sgthale

Liminal v0.1 Pre-Release

It's here! I played it with several groups of friends and it was pretty fun! It's not meant to be a multiplayer game strictly speaking but if you and a buddy decide to join at the same time you will spawn together. This is a temporary feature to stress test some things. The game will continue to receive updates, entities, biomes, and items! Game will go live publicly (without Patreon in 2 weeks). Supporters will keep receiving these early releases.

The goal is to reach and find an exit....

Preparing for Public Release #2 part 4

Dawn before release! (Friday June 24th).

I am doing the final touches for the game and also finished the first pass of the UI.

I went for a sort of polaroid + scribble aesthetic. There menu button sounds are very spooky-ly done by Calpico. At the moment there is only one level (level 0, the famous yellow wallpaper type backroom), but I added support for other levels in the near future. Th...

Preparing for Public Release #2 part 3

Devpost was delayed by a couple days because I was out of town for a weekend.

The first beta is upon us! It will be released for Patrons on Friday June 24th! Afterwards it will be released publicly on itch.io after a thorough play with everyone. Once it is released publicly I expect to have hundreds of players intermittently playing in total (not at the same time) and thus the server map will be full of people trying to reach the exit.

The game is now significantly harder and you ...

Preparing for Public Release #2 part 2

I am implementing more room generation variety.

There will not just be blocky boring yellow wallpaper rooms. I will keep the rest as a surprise but as an example, there are now rainy rooms.

Each "biome" has its own unique characteristics and game mechanics. There are some spooky ones and others are benign. You may find things that are unique to these places.

There is also a new enti...

Preparing for Public Release #2 part 1

Now that the trail is out, I have been working on more features and increasing the difficulty of the entities in the maze. I am planning to release the next public release sometime this June. There will be 1 online tool that you will be able to use to help others. More details on that later this month.

I am also adding another entity. It will be mostly kept a surprise but I will talk about the technical details that had to be done to implement it.

Mirrors!

Mirrors have been ...

Liminal Trailer

Watch here: https://rumble.com/v16ivmh-liminal-trailer.html?mref=wzgks&mc=78s3x

Preparing for Public Teaser

There is now enough material and content for me to launch a new Youtube/Rumble channel and show off the video. The teaser campaign will be similar to Viva where I will upload videos once in a while to tease new content. The first one will show the many new effects that I describe today. Namely:

1.) The map generation overhaul is now complete and the game now generates interesting new rooms with varied architecture, different ceiling heights, and large warehouse like rooms. There will be...

Lighting Revamp part 3

I'm almost done integrating the new lighting system into the game. However I've also worked on some new map generation changes and assets.

To start, I modeled and painted an exit door sign.

This is the only object you need to know surely exists. It is scattered randomly for you to find to move to the next level or hub. As I said a while back, there will be "hubs" in between or within exis...

Lighting Revamp part 2

5 compute shaders and several hours debugging the system and I'm proud to say that it is looking very promising for use in the game!

As I said in the previous devpost, I needed a way to have sexy better looking lighting. Unity does not offer a realtime global illumination solution so I had to build my own from scratch. It was a bit complicated but it works very well.

As I stated as well, the new GI system works by randomly sampling the map and then denoising the result to prod...

Lighting Revamp part 1

I received some feedback from the game. The online server is offline for now. One of the things that I took into consideration is having more variety of rooms. As it stands, the room generation is pretty cool but the novelty wears off too fast. Also, the pacing of the game is far too fast paced and so any semblance of slowly built up horror was lost in the running and quick movements. Running is okay, but normally people aren't running all the time.

This is one of the challenges with tr...

Liminal v0.1 Public Alpha

I wont' tell you much about the game other than it is spooky and there is an ending goal. See if you can survive! You may run into other people in the game.

Have fun!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vjprQvut62xXFO48AtlHJ3bjV6nMTzBy/view?usp=sharing

Liminal v0.1 Tomorrow!

The Backrooms game has been named "Liminal"

I will drop the game file for Supporter Tiers to download. The game is functional and requires an internet connection to drop into the Backrooms universe. 4/30/2022 9PM CST. If you can't make it to that time, the server will remain opened for a day afterwards so you can jump in at anytime then.

Stay tuned!

Network Progress Part 4

Apologies for the day late dev post, I've been furiously updating my game to conform to a new network API standard. There are a few new cool things to show off.

First up is the work in progress logo for the game. I've decided to call the game "Liminal" though it is subject to change as someone informed me that "Superliminal" already exists. Though the name is too good and fitting to pass up!

2022-04-29 05:10:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Network Progress Part 3

Weird I posted this devpost but it didnt upload. Trying again.

The past few days I worked on a blood system and updating the networking API.�

The blood system is very cool. There will be several ways of dying. At the moment there is only 1 way in which you bleed to death from your neck. The cool part is that the blood will remain in the server for others to see. Im working on also having the corpse persist. Here's a WIP gif.

2022-04-23 06:15:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Network Progress Part 2

I finished another entity (you'll have to find it around), and also did a TON of work on the networking backend. To recap, I wanted to implement the type of networking used like in Dark Souls where players leave blood stains from previous playthroughs. Of course this is not going to be used only for blood stains. It will be used for leaving behind items or previous interactions.

I have plans to allow players to use tape, or a marker, or some kind of rope for guiding players (...

Network Progress Part 1

The game is coming along very well and I expect to have enough time to add one more entity into the test for this end of the month. We will all jump in at roughly the same time and see how the game feels. Since it's a networked game there is a chance (though small) of us running into each other. It will be fun.

I bought some cheap player model on Unity as a placeholder for the player and I also implemented first person body so you can see your body as you run and move.

I'm still s...

The Challenge with The Backrooms

Long post today! Making an effective game based on the Backrooms is difficult for 2 big reasons:

1.) It demands random level generation

2.) It must be realistic

I sat down roughly a week ago and thought of a way to come up with a good solution that would satisfy these two conditions. The tools I'm using is Unity and HDRP, and had great success!

Random Level Generation

The Backrooms prides itself on having maze like rooms with lots of duplication ...

Next project also OpenViva news!

10 years ago, Notch from Minecraft would release updates for Minecraft in a very unique way, Secret Friday Updates. This method of disseminating new game content provided the Minecraft community with an adventure to figure out how and what new things have been added. The idea of making a game in a similar fashion stuck with me for a long time. Until now.

For the majority of people in The Backrooms that don't escape, the ones whose only way out is going further in, how would they surviv...

The Last Release v0.9.3

This is an addendum to the previously released v0.9 version. I managed to fix a bunch of bugs and also smooth out some gameplay. I added some new features such as playing with a ball, chicken cooking, basic construction, and feeding strawberries. However, with this release I have decided to end Viva today. Download available on https://shinobuproject.itch.io/game

Since 2017 I had a vision with Shinobu at the hei...

Viva v0.9 Trailer Release

There were a few complications with the release. But it has been scheduled for March 27th. Some previous beta Supporter testers have given me a list of things to fix before release.

Stay tuned!

Dawn before Release

No devpost today as usual, the last few days before release are just bugfixes and clean up.

Stay tuned for release March 12th!

Final Polishes for Re-Release Part 5

Devpost today is short as I'd like to keep the launch surprises, surprises. However there were some tweaks and improvements I can show off.

Besides mostly focusing on bugfixing, polishing, and physics item handling, I made sure that characters can use the knife. As well as players.

By giving characters the knife and a chicken, they will butcher the chicken themselves to get chicken legs.

<...

Final Polishes for Re-Release Part 4

I returned some older behaviors to bring it up to date to v0.8.

This includes give commands (they give you items).

Also I finished the chicken achievement which will be the central goal for release. Once you have chickens, you can kill them with the knife to get chicken legs:

You can then cook them in the oven:

2022-02-27 04:40:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Final Polishes for Re-Release Part 3

Some more work was done on existing features. Walking was slightly tweaked to feel better as well as running.

I did however forgot to finish a behavior I had animations for. You can now feed characters by directly giving them food. This is only enabled for small foods like strawberries but you can mod it to whatever. Including weird props like live chickens.

The onsen is functional again ...

Final Polishes for Re-Release Part 1

Slight postponing for re-release because I have no internet (Can't upload large files, currently tethering) till my ISP sets up service where I am. Now aiming for March 12th ish. Regardless I'll use the extra 12 days to hone in some more mod friendly platforming.

As for Viva, the book is back and now provides you with an invaluable task list so you know what to do. This list is better than the old version because it now also provides descriptions and images for each task so it's easier ...

Preparing for Re-release part 1

There is now enough content for a youtube video. I've decided to re-release v0.9 (but with some polished game mechanics) along with the video. This will happen this month.

It's kind of a GRAND RE-OPENING but for Viva as a game. The original v0.9 release was rushed. I've been taking in some more advice and have decided to remove arms from the players (both VR and keyboard). NPC Characters will of course remain with their limbs in tact but the player will have the old style floating hands...

Beta Pre-Release v0.9.11

Code: "chickens".

This beta has a pre-made save state for you to load to try out the new beta features. Simply open the game and load "beta" in the sessions list.

What you can do:

Try out the new hammer tool and try to build a small structure to reach lemons. If you are in VR, grab the planks and hit them with your hammer 3 times to freeze or unfreeze. Grabbing planks in VR is a bit...

Preparing for YouTube Trailer Part 4

I have a lot of changes today. Good content coming in.

Starting off with the small ones.

Firstly, I managed to improve the movement of players and characters. I noticed that there was a slight stutter when running and it made things very clucky feeling, this has been addressed and movement is now much smoother.

Also, chickens have better egg laying mechanics. You will have to capture them and then pet them for eggs.

2022-01-25 08:35:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Tech Research: Grabbing Box Shapes

Today's devpost is going to be a tech research post which are typically lengthy technical posts about implementing certain features. Search the "tech research" tag for other older ones.

At this point in the game I've been using cylinders to allow your model to interact with objects in a realistic fashion. This works perfectly for things like poles and small capsule like items. However, many objects are not of a cylindrical nature and thus there was a need to expand the types of shapes y...

Preparing for YouTube Trailer Part 3

Somewhat of a big update today. First off, eggs can break like older versions. So be careful when handling them now! Also the same character behaviors are available for when an egg splats on a character:

There are also new props for an upcoming recipe and character feature. Basically I'd like to work on the ability for characters to have picnics. This will involve cooking things and bringing th...