Good evening!

So today was a busy one with life so here are some basic concept doodles I did for this project;

(excuse the spelling errors, no spell check when you're just doodling down text!)

That being said I did find some time this evening to add more to the game. I've cleaned up the mapping so it looks more uniform, got collision working, added little nodes that blink and stop blinking when you move over them, got some plant and fishy life sprites (super basic) into the game (with simple 2-3 frame animations to make the screen less static), and also fixed an issue where the Chromatic Aberration would just break sometimes. 

Tomorrows big goal will be to get a basic UI in the game for when your sub hits a node. This will be interesting as it's an area of Pixel Game Maker MV I've never touched on in the past but good ol' Baz has a tutorial for it so hopefully it'll go smoothly and I'll come away having learnt something new and useful for future projects!

Oh one final thing. Due to tinnitus I MUST have music playing when I work or I can't focus at all, so, what is everyone else listening too? I'm always open to new music to stick on while I work so let me know in a reply! Currently as a key inspiration for this game I've been listening to the beautiful In Other Waters OST as well as the relaxing vibes of the Sable OST :-)

Afternoon you lovely peeps!

So I've been banging my head on the wall trying to get the display text and display image to behave as Pixel Game Maker MV doesn't offer a 'centre to screen' option, so I finally setup a very messy process where when a trigger is switched it locks the Drone and draws the text and image on top of that but offset so it looks like it's appearing in the centre of the screen no matter where I hit the triggers object from. It's been messy but now I've got it working with one node it'll easily be a copy job for all the others.

As you may notice the screen now has a border too, this is to (on top of the Chromatic Aberration) make more clear that you're not some magical third person camera floating above a sub, but actually someone at a computer controlling a drone based on information feedback from it's sensors.

I also created a robot voice which reads out the text on screen but due to my OBS deciding it can't record desktop audio anymore (no idea why) I wasn't able to capture it just yet.

I think someone will like the idea with a pdf file. 

But there may be those who do not like it. 

I want it to be interesting. 

I like the idea with the ocean and exploration

As the day draws to an end time to look at what I achieved today;

1. I got the Node Interaction System working.
It was a chunky part of my day as the engine didn't wanna play nice with drawing to the correct part of the screen, not freezing the game, and closing everything down correctly, but it's working! I have it working on a single Node so far but from there I can expand it out to work for all of them with minimal effort!

2. I've created a bunch of audio for the game.
I did this by mixing lots of CC0 clips together. The big one is a mix of an AC Unit, Office Ambiance, and the whirring and clicks of an old computer as well as a Sonar Ping to give the audio sense you're at a computer but also when you receive an image from the Drone you hear a little HDD spin up sound and a BIOS beep too. I'd love to show this off but sadly my OBS is still refusing to capture audio right now, still trying to fix that.

3. I've added a lot more marine and plant life icons to the tileset.
This is to give the map more variation as well as upping the amount of plants you see as you get closer to the source. On top of that I've begun adding more interesting shape to the sea trench's walls, small openings you're too large to fit into and so on.

4. The final big thing today is the addition of "Corruption".
Around the map you'll find corrupted nodes which when interacted with like normal nodes will send you information your little Bug Sub probably isn't designed to report back. I've also begun playing with Values to keep track of a 'Corruption' value, maybe if you collect enough corrupted nodes there'll be something waiting at the end?

I took inspiration from PacMan 256 and it's representation of the kill screen from the original PacMan to give this a clear visual sign it's 'not right' and to suggest something is going on here your computer can't process.

The more I fiddle about the more the game reminds me of some kind of weird Dwarf Fortress and I'm kinda loving it! :D

Tomorrows big goal is to get all the Normal Nodes working, and if there's time begin work on the Corrupted Nodes too!

Todays Work Music was the Kingdom OST :D

Good afternoon!

So bit of a late start today as I've been feeling a bit under the weather today.

The plan today is to create the stuff that shows up when you interact with a node or corrupted node.

I don't know if I'll have much to show today as a lot of it will be spoiler heavy and don't wanna ruin the fun for people who try the game out :)

Time to start some heavy photo editing to create alien sea life!

Howdy Doodies!

No real update yesterday as I'm on the 'nothing visual to show' writing element of the game currently (as a visual artist this kills me XD) but hopefully it'll all be finished today and I can move onto making the intro and ending :O the left over time then will be used to tweak stuff, add more audio, and generally tighten the little experience up and polish it off :) So HOPEFULLY I'll have a real update at the end of today! <3

Evening Update!

Ok so I'm hoping to get more done tonight but in case I fall asleep early or something here's a mid Evening post :)

I spent today making the last few corrupted images the drone will send back when you touch a normal Node. There are 12 interactions in the game as I want to keep it short, the "gameplay" is so simple and the scope is so limited I think although I could put in a bunch more nodes and a bigger map, players would quickly get bored. Plus these are here for set dressing and world building for the real underlying events of the game!

(anyone wondering, yes this is a reference to the Eel in Mario 64, I still hate that guy!)

So up next is getting corruption nodes fully working. They work a little different from normal nodes as these ones have a linear "narrative" to them meaning I'm going to use values to track how many you've collected so the correct transmission plays even if you collect them out of order (and to avoid having a spoiler'y ending one pop up if it's the ONLY corrupted node you collected!).

That's it for now - not a gripping update, mostly behind the scenes work. Hopefully have something more chunky soon! <3

I like the idea. I have a list of names I have brainstormed:

SEAlert

Subalert

Seaphobia

Seascape

Depthsite

If you don't like these, here is a website that generates great names for games. It generated the one I am using for my jam game, Helmet Point

https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/video-game-names.php

a rougelike underwater. good good ! good luck for final version.