Introductions

Abnoctarium is a team of 2 artists, Noahh and Volesus, who are both learning about programming in unity and game development in general! 

You can find our art on twitter at https://twitter.com/abnoctarium

Concept

The rough concept for our game is an RPG-inspired adventure game that meshes mechanics of classic RPG genre with bullet hell spell slinging. We hope to make one introductory scene, one 'dungeon' exploration focused map, and one intense boss battle! The theme of the game is exploration in the vast world of Batoea, a world inhabited predominantly by dragons.

Day 1

We've decided to blend Unity's 2D tools with a few extra plug-ins, Fungus for character narration and BulletML for enemy attack spells. We are still learning how to do all of these things, because all of them are new to us. For now, we're building a bare bones prototype with very few drawn assets in order to make sure the mechanics of the game work first! This does mean that I can share our lovely placeholder images : ^ )

our terrifying boss monster

our protag, Noy (as a cat)

A very rough mockup of our beginning area,

And Noy's idle animation!

Today we finished the beginning campground base coding and conversation events, player idle animation and player movement/camera movement.

Tomorrow will be coding the scene transition, a prototype for a parallax background and laying down some code for enemies. See you all in day 2!

Day 2

Prototyping continues! Today we created some new scenes, added scene changes to make sure they transitioned correctly, fixed some camera issues and started making our movement patterns for our boss. All our initial conversations are written and coded, so our quest giver spawns the scene change block that will let our player leave the first area and venture into the forest for her. We also coded the basis of a parallax background, so that the journey into the woods area will provide a view of the jungle down below!

And here are some snippets from conversations at the camp, and a look at the rough sketches for our portraits!

We'll see everyone in day 3!

Day 3

Ran into some problems with Unity versions and compatibility @---@ and then ran into more problems while trying to convert our project from 2018 to 2019 versions. Luckily figured it out and managed to not lose anything in the process, but it took a few hours to puzzle out because the version of fungus that was being used didn't like the transition much.

Thus not much coding on my end today, Vol worked more on the final boss' code and making sure all the bullets he spawns doesn't crash the poor game.

Unfortunately, the game ended up crashing quite a bit anyways.

On my end, I worked on portraits instead! These are not quite finished, but have some almost-done portraits of our characters and a little bit of an intro to them!

Noy, our main protagonist. A rather secretive man who left his home in order to explore Batoea in search of a means to an end. Though he doesn't share much of what exactly it is he's looking for, he has managed to befriend a few people along his way. As an umbran dragon, he excels at magic, but also requires it as a food source.

Dior, a companion of Noy's. Not much for company, Dior tries to keep a low profile and stick to his business of turning hunted monsters into crafted weapons and other goods. Unfortunately, his natural charisma tends to draw people to him. As a fire dragon, his body acts like a powerful nuclear engine, and poses real risk of a meltdown if he overheats.

Kudzu, a companion of Noy's.  A professional at surviving and tracking in any environment, her skills begin and end with anything that involves physically moving. Good natured, friendly, and a little dumb, Kudzu tends to be the optimist in a group of pessimists (who would prefer the term 'realists').  As a plant dragon, she is extra energetic when the sun comes out, but suffers a dip in energy when it gets too cold.

Iris, a companion of Noy's.  A woman of few words, Iris tends to come off as cold and dismissive, though she is just thoughtful and withdrawn. This tends to create misunderstandings with those she would like to befriend. She has forged a strong bond with Kudzu, who rarely leaves her side. As an ice dragon, she is slow moving, but extremely hardy.

???

See you all in day 4!!

Day 4&5

More debugging, more tweaking and some additional features in this prototype!

We ran into some problems with pixel per unit ratio and unity, which we solved with the help of a fancy pixel-specific camera add on and some tweaking to our import settings. We have the beginning of a save system implemented now! Unfortunately it can't load save files yet, as we haven't made it function with the scene manager.... yet. That will be tomorrow's goal.

Vol also got some more coding done on the final boss AI and bullet patterns, which now don't crash the game anymore!! : D

On my end, I coded some enemy scripts onto some placeholder sprites. I got all 3 of our enemies into the game and they do what they're supposed to-- aside from this bug, when I had the rigidbody set to dynamic by accident. Noy just sort of punched them into space, what with the walls having no colliders yet LMAO

We just have a few things left to code into the game, and then we can stick it all together and start balancing the prototype.. and THEN we can start making some real art to dress it all up! The remaining coding elements involve making a start screen, the scene load function, finishing up the boss encounter and the cutscene that precedes him, and coding our player combat controls (which we are still deciding on the exact mechanics of at present). 

@---@ Till next time!!

It's very nice seeing a project that's getting so much effort put into it in this jam. After seeing some of the submissions so far, I can tell yours is going to be one of the best.