Archive:
Built two more Gilby rooms, but now that I’ve played them, I think aiming for ten was overly optimistic. They’re not that exciting without the time pressure and puzzley bits that Kula World had, so I’m forcing myself not to add pickups, spikes, slow-downs and a timer. I’ll end up remaking the entire game. (Much as I’d like to…) These are a chill distraction atm, which is fine.
Ian dropped me the music for the Mutant Camels mini-game, and yeah, he absolutely smashed that. The intro timing was spot-on, which put a massive grin on both our faces. The sound effect levels need some fettling, in fact, the entire game’s audio could probably do with a mix down now that I think about it... I’ll have to drag the PC downstairs and hook it up to the surround for a day.
Oh, and I bottled working without source control. Ended up flattening my laptop with a fresh install of Debian, and getting Perforce up and running again. I need my safety blanket! And I still can’t get my Eero to port-forward, so I’m starting to wonder if the ISP has started packet filtering. Royal pain in the arse.
Speaking of pains in the arse, Wil Overton can’t do the key art, which is a crying shame. He showed me the roughs he’d been working on, which were wonderful. He’d absolutely nailed it. I’ve asked if he can finish it off as a private commission. I want it for my wall, even if we can’t use it for the actual release.
Sad panda. It’s not going to feel the same without him involved.
Built another Gilby room, and fettled the ones I made yesterday. The new one re-uses the electricity sparks from Moonbase, which livens it up a bit, and looks pretty cool.
I also found a way to fix the dodgy animation imports from last week. The ones with the twisted feet. You can bake the dodgy animation onto the character’s control rig, tweak the twisted bones, then bake out a new animation asset. Dead simple… Problem solved. Have to save, despite being sceptical at first, I’m using the modelling and animation tools in UE5 all the time, now. They’re just so bloody useful.
I’ve not seen the flickering directional lights in Willy’s Mansion since the “big replacement”, a few weeks back. But now, some of the interior lights are flickering. WTAF? Been happening, on and off (ahem), for a week or more, but… Only in packaged builds, and only on Windows (go figure). I’ve deleted them all, and replaced them with new ones. Shrug Fingers crossed, I guess?
Oh, and the player despawns as they go through a door, and then respawns in the new room. I’ve been meaning to do that for aaaages, cos the pop as they teleported has always looked a bit 50p.
Made the final Gilby room, and hooked it up. Spent the rest of the day bouncing the engine version up to 5.5.3. Doesn’t look like it’s fixing anything that I’ve hit, but I might as well take the hot-fixes now, before the porting begins.
Very much the Game Development equivalent of watching paint dry…
Made another windy room, but this one’s entirely driven by the wand, including the ground you’re walking on. S’good fun and the effect looks cool.
But more importantly, I think I’ve finally squashed the oldest bug in the game!
Moving platforms – that bounce between two locations – would occasionally pop to the wrong location, and I’ve never been able to catch them in the act (in the debugger), until today. Took a couple of hours of head scratching, mind.
One line fix: when I reset the platforms, I reset everything except the direction they thought they were going in. If they thought they were going backwards when they were disabled, they’d move forward the next time they were enabled, but when it came time to swap, they’d swap in the wrong direction, pop, and then carry on as normal. Derp.
It’s always the bloody simple bugs that take the longest time to spot. Wood for the trees, and all that. 🤦♂️
More bugs found, more bugs squished. The worst thing that I managed to find today was around a little nice-to-have that I put in ages ago: if the player Alt-Tabs away from the game, say, to add a note to fix the bug that they’ve just found, I pause the game and bring up the pause screen… Except, that breaks the Juke Box UI, which is forcibly removed without cleaning up any of its key-bindings. Next time you press Y, regardless of where you are, the Jukebox would pop up. Wasn’t too difficult to fix, but I’m glad I spotted it.
Added some particle effects to Inventory Item pickups, and some missing audio effects.
Added more audio effects, including a little click sound when you use the right stick to rotate screws. Sounds stupid (ahem), but that little click’s made such a massive difference. If it feels good without audio, then more often than not you’re in for a nice surprise when you finally add it.
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