drjavi

Devlog: setbacks and damage control

I have zero improvisation skills. Whenever something unexpected happens, I always freeze in panic before I can start solving anything. I need a plan to function. I learned that for my comics and I have learned it now for videogames.

I haven't been able to get any proper progress done for weeks because I wrongly assumed that level design wouldn't be that hard, if I knew which key details were important for the story. Yeah, it turns out that it very much is that hard. I can't just throw p...

Devlog: main buildings

I was hoping to post a video of the initial bits of the first level soon, but things got complicated. I'll post that as soon as possible. In the meantime, here are some details of Cornamenta.

Devlog: outskirts of Cornamenta

I have been working on the outskirts area and the city wall of the first level and it's looking pretty good. The process was too trivial for a set of devlogs, but I'll post a short gameplay video as soon as possible. The last things to add are a city guard, the golem and a switch to open the entrance portcullis (it would be automatic, but that's a neat way to teach the player about switches). Time to program the golem's AI!

2023-12-23 14:40:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Devlog: the mechanical guard

Nov 21

I've spent all day trying to figure out a way to fix the gates, since disabling a wall collider can cause NPCs to fall off the world. After trying a lot of different ways and making a complete mess of my code, I found out that there's an add_collision_exception_with method that does exactly what I needed. Now I have to undo everything I did today and try again. But that's okay. Mistakes are necessary. Failure is how we learn.

Dec 06

This is a mess. I've b...

Devlog: distortion, colliders and teleportation

Nov 12

I added a distortion shader to be applied to a screenshot of the game whenever the player dies and teleports to the latest checkpoint. It was really easy to program: first, capture the current viewport image and apply it as the texture of an interface panel. Then, simply distort the UV textures with a couple of gradually increasing sines, and that's it. Whenever the game needs the effect, a signal is captured by the HUD and the algorithm plays.

2023-11-19 10:11:26 +0000 UTC View Post

Devlog: shockwaves and trails

Nov 08

I added the shockwave and trail visual effects. The former is simply an uncapped Godot cylinder with a gradient texture, such that the top cap rotates outward while the bottom cap expands lineally to meet it. The trail is a hand-made mesh, extended frame by frame with the global position of the hammer tip bone, such that each slice gradually shrinks and disappears after a set time. I certainly didn't expect to get both effects done in just a few hours. This was almost anticlima...

Vero bumps to the buck to the bump to the bass

Art process of this image: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Vero-bumps-to-the-buck-to-the-bump-to-the-bass-992757861

Devlog: Cornamenta

Cornamentans like to build their houses on cliffs. Would you live here?

It's a giant ram gargoyle. It does not look like anything else.

I might have gone a little overboard.

2023-11-05 09:09:46 +0000 UTC View Post

Devlog: dialogue, hitboxes and level design

Oct 15 bis

The health display works perfectly. I learned Godot's signal system to let the character communicate any health changes to the HUD, and atlas textures to use different regions of a sprite sheet. Also, for some reason, Godot is very afraid of integer divisions and requires that the programmer manually reassures it that shhh, it's okay, it's safe to divide integers.

Oct 16

I have a bad cold (again), but I managed to get the action icon and most of the basics for...

Devlog: ray casting, face expressions and grabbing

Oct 08

Learning how to cast rays and shapes took quite long, but now the program detects places where Ternera shouldn't stand or which Ternera can climb. I had to fuse the "air" and "hang" states, as the latter could only be entered after detecting a ledge on the former, and that's data I can't send between states. Now the "air" state is gigantic, but I'll try to clean it up as best I can.

Oct 09

The air state is complete and it works perfectly.

2023-10-15 17:07:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Devlog: state machine, attack and combat

Oct 02

I had to modify my soft blending code to allow for nested state machines, but Ternera can now equip and unequip her hammer, and her walking and jumping animations adapt accordingly.

The idle animations now work perfectly. I had to figure out a way to read the elapsed time of whichever animation is currently active, which I used to time events - because I can't be arsed to manually save 60+ animations as Godot files one by one when I don't know if any changes will be neede...

Devlog: camera, motion and states

Sept 27

We have camera controls. I'm not sure how to map it to the controller, since a joystick can only control pitch and yaw or distance and yaw, but not all three things at once. Maybe I can use the shoulder triggers. I must also allow the player to use the mouse to control the camera, if they don't have a controller.

Sept 28

Mouse camera is now fully operational and the player's movement adapts to the position of the camera. By trying to keep the camera controls as c...

Devlog: First steps, mesh, blending and shaders

Sept 21

GLB files don't properly save which character animations should loop and I spent days trying to fix that issue via code, which was doable but highly inefficient and inappropriate. Yesterday I learned that Godot automatically loops all animations whose name ends in '-loop', so today I sanitized Dame Ternera's Blender file, ensuring that all 60+ animations are properly key-framed and labeled, and removing all leftover garbage animations from the file. Now it takes 10 se...

CowHammer reset

As you might have heard, Unity recently shot itself in the foot and everyone is jumping ship, me included. That means that I have to start all the code for the game from scratch, saving my algorithms as best I can.

I'll be taking my game to Godot, as it's open source and I expect we can trust it not to get greedy. This is already proving to be a greater challenge than I expected, because there's much more other than just the code that I have to change.

But I will get there. CowHam...

Misbegotten Kittens 5 page arrangement

Back in business! Chapter 5 is fully scripted, sketched and ready to ink. I hope to work both on the comic and on CowHammer during summer break.

Chapter 5 designs

A few references for character that will appear in chapter 5 of Misbegotten Kittens.

Lazy Sunday

Drawing timelapse of one of my pictures. The final result can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Lazy-Sunday-959359213

Dame Ternera's state machine

I laugh at the naïvety of my past self, who thought programming a videogame character's state machine would be a simple task. It's been months and I'm still nowhere near done. Fortunately, design patterns are very useful when creating code that needs to expand without becoming impossible to handle. So I present to you a gross oversimplification of Dame Ternera's control state machine.

Gut punch

That falling animation needs some work, but I wanted to test the HUD and the immunity frames.

Ternera smash

I added a trail and a shockwave to the attack move. Everything was handcrafted and procedurally generated because I'm old school and I don't trust Unity's built-in tools. Maybe I should write a devlog explaining how I made them, along with the state machine powering our cow dame. Would you like me to?

Rainad and Erato

Drawing timelapse of one of my pictures. The final result can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Rainad-and-Erato-948381995

Too bouncy

I may have made a mistake.

Even cuter

Drawing timelapse of one of my pictures. The final result can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Even-cuter-946266804

Rosie

Drawing timelapse of one of my pictures. The final result can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Rosie-945867041

Weapon impact test

F*ck this particular dummy character.

Naga

Drawing timelapse of one of my pictures. The final result can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Naga-945307861

Noodle and Doodle

Drawing timelapse of one of my pictures. The final result can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Noodle-and-Doodle-944380676

Ly and Hortensia

Drawing timelapse of one of my pictures. The final result can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Ly-and-Hortensia-943824117

Clafoutis aux pommes

Drawing timelapse of one of my pictures. The final result can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Clafoutis-aux-pommes-942048616

(The dough also contains 50 ml of milk, I forgot to write it)

Toon shader

I might have spent more time programming a video editor to get this preview than making the shader itself.