Project Vault Dev log 018

Spooky month is just about at it's end now! This month seriously blew by in a second over here. Between BLFC and pet stuff, this ended up being quite a busy month for me. Thankfully I managed to get a decent chunk of progress in this month in regards to some new systems. One of the main things I was going to need in the game long term is a dialogue system and NPCs, so that was the major focus of the month. Ended up getting a great start on a new model for the first NPC, a goat mechanic found in Bod's home city! Likewise I got a working dialogue system that is pretty modular for me to build up NPC conversations!

Alright time for a few break downs on stuff that got worked on :3!

NPC Model: Can't have a dialogue system without some NPCs to talk to! Been working on modeling the very first NPC that Bod gets to talk to in the game. As part of the process for this I ended up creating a barebones template mesh that I can use as a starting point for future models and NPCs. I got through the majority of the blockout for the new NPC for now. Still going to be doing a bit of cleanup next month on my free time for her so that I can start working on rigging and textures. Here is a bit of a sneak peak of her concept art! Been getting some help on the side by some friends to help me get a look for some of the NPCs in the world!

Dialogue System: It's time to chat it up! Been working on getting a dialogue system working for Bod and NPCs throughout the world. One of the big things that is a core component of the game is Bod's relationship with the cities and world. There are going to be plenty of interesting people Bod meets during his adventure, so the ability to actually have communications with them is super important. For now I've roughed out the initial shape of the UI element and got it working with the current system! Thanks to it's modularity, I plan on adding some new features like Questions, Quests, ect for Bod to engage with down the road :3!

Inspection System: This one is pretty similar to the Dialogue system. I want Bod to be able to check out some things in the environments and world to get a bit of lore or info on the location. It's pretty simple for now but allows me to setup items all over that Bod can now interact with to learn stuff.

Shop Rehaul: Another thing that I've really needed to do is finally fix up the store system. With all of the work I did to the inventory system months ago, a lot of things broke in my poor store. So a bit of cleanup has now been done to make sure it works more efficiently now! Likewise I played around with the layout for it a bit so that it's more in line with my UI sketches.

Gravity Eye Enemy Sketches: Starting doodling up some concept stuff for the next enemy getting added into the game, the Gravity Eye. It's going to be a stationary camera like enemy that Bod will find in the ruins. Although not super dangerous by itself, it will have a couple of delaying tactics that it uses on Bod if he is spotted. Trying to grab bod and dropping slow down zones across the map are 2 or the main tactics it will use to try and slow down Bod so that more dangerous Restless can get to him in the ruins.

New levels: Got in a bit of work building up 2 new levels for testing. The first was a 5th stealth training level that focuses on floor panels and environment. Designed to teach the player to watch out for various environmental hazards or things that could give Bod away. The 2nd level built is the 2nd Salvage Level. This type of level is an exploration focused one that plays around with verticality. Both of them still need a bit of a cleanup pass and some play time from me to see what things are working or not.

Next month and the next 5 months: So at the moment October is the last month in my current stretch of game dev goals! This means that I'm on to a completely new chunk of monthly projects to keep updating the game. I'm also at a point where I feel I've gotten a lot of the initial prototyping done, so I'll be starting to move into pre production now on the final game. There is still a lot of enemies/mechanics still left to work on, so those are very much going to continue being a focus. But a decent chunk of my time is going to start going towards actually building levels and prototyping the actual game world now. This starts off with a bit of a cleanup month in November. I've got a ton of prototype meshes, models, textures that I've created for the sake of testing a mechanic.... that really need to get finished. So I'll be spending a month on actually bringing them to a polished level that I would be happy with in the final game!