#dev blog updates

[funkin-news]

funkin blog update!!: THANK YOU ERIC

lots of good stuff in this one :) i highly recommend reading the original blog post itself, there's so much juice that tumblr won't let me put all the juice in one post

but for the sake of tradition, summary ⬇️

so. been a while yeah

they've been working on a lot of stuff that's secret/under NDA/for a different update so they couldn't share any of that on the blog

while they've had instances of people having little things they could and wanted to talk about, they couldn't just put out a post that's like one paragraph and leave it at that lol

so, eric is now going to show us some stuff! yay!!

remember this?

well, eric's been working on rebuilding the chart editor from the ground up!

he's also been pulled aside occasionally to work on other stuff (redo input system, get cutscenes working, redo scoring, work on thing that was blacked out because NDA but when i clicked it i got this video, fix issues with gamepad)

ok now put this song on while you continue reading ⬇️

and now... the chart editor is COOLER!

now featuring:

chart isn't divided into sections to scroll through anymore, just one long scroll

opponent is always on the left and player is always on the right, no weird flips

waveforms under the character icons! you can see those!

icons can be clicked to change the character

measure ticks on the left (that thing that looks like a ruler!)

note preview on the further left

video-player-like controls at the bottom for the song

oh, and it's now powered by HaxeUI instead of Flixel UI, which allows for these toolbox windows:

and neat tools like this, which lets you set offsets for each of the tracks:

this new chart editor's toolbar has all kinds of neat stuff, like these!

for the third pic: "The Window menu. No the screenshot isn't cutting anything off you're imagining things." 🤨

there's more but at this point you might just wanna go read the original post

FNFC files - new standard for making charts! contains the chart data, including the audio files!

LOTS of new keyboard shortcuts for the editor too!

also a live input mode, where you can place notes at wherever the playhead currently is by pressing WASD/⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️

what that means is you can tap out some notes as the song plays and then proofread them after!

this is the part where i'd put another video because there's another one, but tumblr only lets me put one, so... go read the original post i guess

SONG EVENTS FEATURE! you see that ninth strumline on the right? anything put there doesn't show up as notes for either player, but instead runs a chunk of code at the given time

right now the only built-in events are camera control and getting a character or stage prop to play an animation, but modders are probably gonna have a field day

another video! i already forgot i can't add more than 1. damn you tumblr.

also, it, like, never crashes!

except for when it does!

[omeletcat]

I have had this joke stuck in my head for weeks now and i finally decided to crudely draw it i'm sorry y'all this is the peak of my comedy skills.

[ourloveiselectrifying]

OLIE MONTHLY UPDATE!!! :3

Hello everyone, sorry have been busy, I'm not going to be answering many asks because I wanna focus on the game! But I'll answer a few here and there until the updates out, then I'll just answer everything if I can >:))

Stuff I've been working on (Spoilers!!)

THAT DINGO IS ANIMATED !!!

I've mostly just been replacing the old sprites with the new ones! It's really neat! The old sprite was just a ton of different images that take up a silly amount of space and makes it tedious making new slightly different sprites as Kevin has two forms, 5 outfits, a helmet, will have various bodily fluids on him, ect. SO the new sprite is a composite, every similar to the MC customiser! We playing dress up with him :3

It's also great because I can quickly take any expressions or outfits and easily update them in the future when my art abilities improve!

Kevin's sprite is much more dynamic and expressive now :3 Have some happy Kevin wagging gifs

Most of the fav animals are in the screen/not hidden within other animals now!

Added a few small additions to the sprites

Sketching out new BGs & CGs

Updated a few keychains that I was unhappy with, here is two of them!

New logo/presplash that's a lil' animated!

Side images! Have a look it moves! (Only on the first sentence and then is static until Kevin's face is in shot/final sentence, then it hides!) Also bonus Kev upside down because idk how to code

Writing the routes and figuring out the story some more!

Working on the dream buddy a little more!

New textbox character icons

[last-sprout]

Last Sprout Dev Diary - Nov 22, 2024

Hello sprout folks! I'm Valerie, or @oneominousvalbatross, and I've been working on Last Sprout since July, and I'm wildly excited to share some of the things I've been working on with y'all.

Ignore that Twiggs' hat falls off that's natural.

I'm aiming for a Dev Diary once a week on Fridays, and I'm just gonna be giving a brief look into making a game! I'm learning how to do a lot of this stuff live, so I'm sure there'll be a ton of massive rewrites and changes. I have probably a dozen huge systems that are already built that I'm not going to be getting into in this post, since I'm already half a year or so into development, but I'm sure I will find space to include them later!

XP

I spent most of my time figuring out exactly how we wanted to represent XP in the world. We were pretty certain that we wanted XP to exist physically as a substance you picked up, so I started with a system from a previous build.

In that version, we just created a bunch of XP objects and scattered them into the world, then had some code that scooted them around. Of course, that means that we're tracking an individual unity GameObject for every single instance of a point of XP which is, uh, slow.

This is what we call 'suboptimal.'

So obviously we needed to not instantiate an entire transform every time we needed to spawn XP. Even if we re-used objects that would just be prohibitively expensive for an object that really just needs a position.

I'm not going to go over each step in the process, but after experimenting with GPU instancing to just draw a bunch of XP objects at once, eventually I landed on extending Unity's particle system, since it has a lot of the settings I wanted access to.

To make the XP move how I wanted, I wrote a pretty simple process that iterates through all the little blobs and checks how close they are to a designated collector, then uses an exponential decay function (with thanks to Freya Holmér) to make them move towards Twiggs.

I think every game should have an action that can be best summarized by making the noise 'SHWOOOOOP.'

Parrying

Parrying was a good deal simpler, but it still has its issues. Essentially, all a parry needs to be is a hitbox and an animation, with some callbacks to enemies to let them react to the parry. Whenever an attack hitbox intersects with either a Parrybox or a Hurtbox, it checks its tags to see if it's interacting with the appropriate entities, to makes sure enemies aren't hitting or parrying each other constantly. If it passes the test, it calls GetParried() on the intersecting object.

GetParried(), idiot.

For the basic behavior, parrying just interrupts the attack in progress and knocks the enemy back by a set amount, but there's room in the system to add all sorts of neat effects, which I'm sure we'll be taking advantage of in the future. It's been a challenge to juggle the various kinds of hitboxes, but it'll definitely be worth it going forward!

Of course, between all these bits there were a ton of bugfixes and little experiments, but that's a topic for a later dev diary!

[front-facing-pokemon]

[inkdragonworks]

June Update

Breaking the chain of not updating to talk about what I've been working on. As the absence of Poppin & Jupa here can tell, I switched projects back in April, to an older one I worked on for about 8 months in 2022. Main reason was feeling dejected a bit after the animation didn't do as well as I was expecting; been getting the impression that Tiera is more popular than them with folks lol.

Again I won't be cancelling it, or never working on PnJ, just switching focus so I can stay productive and make something that feels fun for me, which this has.

------------------------------

As a refresher, here's the game I've been picking at:

The game's current design can be broken down into:

intro sequence to introduce Tiera and the setting

initial puzzle + encounter to introduce the main mechanics

large hub in the form of Fragaria Park where you avoid the main threat, collect items, interact with side attractions, and access the 4 side areas

4 side areas, which have their own puzzles/challenges within with a primary goal at the end that progresses you towards the final escape

optional collectibles Since April I've worked on a part of the large hub, 3 of the 4 side areas, and the optional collectibles.

"Who works on optional stuff before the main game is done" well they play off of the main mechanics but mainly it's an excuse to draw something cute instead of programming.

These are Anna Banana and The Fruit Friends (Also Strawberry), characters from a cartoon show that Tiera likes (Except Strawberry).

They don't play any significant role/impact in the game (Besides Strawberry), but they reveal part of Tiera's interests, they form a small bit of the world's background, they make for fun type of collectible that gives something to do besides the main puzzles, and, again, I just felt like drawing cute shit.

------------------------------

For the hub, I worked on a themed side area dedicated to a playground. This does have puzzle elements in it, but a lot of it are silly interactions, and a reference to that cartoon I did a while back. Maybe you can recognize it here.

It's one of those "makes the setting feel more realized/fleshed out" deals.

------------------------------

For the side areas, what I've mainly been doing is settling on their exact design, blocking out the areas, and working on their puzzle sequence, obstacles, and any single screens that are tied to it.

Here's what I mean by "single screen":

Something that cuts away from the main game to it's own puzzle. This one here is for the performance theater. All graphics are placeholders just to get the logic in and see if it might work.

Making these type of puzzles is fun cause it reminds me the most of Resident Evil 1 and various flash adventure games I've played.

As for obstacles, a significant one I'm playing with for the theater is darkness, making use of Tiera's sonar to detect a safe path around deep pits.

She won't fall off right away, but it's tied to the same stamina system.

------------------------------

Another side area are the sewers, everyone's favorite video game setting. That obviously involves water, but the trickiest thing about it has been dealing with really complicated patterns of depth changing.

What that means is Tiera climbing up and falling down a lot, and trying to keep track of that. Here's what that looks like without proper graphics:

I'm very happy with how the area is turning out so far though, it's something you'd get to later and I think the puzzles do a good job of reflecting that progression.

------------------------------

The last side area I've poked at was the final sequence of the game. I've had a lot of different ideas of how to go about it but I think I'm happy with the set of them I have planned, something that builds up towards the climax and building off of what was set up in the rest of the game.

I wanna be careful about spoiling it, but here's one effect from it I've started work on:

------------------------------

I'm trying not to overshare here, though there's a lot more I've thrown into my server that I couldn't here. One of the side areas I haven't gotten to really pinning down is the Hedge Maze. I have a basic outline, but the main obstacle involved requires more dynamic logic. It's hard to settle on what that logic should be without set level design, and it's hard to settle on level design without knowing the limitations of that logic.

It's a similar issue with the main challenge of the game, both for the player and for designing: the ghosts.

What's intimidating is the feeling that they need to be very deliberate in this type of game, to balance between adding tension without veering into frustration. I'm hoping tackling everything surrounding them will make me more confident, but odds are I'll have to start with something simple and half-broken just to break the ice. And accepting I'll have to make something that gets thrown away, which I'm not used to doing... I really prefer thinking through stuff first before making it.

Anyway, thank you for reading.

[wishbonegame]

May update!

Honestly... not a ton of updates to report for May. I was traveling for half the month, and many of my days off were spent preparing for traveling. I will ALSO be traveling this month, but not for as long. Phew! I am looking forward to not traveling for a bit!

I have been plugging along implementing the biggest event for Summer Y1, though. It's got a total of... geeze, maybe 16 "segments"? That's across two branching paths and some segments are optional/very short, so it's not like you have to play through anywhere close to 16 unskippable map transitions in a row... but it's still a lot, and quite time-consuming to implement. MOST EVENTS ARE NOT LIKE THIS...

In any case, I expect to be done with the first fork of the two paths next weekend. And the second fork will go a lot faster because it reuses stuff from the first fork.

After this... well, there's still more Summer Y1 event stuff to do. And other little things! But it'll be nice to be done with this big event, at least...!

[glugslove]

Adding mechanisms like doors and bridges

you can also transform these with magic

[0enoth]

0enoth returns for the 32492384th time

Hello, yet again me, 0enoth answering some questions someone might have 👽.

Q: What even is a s0lavita and who even are you?

A: I'm the developer of s0lavita, it's a mainly surrealist and horror-ish & psychological rpg where you play as a (doomed) protagonist that meets wacky and weird people, such as "Chrom" "0enoth" "Vita".

You're introduced to Mors as a new caretaker, an observer of sorts, to be entretained by everything that happens. Mors will gladly tell you about herself.

She lives in an apartment complex with past hers' and people of paralel universes, they all have resorted to sell microplastics and computer parts to make a living, will Mors succumb too? Mors will show you around her art gallery, from there, you'll meet the in-game oenoth (that for some very normal reason and no hidden lore that you'll have to discover and put together) that for some reason you're very eager to meet, maybe you have unfinished business with them. Maybe not. Maybe you'll unlock hidden endings. Ah, after that, you'll play as "Chrom" and decide if to save her or not.

from there,you'll have different choices on what to do, that leading to different multiendings, including hints for the hidden ones.

(Keep reading if you're interested 👽 vorp!)

(Askbox open)

Q: Who is who?

Depending on the player's (YOU!!!!!) decided route, Chrom will grow fond of Mors, or not.

A: Chrom is a pale woman with a hairbun. She's a scientist that has an interest for the sideeffects of sickness and experimenting on people. She is almost always in her home, she isn't fond of going out unless is utterly necessary.

0enoth is a phyisically androgynous male-ish humanoid creature that has half body missing and a "core" in the middle of their chest (s0lavita lore stuff). He tends to be always putting on a smiling persona, he's also Mors' friend and probably Vita's sworn enemy.

There's two more hidden character, one is from a future game, prequel to S0lavita.

I cannot describe who "Vita" is, it's major spoilers lol.

Q: Is there any sensitive imagery or topics?

A: There's only blood, body horror (Oenoth's lower body basically) for imagery, as for topics:

Suicide

Cannibalism (slightly discussed/metioned)

Attempted murder/ murder

Stabbing ⤴

Body horror (flesh lower body)

Blood

[funkin-news]

funkin blog update: "the funkblog with factorio references..."

the summary below does not include nerd stuff, if you like nerd stuff read the full blog (there is a lot of nerd stuff) (it is straight up called nerd stuff and put in its own box in the blog post)

⬇️

MORE chart editor stuff!! there is now playtesting and it has a lot of customization, from where you start to what you load👍

meet HAZEL, one of the funkin' crew members who hasn't written on the blog before toda... *checks date* ...yesterday!

hazel manages server stuff and has built the API for online leaderboards in fnf!

the way this is gonna work makes it so they don't have to rely on the game to do calculations, which minimizes bugs fumbling your score AND lets them check submissions server-side to see if there's any cheaters!

that's not all hazel's done: they've also made nifty tools and automations and fixes for the devs to improve and speed up the work process in the long run!

see this?

that's a lot of time, right? well now it looks like THIS!

there's now also a funkin' launcher for the testers! (the final game will not ship with a launcher)

hazel's also set up a single-sign on (SSO) service so you don't have a kghjpillion accounts for every different funkin-related thing: just one account for all things funkin!

based on your login, the download page for any development tools will list out all the ones you can access!

there is also the log viewer for devs:

MERCH UPDATE! the pin manufacturer has 400 pins left to send! here's 2000 of the sent ones!

pin shipping is starting with about 500 orders shipped this week and then likely ramping it up to 1000 orders shipped per week!

"These are estimates from our pin shipper... so if they are off we will make sure to kill him..."

[omeletcat]

I drew Fireboy and Watergirl in my pixel art style!!!!

[louieferhanil]

little thing i did today

[neonrain-dev]

October Report

Funny how this coincidentally turned into a bi-weekly update... Anyhow, the demo is getting wrapped up this weekend. Woah, that was fast, right? Thanks to my friends who joined forces to help me playtest, we caught every major issue, and their criticism of the builds they played has been super valuable in ensuring a great experience. All I have left to do are a few tweaks and fixing my poor English. A hefty amount of things have been added in that time, so here goes:

I made weird flesh nodes that give massive speed and jump power (I guess they’re like Sonic bumpers). A big criticism of the larger areas was that backtracking could result in some tedium, and these have greatly improved that. For some people, it even made those areas their favorite!

More set pieces!

Added nuggets of lore!

Improved the user experience in the menus!

That’s all for now. The next time I see you all, it’ll be on Vakrex itself. :)

[madhatter-artz]

nightshade dev log

so its been a hot sec, nightshade isn't abandoned we all just got busy, I had some personal stuff and I started a new job! but yes the game is making progress slowly we redid it so yay! have a syra sprite wip for ur troubles

[krimsonkatt]

Mr McFly

Another nightmare creature appearing from my dreams. He is a man with a fly face and a dapper suit who attacks with his two spiked tenceles coming from his twin bowties. These spikes pierce into his enemies, sucking out their soul to be captured and placed in The Cage. He is weak to smash and fire elemental attacks and appears as the midboss of Day 2 in Imprisoned Chain. I don't know what he's inspired by, but possibly by Dr Manfly from Terraria, the Buzzbound fangame/analog horror videos, and strangely enough the Behemoth boss from Castlevania Portrait of Ruin. (Mr McFly's tentacles mirror how Behemoth's spit out entrails move in PoR)

[inkdragonworks]

Hope you all had a nice Halloween! This was another quiet month for development. Started off finishing a round of updates to the cutscene editor, and importing it over to Fragaria Park for future use.

When I finally finished with that, I rounded off the final cutscene for Chapter 2, where Poppin and Jupa run into the main antagonists again. Came to the conclusion that one of them, Grab, needed a couple more poses.

I performed similar work with some NPCs, named Ruby and Topaz. They're miners you can talk to in Chapter 2. Something I really want to try doing with this game is having previous places update a little bit if you happen to backtrack through them, as a way to make it less boring and give a sense of time passing. For enemies this is a matter of swapping some in and out, but for NPCs, I'd like to update dialogue and portraits and such to reflect it.

Speaking of backtracking, I created a Tram that would take Poppin and Jupa around Snow Machinia... after they find a pass later on. Like the elevator it's meant to be a convenient way of getting around. I'm trying very hard to design the map so that navigation makes sense.

One other avenue of navigation, that I may have mentioned, are colored doors that zip you around the mountain. You can see one of them up above with the yellow door.

These doors are secret tunnels built by an underground race of robed cave dwellers (Jupa ends up calling them "Clock Twerps"). A route nearby has one of them running away and dropping the key to this door.

There's two other keys before this that allude to clock twerps dropping these keys and such, so I really hope the connection sticks. In other parts of the game there won't be so much emphasis on it, but you can presume one of these critters dropped a spare key. What they use them for and why they need them... you'll find out eventually!

And then I started on some enemies that are meant to populate the caves between future chapters/areas. This first one is Stalactmic, a bat with a microphone nose and speakers for ears. They shoot violent soundwaves that bounce around.

And then there's Mackerel The Knife, a lanky fish with sharp bones that it uses to attack prey. There's two variants: the one here that swims near the top of water, jumping out to attack. And then another you'd encounter while submerged underwater, that ends up spinning and bouncing around in place.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The theme last month was rounding out content for optional, post-chapter places, excluding the Tram which is a prominent part of Chapter 3.

Chapter 3 is pretty intimidating. Of the 7 chapters I have planned, while I don't know if it'll be the longest, it is the most varied in terms of locations. While it's nice to get a break from making rocks, I'm still not confident with tilesets and backgrounds and picking good colors for them.

I'm planning to keep picking at the Chapter 2 enemies and additional areas first this month. That *may* involve the return of Dr. Thurston, and finally giving you an idea of what his gameplay involves, but I may end up using momentum from enemy work to finish up the ones for Chapter 3, as well as completing Rickity's boss fight.

I didn't end up drawing as much as I wanted in October, and I have been thinking of finding a way to talk about Poppin and Jupa's world more, but I'm still on the fence. My current job is pushing us to get software certifications, so some of my time is dedicated to studying. I'd still like to keep pace with the game though; I never feel like I'm doing enough. Until then, thanks for reading.