Haven't done a devlog within itch.io before, but I think they're super cool on others people's projects so here we go.

i do believe we are in alpha now

i say that not because i feel ready to release an alpha build but because if i dont release anything soon, i'll probably finish this game after a decade of isolated development. Which is not wanted lol

Somewhere about a month ago I was watching a gamedev youtuber saying something along the lines that on average, when a gamedev puts down their project for a couple months, the project is essentially dead because the dev will most likely never come back to it. After hearing something as scary as that, I made a small plan on trello to get to a point where I could call the game in an alpha state. And well here we are, still rough around the edges but now players can play what will be essentially be the main loop that is exploration and simple bump-combat.

recent developments

by which i mean the things i did to turn my meandering prototype game to something i could call an alpha, because that sounds cool and more real.

● planned out a world node-map.

where each node was essentially a unity scene. I decided that it'd be best to just work on the first area (5 scenes) of the world where the first dungeon is to not bog myself down with making all the zones and assets at the same time, which would have easily made me burn out.

● made the 5 first scenes that are connected through door objects.

before it was kind of a giant debug scene that i developed mechanics in. I blocked the sections of the zones that will lead to future scenes.

● I finally made the foliage sheet.

to be used as transparent foliage for decoration. I just didn't want the alpha to look so barren and samey for anyone who does decide to try out the game at this state.

After modeling the foliage in blender and importing them into unity I kind of get the idea of what I might want to change and set up the materials for the rest of the areas of the game. For those not in the know, when making a standalone vr game, it seems to be best practice to try to limit the amount of materials/shaders/textures that are being used. 

I guess now that I set a hard deadline, the feeling of paralysis/analysis is dwarfed by the "oh sh*t, i NEED to make some plants NOW if i want to make the deadline. NO ONE is going to be expecting moss levels of quality here." Which really helps tbh.

● Fixed a respawning issue when the player died.

This was kind of annoying to fix but essentially it was the byproduct of my spaghetti code of a game manager. I've added a card to the board to organize and comment everything in at least the game manager script. Anyhow, the player will spawn in the same zone they died, where they came from, after their health hits 0. In the future I want to make it so that the player will respawn at their last used savespot.

maybe i'm old fashioned but i do think having the player start at a low, (like a safe savespot) where they can get their bearings and pick up the controls again is better rather than panic at the scene they last played in, maybe fight a couple wandering enemies or dodge an obstacle. It's kinda like those plot diagrams with rising action and climax hahah

● i sprinkled in a couple enemies.

Even after decorating a little bit and changing the fog settings for each zone, the world felt pretty dang empty. then i remembered that most action games are more than walking simulators even in vr. silly me.

so like, an alpha right?

its got all the workings for an action-exploration game, ya look around, ya fight, maybe die and ya respawn; there's even a title screen! Now, this might not seem very polished or amazing but for someone like me who seems to be getting a worse attention span as the years go by and less time to go goblin-mode on my computer, this is kind of a feat for me muahuahua!

i'm shootin for a springtime release buckaroos so wish me luck and if youre in the mood, send me some feedback on the game to make it better!