Hi everyone!

Sorry, my bat~

Most of the animation loops and transitions are now blocked in and I'm making good progress with blocking in the colors and rendering the frames!

The sketchpack has been updated here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/113539196

Behind the Scenes look at our animation planning process

Unfortunately we don’t have a screenshot of the very first document, which was way more rough and messy as we figured out what we were gonna do with the animation.

At the top we made an outline of all the stages of the animation from left to right with some descriptive text.

Going down from there, you can see all the iterations we went through. At each step in the process, Cookie would put up a GIF or the Aseprite file of the current state of the loop and ask for feedback and we sparked little discussion threads, going back and forth. That way I don’t have to go and hunt for the correct file and can just download the thing that is attached to the discussion.

It’s important to make a new discussion thread for each issue. If we feel like it is resolved, we mark it with a checkmark so it is easy to see which discussions are on-going and which have come to a decision on what to do.

To help make points clear, we often throw in refs or even photos of ourselves. And if that asynchronous form of discussion stops working because of misunderstandings or details that are too subtle to convey, we do an in-person meeting and then write down the results of that as best as we can, or even better, try it out at Cookie’s workstation right in the moment.

About the Build Delay

While working on the levels in the last few builds we kept bumping up against problems and limits that stemmed from our old code base. A lot of the features we made early on were roughly cobbled together, sometimes last-minute, just to make the level work somehow.

We decided we can't keep moving forward if we don't fix and overhaul a lot of these old things and put some more robust systems in place.

There is a laundry list of other things to do, but they might be potentially save game breaking and we want to wait a little while longer until we do another game progress reset (don't worry, we will offer save files that will basically put you where you left off if you played the previous builds until that point).

There are other reasons for this delay, but I will talk about it in a separate post once this build is finally out.

Rest assured tho, that his build is going to be juicy and will hopefully make up for the wait time!!

Channel open, Goliath online

On the code side of things, bunny has been fixing more player physics jank and refining our toolset for making puzzles and stuff.

Our old level elements, like fire traps, switches and doors, etc. were hardcoded to work with just each other. That means certain objects would only interact with another specific counterpart.

Now everything is "de-coupled" and the components communicate via a signaling system that is inspired by the Godot game engine.

This basically just means that we can combine almost game elements with almost any other element in creative and unexpected ways.

For instance, here is a clock-generator component that can be configured to kind of like a "time signature" in music terms and elements can listen to the beats of it, and react.

This component can be used to synchronize things like moving platforms, traps and other things. Before this change we would have to tweak timing and delay values for all the individual objects, now we can tweak the difficulty in one place for a whole bunch of objects that are supposed to work in concert with each other.

We made a bunch of other components too, that all can be combined and linked together to trigger events or create game logic, which is useful for actual puzzle design, a game element that is severely lacking in Kincaid.

Get Hook'd

Hooks can either be static, pullable or be controlled via the new signal system (extend and retract based on a trigger).

Moving Platform Overhaul

Moving platforms have gotten a major overhaul. They should work more reliably now and are easier to use and set up, which was one of the reasons we barely made use of them.

In the old system, you had to place special colliders in the level that would set the vertical and horizontal speed of any platform bumping into it.

Now we made a small visual toolset that is easier to use and tweak

Also the moving platforms now support all types of shapes and speeds. They can also be solid now, which means they also support ledge-grabbing.

(GIFs of different platform types and platforms carrying enemies)

Object Composites

Another feature we wanted for the game that is inspired by engines like Unity and Godot and something that GameMaker doesn't support without a lot of extra work.

This feature allows us to nest objects and have them move together with the core object.

This allows us to have things like moving platforms with traps and other things attached to them.

For example, here we have a moving platform that has one of the new hooks attached to it, and both are fully functioning and Kincaid interacts with them as you would expect.

Moving Level Geometry

Bunny loves the levels in Super Mario World where whole sections of a level can shift and squash Mario. For later levels we want to create threatening atmospheres like this. So we extended the composite system to include level geometry as well - another feature that is supported by engines like Unity and Godot, but is harder to do in GameMaker.

Until next time! Cookie & Bunny

Overall Status Report

Upcoming Build Tasks

• Kobold City Cisterns Work-in-Progress
• New small lewd animation DONE
• New CG scene DONE

Long-term Projects

• Soundtrack: New Soundtrack Additions
• Haven: Working on backgrounds and props Work-in-Progress
• Bat: A new major enemy Work-in-Progress