Hello, everyone! It’s the 5th blog post update. As we’re nearing the end of the development cycle, we’re mainly focusing on adding in decorations into the decoration system, adding in UI sprites, and fixing things here and there. We added in a start menu (it’s been a long time coming) and even a little tutorial screen so you can get a brief starter on how the game works. I planned those to come in later in the cycle because they’re really easy to make, so more important systems could be worked on first. This game is beginning to come together!

Modeling

One thing we were thinking of adding in this sprint is having potions be decorations you can use instead of just usable items. Before, they were just sprites in the inventory, but now they’re models.

We also have a vine wall that is meant to be a barrier of entry for the Faebury Forest area. We want to make it look like the forest is appealing enough that you want to do what you can to unlock it as quickly as possible. You only need to craft a potion of decay and then use it on the wall to get rid of it.

We have these really cute stone statues made by one of our incredibly talented modelers. There’s a fox, wolf, and wolf pup to go with the frog made last sprint.

Relating to those stone statues, we were thinking of making the enemies into NPCs that walk around the home area, since we had to leave the boar out as an actual enemy. Our idea was to have the enemies as stone statues, and then with a certain potion, you can use it on the statue to make it come to life! Here’s what they look like currently.

Here are some more of the decorations we’ve made. There’s a bed and couch as furniture for your workshop.

As for smaller decorations, here is a chalice and a stump stool. Unfortunately, you can’t actually sit on the stool, but you can put the chalice on a table or on a shelf if you wanted to.

There are also different colored stepping stones if you want to have some variety in what you want to make.

2D Art

There were a few new ideas for potions, so our artist made some new sprites for those. Technically we could just make sprites from the models, but the potions started out as sprites first, so it’s better to keep consistency with that.

Because we’re nearing the end of the development process, it’s time to start thinking about marketing materials! Our 2D artist made a bunch of team logos to use (but we only have space for one!).

Here’s the sketch phase of the marketing poster! It looks like it's really coming together!

Programming

Previously on the decoration system, we had it so that items could only be placed by accessing build mode with B, but now selecting “place” in an item on your inventory automatically lets you go into build mode.

The new decorations were added into the crafting menu so you can create them.

We also finally have a start menu and a tutorial that pops up when you start so you get a little briefer on how to play the game.

One thing we were able to polish really well was our movement. Before it was gravity based, so movement felt a bit slippery, but now it's not. And also you can go up the stairs without it being annoying!

Miscellaneous

Since we still have the animation importing problem, we didn't really want to add in more animations knowing that they might not get in. Either way, the boar that we wanted to put in still needs to move, so here it is walking and being idle.

The world scene had a bit more decoration to it, with the fence barriers and the skybox addition (not in the build).

The sprint was somewhat turbulent, but also I feel like we got the most out of it. There were 286 points assigned and 204 points completed. We had Before we had a problem where our level designer was unable to upload their scene to Github, so he had to send everyone a Unitypackage of it. Being able to combine everything was a major roadblock and was several days' of work to fix (but we were able to brave through it!) We're at the point where we're gonna mostly stop on adding in big new things and start working on bugs and optimization. From our playtests this time, we had a major lag problem where even the best computers weren't able to get the game comfortably running. As of writing this, we should have fixed the problem, so stay tuned for the next build!