Hey yall, I'm gonna be making a 2D side scrolling game about what a dog would see in a wolf, kind of based on a comic that I'm pretty sure I read a few weeks ago that I may dig up and post later. My goal is to have everything handled with three buttons, left, right, and one general interact key, which will be used to do things like climb on top of a table, knock over a trash can, dig through said trash, etc. This means that most of the heavy lifting of the game will be animation, which is absolutely not my forte, but you know, it's a learning experience, and hey, look at this walk cycle

which feels like a good first step (might fiddle with it later).

So I'll be posting this super informal devlog here. See yall tomorrow.

this is a really good start! your dog looks lovely so far.

I've been out all day, so I just got a chance to get back to work a bit ago, but I'm happy to report I think I've got the camera system operating how I want it!

It's a nice smooth scrolling camera that leads the player by a constant tied to a script argument, which means that I can have the camera lead the player further during the more oppressive scenes in the game (so that it hides what's behind you).

Next up is climbing, which will work by deleting the player when they interact with a climbable block, running a pre-animated sprite, and then creating the player on top of the block. The two big hurdles here are

one: the climbing animation, as animation is not my strong suit, and

two: A visual indicator that an object is interactable. A have a few ideas for this, one being that when the player is within the interaction range of an object, some visual queue is thrown (an exclamation point above your head, or maybe the object will glow orange). The other option is to take the mirrors edge route, and have interactable objects be chromatically distinct from their surroundings, ie. a red tablecloth on a climbable table, red mushrooms on a climbable log, have the trash can you can knock over be red, etc. Not sure which direction I'm gonna go on this one, as there are pros and cons for either.

http://galleytrot.tumblr.com/post/154905845020/lie-close-laura-said-pricking-up-her-golden oh and here's the comic I mentioned, that this game is going to be roughly based on. Dogs as analogue to body horror. It's a good time.

Added a falling sprite and other minor animation tweaks, and I've also got a basic dialogue system running! So that's all cool.

Tomorrow I'm going to further implement the dialogue system to allow for a basic back and forth as well as some sprite you fall into whenever a conversation is happening.

Currently, it just works that a dialogue box will destroy itself whenever the interact key is hit, but I'd like to establish some linked list of events that will pop dialogue boxes back and forth over the player and the dialogue object.

i really love your animations!! i'm super lazy and fully animating sprites is one of the most daunting parts of a project for me, so i'm always interested in seeing other people's animations. i'm already impressed with how yours have turned out! i also like the exclamation point as an interactivity indicator a lot. whenever my cats (or friends' dogs) see something they're interested in, i imagine a lil exclamation point popping up over their heads.

Boy it's been a long couple of days, intersession classes starting up again and all that, so I really only got a chance to get back to working on this, like, an hour ago, but in that time I changed the functionality of my print text script to allow for back and forth with dialogue:

It's weird, I think the way I implemented this was a lot like how I'd work in C++, my native tongue, my lingua mater, which meant that I was able to get it done pretty quick, even though I was probably jumping through more hoops than I needed to (gosh I miss infinitely compounding data structures).

It doesn't look like anything right now, but the player object is dropping into a separate dialogue state here, which means that I can set the dialogue sprite as soon as I actually make one. I'm pretty sure that it'll look like Shelby sitting on her haunches, but I'm not sure if she'll be facing the background or to the side.

Got the sitting sprite set up, and I finally decided to put in a non-scrolling background that isn't a big grey blob. I think the base color outlines the sprite shading nicely, at least. I'm thinking that the background is going to shift in later scenes and have the moon slowly pan into frame. This isn't a technical feat, but I really like how your sprite will turn to face whatever your speaking to, and then maintain that direction when the conversation ends.

Slow day, but a good day, I think.

Some great dog games being made in this jam haha, this totally looks like my type of game I'd like to play... kind of reminds me of a cinematic platformer/point-and-click hybrid. Looking forward to seeing more on this!

For those curious, I'm still chugging away at this project, but it's gotten to the stage where most of what needs to be done is asset work, and little that I want to show until it's a finished product. For what I can show, here's the cover page

Though I may change the title to "Collar"

oh wow it's really cool to see the interactivity like the climbing + dialogue! the starry background is sooo lovely and really adds a lot of depth already ('': !!

Shots from the house, featuring the noisiest wallpaper you've ever seen.

row houses on row houses on row houses on row houses on row houses on

Another one of my dogs! She has a cherry eye! And I love her!

Currently setting at the wall is my sole source of income, so that's been eating up my week, but hey! Look! A stranger!

Yall, I've got three days and three liters of gerolsteiner left. Wish me luck.

Forest design blatantly stolen from Kentucky Route Zero. Gonna keep polishing it until the deadline.

My parents and sister were down in DC at the march today, so they asked me to come home and take care of the dogs, which ate most of my day. So ironically, I couldn't work on my dog project, because I was too busy taking care of my dogs. I'm in the home stretch, but I won't be able to finish it completely tonight. I'll submit a snapshot of where the game is right now in a bit.

A strange big dog

It's in kids, I'm gonna go down a liter of gerolsteiner and some shame Subway to celebrate.