UPDATE #4: Fatelines, writing, and web development
The choice-based aspect of this webcomic, and the thing that takes an ungodly amount of planning.
For those unaware, this webcomic is a multi-ending, choose-your-fate sort of interactive story; there are choices to make, both good and bad, that will determine fates of all characters within. This being the case, actually writing each and every one of those choices, connected consequences, dialogue trees, character development (or lack thereof), and endings is one hell of a task! I love it though, and I hope you guys will as well. (Just be prepared for a LOT of death. If there's one constant in this universe, it's that Everyone Can Die™ and they most definitely will if the wrong choices are made. There's a lotta enemies out there!)
I'm the kinda guy who generally likes to have the entire story and dialogue written out before posting anything publicly, but... in this case, I'm making myself upload it by a per-chapter basis. I write a chapter (and all its alternate choices/endings) and then I publish that chapter on my site. Simple enough. This way, there's a decent amount of stuff to explore and read and play while I'm at work on the next chapter!
Currently, I'm still finishing up with all the fatelines of the first chapter, which require radically different things and have entirely different characters involved. Lots of models, lots of dialogue, LOTS of writing. I'll have more to say on this another time.
Teeny tiny little blurry preview for you. No spoilers to be found here, pal!
In terms of website development news, everything is finished code-wise except the Encyclopedia pages for some individual characters, a couple sophonts, and some planets. Most of these require 3D models to be fully completed, and with main character stuff taking the main stage at the moment, that's been on the back burner for the moment. Even so, here's a couple screenshots of the website as it is right now!
UPDATE #5: Character and entity information
This is a fun one! Over the past few years, I've consistently developed and updated my characters to better fit the world I'm building and the models I make (see above: changing the way machinery looks so it isn't a massive pain in the ass to animate or model), and I feel like that even flow of making little tweaks and edits as I go along has just about reached its conclusion. I'm happy with the way my guys look, as well as how the various sophonts look in general.
Significantly more information will be available on the main encyclopedia of the site, including 3D models and lists of all known relevant entities, but here are the short-and-to-the-point summaries of each sophont type!
Additionally, several more characters finally got updated art in my current style after like 3 years of being set aside for the main cast - all important background characters, many of which will show up fairly early on in the comic. Not much has changed about Morris, Dynoma, Birchley, Argyle, Halisius, or Raxley, but Saturn, Dolly, Benny, Uro, and Radion all had some spruce-ups to more accurately represent their characters (or in Radion/Saturn's cases, actually look more like both their parents).
...You guys also have no many times I have accidentally typoed that name as Bitchley OTL
Still have a few supporting cast characters to finish up the art of - mostly a few of the people at the Lookout, on Gordon's team, and from Enzo's workplace - but that's really not too much in the grand scheme of things. It's mostly just slightly tweaking their existing designs to fit the proper sophont appearances, and eventually modeling them when it's time.
UPDATE #6: Neocities pixel badge
This one is a Neocities-specific update. After all this time, I finally got around to making one of those little pixel badges! Pretty happy with how it turned out, and in case the sidebar doesn't show it properly, here it is at 1x and 2x size! (Also with the code since I've seen that shared on a lot of blogs)
Aaaaand...that's it for now! Hope you guys enjoyed my first devlog post, I'll be sure to keep adding more of these whenever I have some news to share.
Thanks for reading, and have a great one! [ ^]
