Just a quick progress screenshot, showing some minor improvements to this thing.
Now each node draws a line to where it is trying to go, and though you can't see it in the still shot, they all turn much more smoothly towards their goal as they make their way there.
I'm working on finalizing most of the attributes each node will have, as well as how much each can vary to make a node unique. More soon!
With Psychonauts 2 and Life Is Strange: True Colors finished, I'm back on Mass Effect Andromeda again.
I'm settling into a rhythm with this game now, and I don't hate it at all - running around planets and clearing out tasks to improve their viability is a bit mindless, but still fun. The lore of this game isn't as exciting as the original Mass Effect trilogy because all of those games is conveniently swept under the rug with this one.
There are definitely some things that bother me about this game though, particularly the graphics. I know I touched on this before, but I can't get over how weird some of the alien races look. Even the Asari (aside from Peebee) all seem to have this weird, dopey/sleepy look to them that grates on me.
Why do they all look like this? It's such a strange, pointless departure from the original games.
I still hate the Angara more, though. They look like the result of a bad plastic surgery.
I've spent some time working on these colliding nodes some more, and they are better now.
I've tweaked some of the collision variables so that the bumps aren't as harsh, and made them more prone to being pushed around a bit by others.
Each node is a simple state machine right now, where one state is idle (the node appears orange) and the other is actively moving towards a randomly chosen target (the red dots, which are unique to each node).
Oh, and the nodes can bump up against the water surface now too, and leave a little ripple!
Here's another snapshot of the project I'm working on. So far, this is working about as I want - though I left it running for a while just to see what happens, and came back to a massively dropped framerate, so I'm assuming there's something wrong with it.
I'll have to test it more tomorrow, I guess!
I won't spoil the story for Life Is Strange: True Colors, but tonight I played through a section where the Haven community puts on a LARP for one of the town's kids, Ethan, and man was that touching.
This game is really great so far. It might be my favorite Life Is Strange game by the time I'm finished with it - thought Tell Me Why, which I consider an unofficial Life Is Strange game, is also right up there.
Check out these beauties.
I wanted to make some Rice Krispy Treats tonight, but we didn't have enough cereal. So I did the next best (okay, better) thing, and made chocolate chip cookies.
They turned out great!
It's a bummer when you're working on a project and your development time is limited. I find myself in that position a lot lately, and one of the best remedies I have is to keep my mind focused, even when I can't actually spend time working.
I usually pick a problem I'm working on and spend time thinking about it while I'm doing other mindless tasks, like cleaning the dishes or taking out the trash. If I have time, making sketches of things can also help.
That way, when I get back to my dev machine, I'm ready to get to work again - rather than spending a bunch of time reorienting myself.
Psychonauts 2 was a bit longer than I thought it was - which is great - but I'm on the last bit now and with that game almost behind me, I had to get a new one started. I mentioned this the other day - that game is Life Is Strange: True Colors.
I'm a pretty big fan of the series now, even though my play-through of the second game is on hiatus for now. They're really the closest thing you can get to a playable show without the entire thing being pre-recorded FMV. I like that they aren't that though, because it's fun to take things in at your own pace, and explore the game's world on your own. It also feels less on-rails, even when it's not.
So anyway, the latest game, True Colors, is pretty good so far. The story is interesting and the characters are believable. I've actually had some pretty good laughs at the humorous bits.
It's a little disappointing that the game runs at only 30 fps on my Xbox Series X, but you stop noticing it after a while (as long as you don't play something at 60+fps just before jumping in). It's a beautiful game, though.
Between this and Psychonauts 2, I've been getting a heaping helping of incredible Unreal Engine games lately.
I'll have more to say about this game later, I'm sure. For now though, being only a couple of hours in, I'm impressed.
I've been digging into the actual game-y parts of this project lately... in my notebook.
In the meantime, I've been working on improving my shader skills, and have employed a few of them in the existing parts of this project, which means - you guessed it - another update to my background imagery.
You can't really tell from the GIF, but I'm employing a shader to blur the entire background, since it's not meant to interfere much with the water, which is where the game takes place.
I've also re-worked the clouds once more, adjusting the way the blending works (which is still a procedural surface, created from a few layers of cloud noise adding/multiplying), so it now relies on a shader to blend the alpha, which gives me more control over the thickness and edge definition.
I'd like to add some more functionality to that later, so I can change the cloud coverage on the fly, and maybe add some sort of fakey depth effect. We'll see.
One final note: the speed changes in the simulation shown in the GIF are being done in-game, and not as a post edit. I added a debug button that, when pressed, speeds up virtually everything in the game (save for a few un-pictured elements). I might leave that in as a feature, if it proves useful (and practical to keep) in the final game.
Join me as I juggle three games - Psychonauts 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Life Is Strange: True Colors - all at once!
To be fair, I'm just about done with Psychonauts 2. Still, I'll probably try to complete it and collect everything once I've beat the story, so... plenty of ground to cover still.