[The Hive] Weekly Report #2

Warning ! Don't open and scroll on these posts if you want to keep the surprise for the demo.

Like the Hive? Then you'll like Personalias, the writer of the game! Check out his work here : https://www.patreon.com/personalias/posts or here : https://www.deviantart.com/personalias

Latest batch of work on the Hive !

I started by doing some expressions for Ms.Sato and working on her eyes animation.

Now that I'm used to it, it's a bit faster to do these kind of things. I also redesigned the mouths for June and Doctor Lang. The mouths were a little bit too open so it was looking goofy when a character was done talking. Their mouth expressions will be more subtle, like the ones for Sato.

And after that...the layered images. My personal hell for 3 to 4 hours.

These lines of code allow me to control the pose, outfit and expression of the character. Instead of calling a picture while in the engine, I simply have to type the name of the character, then choose all the groups and attributes. I also defined a special attribute with an animation for the eyes.

For example, calling june in a dress would be : june dress_01 (the first pose with this dress), angry (expression), mouth_open, eyes_anim

The great thing is that it save space in the game folders, since you don't need full bustsets, only small portions of a picture to change expressions.

The second great thing is that's it's completely modular ! To change the eyebrows, the mouth or the eyes position, you just have to rewrite the attribute.

For now, I have three characters set up : June, Doctor Lang and Sato since they will be the only ones to appear in the game so far.

Another really cool thing that took a ton of time to figure out was the point and click mechanics.

I wanted backgrounds to be interacted with. The first interaction with a background happens right after June get up and wait for Doctor Lang to arrive.

And here's the result ! Of course it's still a placeholder. But you can see two clear objects in the background. They have an idle and hover state (which mean a blue outline appears when you pass your mouse on it).

Clicking one of the item get a reaction (here showing a picture, showing dialogue)

Like for the layered images, the process to get there is incredibly frustrating. But experiencing it in game after so many failed attempts is really rewarding.

And finally, I continued implementing more dialogue. Doctor Lang finally make her entrance.

There's a video file in the attachments so you can see what the game look like when it's running with sound and animation. Hope you'll like it !

Next week I'll be on break, so I won't be working on the game. I plan to have the prototype with the introduction done by mid-October. What's probably going to take the most time are the five backgrounds needed for the introduction.