development update - 04/2022


hello~ it's been a while. i'm not dead, just very busy.

- where have you been?
teaching! i've been working various different positions at a university for the past two years, teaching game design! it's great work but it's exhausting, and takes up most of my time and energy.

- what state is the game in?
well i've done a lot of work these last couple years, rewriting heaps of old code (i built a new character controller from scratch!), making new shaders, new levels, getting saving and loading to work, and trying to make sure that everything runs smoothly. so at this stage the core of the game is pretty solid, and i'm mostly focusing on level design. i've also been thinking real hard about how the game should sound, what kind of music it should have and when it would be appropriate to have it. so yeah, at this point it's mostly just making levels and making assets for those levels, not much in the way of changes to the underlying structure anymore. it's nice. i get to just make stuff with the tools i've built instead of building new tools.

- how much longer is it going to take?
i'm not really sure. i haven't been able to work on the game at all this year because of teaching, so my current plan is to not teach next semester and instead apply for a grant to work on the game for 12 months. i think that should be long enough to get a 1.0 version shipped. after that i want  to keep adding new features and levels for a bit (i've also been thinking that a console release might be cool, if i can arrange it) and then probably move on to whatever the next thing is. i also want to do a few devlogs after release to talk about how i made some of the stuff in the game, like the character controller and water shader.
so what does that all mean in terms of projected release date? idk, maybe 2024? i think it's unlikely to be finished next year, but who knows. in the meantime i've been thinking that it might be worthwhile to start a patreon or comradery (i think i'd prefer the latter) or something, for anyone who wants to access early access builds and music prototypes or whatever. but i don't really know if enough people would be interested, or how much it would be appropriate to ask for.

- can we see what the game looks like so far?
yes! i've just uploaded a new demo version alongside this devlog which has two new prototype levels in it. these are accessible via two of the bus stops in the opening level. this demo version will also include the new character controller, save system, and renderer, but it'll also be kinda broken and buggy in places i'm sure, so if you do decide to play it remember that it's all very much in the middle of production, so please be kind to me (but also tell me if stuff is broken so i can try to fix it).

anyway i think that's about all i have to say.  see y'all in another two years lol.

bye.

Files

ndh_v0.9.39_win.zip 27 MB
Apr 03, 2022
ndh_v0.9.39_mac.zip 27 MB
Apr 03, 2022
ndh_v0.9.39_lin.zip 28 MB
Apr 03, 2022

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Comments

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i love this game

Ok! Cool that you are alive! And cool that you are learning gamedesigh as a profession! This is cool!

Really great plan. Incredible work with the character controller and all the awesome shaders you've made

:') thank u paul u r so kind

Glad to see you're continuing to work on this! Is there some way I can delete my progress so I can start again?

yeah if you get to the "thanks for playing" screen it should reset you back to the opening stage, but if that doesn't happen then there is a save file that you can delete. what platform are you playing on?

Thanks for the info! I'm on Windows.

ok yeah so the save file should just be in the game data folder somewhere. if getting to the "thanks for playing" screen doesn't reset you then deleting that file will. if the save file isn't in the local game data directory then it'll be stashed away somewhere deep in your computer, wherever unity games store their persistent data.

Awesome, thanks for the heads up! :)

oh i just realised what you meant by this question; the windows version was zipped with a save file inside it already because i am an idiot. this will almost definitely cause some save problems due to various permissions about where unity games are allowed to write data. i deleted the save file and re-uploaded the windows build which should solve any future problems. sorry for being a dolt.