hi everyone!

so the concept of this game was born out of a combo of inspiration from the fifth harry potter game, another group's game from a class i took in college, and frustration with the witcher 3. basically, i thought it'd be cool if you could draw out/select the path you wanted to take (like a google maps function) and you as a player would either automatically follow it or the path you drew out would be highlighted in-game. i was thinking about this because while i like path-finding aspects about open-world games and the like, oftentimes i really want or need to take a detour or a particular route to the ultimate destination (i.e. on my way to this location i want to stop by this other location for hunting and then stop by this person to fulfill a quest). like in the witcher 3, you can pick only one other checkpoint and in either case, it's a directional marker, and a mini-map path-finder (this is pretty similar in other open-world games like horizon zero dawn). in the fifth harry potter game, when you select a location to go to, footprints will appear in the world in front of you as the path to guide you there, which i really liked, but again, lacks the flexibility of detouring and such.

i wanted to take this core mechanic and make it into this: you and your mom are hiking, there are multiple paths you can take, the first thing you do is draw the path you want to take, and as you take those different paths will bring up different conversations and different environmental objects to click on. there is only one starting location and one ending location. so it's like more literal choose your own adventure kind of thing! i wanted it to be pretty and encourage taking your time and being present, etc, so i want to incorporate some of my own watercolor art in an isometric viewpoint. and it's called 'smell the roses'.

i don't have the narrative arc or dialogue planned out yet, but i did spend today (because i forgot the jam started yesterday OOPS) just figuring out the isometric view in unity. here's a gif of the result:

tomorrow i'm going to plan out the narrative/dialogue paths and maybe make some watercolor textures for the ground!

- maddie

update time!!!

it's been a couple of rough days of circling around and around until i figure a small thing so progress feels slow at times - but i don't think it's that slow. the biggest success - i found a way for characters to follow a path in 2d in unity!!!! (thank you to youcontributegames.com's pathmovement system - the code is pretty clean and commented well and it's intuitive and easy and i'm just so happy lol).

here's a fancy gif of it in action:

okay so this may seem like i have nothing, but this find is going to make a chunk of the game a lot easier to work with. and those assets right there? i had to adjust from the watercolor ground assets i was previously making, so i'm making a compromise - the ground itself will be done in vector-based software so that's all smooth in the finish, but the details will be watercolor cut-outs. for now, these act as pretty placeholders just in case i don't get them all done. but i have a lot more to do on that end.

here they are close up and personal:

OKAY now i need some help from ya'll!!!

please reply to this with the ways - big or small, bad or good - your mother has influenced you

(i'm trying to get at the different experiences of a mother-child relationship, where the child is someone of a marginalized gender or sex)

thank you xx

maddie

She gave me good taste in classic film and cartoons.