Hello everyone! Thank you for coming to my zone of hopeful splendor and gothic shenanigans. If you're not a fan of walls of text, consider skipping to the pictures! I like the pictures, you might too. 

☆ intro +.

About a year ago I was conceptualizing my first 3D project Bloodguilt Vita, but ended up scrapping the first attempt in favor of something with more love and detail. Bloodguilt Vita is a game about exploring the guilty subconscious, interacting with NPCs on their own path facing their guilt, and conquering your guilt in the form of monsters to go on the path of being forgiven from the deity in the realm of forgiveness. The game has a gothic nightmarish feel visuals wise. 

 The demo will only have one path to take, but the finished game will have many levels each representing things that people commonly feel guilt about. It has a blend of older and newer techniques for graphics for a slightly unique feel. 

☆ devlog +

I've completed the player model, a protagonist named Pris. Designed and modeled with love; she is rigged, animated, and coded now. I included a state machine for her animations. Pris comes with burning ash that fades to cold ash particles surrounding her. I made a basic spawn area and began work on the portal hub cathedral, I wanted to give the game gothic architecture but it's my first swing at architecture in general. It's a huge work in progress but I'm chugging along. Still working on the portal hub and forest area, and I will implement a waking up animation when Pris spawns in. There's a lot planned! I will redo the trees for better optimization soon. So much decor to add..

☆ GIFs & pictures +

☆ end devlog +

Thank you for viewing! I've been happily working on this for a bit, I hope you guys enjoy the vision. Suggestions or commentary welcome! I'll be updating this as I go along. I've been wanting to show *someone* .. *anyone* what I've been working on lately. Thank you so much if you got all the way here, it's very appreciated. (so appreciated!) Late apologies for the wordiness. Until next update!

(10/28/24)+.

☆ Small Devlog 10/29/24 +

I wanted to change Pris's outfit with each level, so I designed her an outfit for the level inspired by the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. 

Retexture WIP // Almost complete but I'd like to refine some details.

Adding a state machine for her prism to turn red when she's in danger, probably after I model the Red Queen monster! I'll be working on the forest's greenery and props today as well. 

Thanks for reading! <3

☆ Small Devlog 11/2/24 +

I've been pretty low energy  for a bit so I decided to model most of the Queen to take a break from the portal hub and spawn forest. I need to model her sword and crown later. I'll start work on her map as well to deal with the fatigue of only working on one zone. Lots of corridors and red queen themed architecture in my future . .

She's inspired by the Queen of Hearts, I figured making her entirely out of heart organ material would be homage enough to that design.

☆ Pictures +

☆ end notes +

I have a surgery coming up on Nov 7th so development may be a bit quiet for a couple of days to a few weeks depending on recovery time / whenever I'm able to sit at my PC. Thank you to anyone reading my little gothic zone here, it's very appreciated. I've been pretty exhausted because of the reason for that surgery but when I'm feeling better and recovered I can probably have more energy and can make bigger devlogs! 

Have a nice [timezone]! 

-Spooky || gothflakes

☆ Small Devlog 11/12/24 +

Hello everyone! I'm still recovering from surgery but I can sit up now. I started back up and fixed a simple bug with the sprint ability and overhauled Pris's animations. I used mixamo's library to get some higher quality animations as mine are quite novice :') I've been figuring out what I'd like to work on, I'm tempted to start work on the UI since I have some ideas about a gothic aesthetic in the UI. I still need to rig & animate the Red Queen, but I have no level started for her currently as the spawn/ portal hub has been the main focus. I was thinking of releasing this as a prototype first and then polishing it into a nicer demo.. then adding content to make it a full release. I keep having the temptations to repeatedly overhaul things but I need to stick with what I have for a bit then consider new polish in the future. 

☆ New Pris Anims 

☆ End Notes +

It's not perfect but I like it a lot more than what was going on before. I'd like to work on the NPCs and dialogue system sometime soon, maybe working one scene at a time would be best! Thank you to the people here that have shown interest, it means a lot to me! <3

Hopefully soon I'll have bigger devlogs to showcase! Thanks for tunin' in.

Edit: added a video + added crossfading between animations so they're more blended

-Spooky || gothflakes

☆ Devlog 11/13/24 +

Well.. a first attempt at making something cutscene like was made today. I wanted Pris to spawn in on the floor as a wake up type of scene. I added a little spawn ring and some particles for fun. I intended to work on dialogue + UI but got sidetracked making something more interesting to spawn in with instead of just popping into existence. I will have a main menu and probably a cutscene with dialogue before spawning in so it's not jarring and suddenly triggering a cutscene before the player is ready. I made sure to disable player input and make a camera switch so there's no weirdness going on. Let me know if there's something I can fix with the current attempt if it's not looking good enough.

☆ Video +

I'm hoping this is a decent first attempt. I feel like there's a lot of room for improvement, though. I'm glad to have gotten something done at least :'D

As usual, thank you to anyone who's reading & checkin' in with me.

-Spooky || gothflakes

☆ Devlog 11/17/24 +

Been a bit busy, will be a little busy with college work until the end of November. Anyways, today I attempted to design a pause menu from scratch! I wanted something gothic with the game's theme in the design. I drew a little heart for a mouse cursor & drew the UI elements in Clip Studio Paint. I used some free to use brushes for some fancier details. Hopefully this design looks decent, I'm inexperienced with making UI so it's an attempt. I had to fiddle with a lot of settings and will probably have to fiddle some more when I add settings to change the window size. (hopefully the anchors and scaling settings are correct) Currently only the resume button is functional. A lot of this was me toying around.

☆ Pause Menu In Action +

☆End notes +

I'll make the quit button next. I'll find some satisfying button sfx sometime soon. I'd like to start working on some NPCs and dialogue soon, I made a somewhat basic textbox but I'd like to add some more gothic details to that. I'm trying to keep it readable, my first instinct is to pack things with detail and make it noisy so I have to fight that. Hopefully the assets look nice together :') Thanks for tunin' in!

-Spooky || gothflakes

☆ Devlog 11/18/24 +

I finished the buttons on the pause menu, implemented a functional loading screen, and made a main menu with a settings menu. I hand painted Pris for the main menu art which I'm not sure if I'll tweak it or add more later.. I used Brett Chalupa's godot skeleton and it made my life significantly easier demystifying making a main menu/ settings screen for the first time (thank you Brett). I was mostly painting the UI & assets today. Nothing much going on in the 3d modeling section, it's all been working on menus and the loading screen. I did tweak some details that were bothering me in the cutscene, I didn't like the camera not showing her fully on the ground and the emptiness of the zoom in part. I want to add some text with it soon. 

☆ Video demo of the functioning menus & tweaked cutscene +

Well.. I'm getting through a decent chunk of work. I have monster mechanics/ AI, NPCs, Dialogue, finishing up spawn, & making the Red Queen's castle and the end level. I'm thinking of releasing as a prototype here first.. or demo.. to see if there's any bugs needing squashing/ making sure I exported and packaged things correctly. I'm still improving on coding and I feel like my first attempt will be a dumpster fire, but an endearing one. I haven't drawn in ages so I hope that the Pris art looks nice. My brain is scrambled and I have a lot of work to catch up on so I might be quieter, might procrastinate by doing this project, who knows. Thanks for tunin' in!

-Spooky || gothflakes

☆ Devlog 11/24/24 +

Pris now has.. LORE! Which will be revealed in the game. I'm not sure if I'm revealing the full spoilers here or not yet. Being able to mark things as a spoiler would be nice. I've been working on modeling a room vital to her lore & designing and modeling a past version of herself. The texturing could use some polishing. The room will probably contain more props when I'm done with it and a new character important to Pris will be added. 

☆ Pictures (kinda spoilers! ignore if you want lore related things to be a surprise) +

☆End notes +

Well.. I've got some animating ahead of me. Ignore the texturing error on the Pris model, I will fix that. I need to get to the Red Queen's level as well, I have the design set I just need to build it. It's ornate, so that's going to be fun. I'd like to get working on the dialogue too, I have ideas! But I need to make the NPCs for that. There's a lot to do. I have a clear path on what I need to do, so things will get done. I really enjoy seeing things come together. I'm not sure how open I should be about the development of the story as I'm not sure if I'd chase people off with spoilers. Advice is welcome in that area..  

Thanks for tunin' in!

-Spooky || gothflakes

☆ Devlog 11/26/24 +

I've been working nonstop the past few days. I've been working on Pris's backstory cutscene, animation is frickin' difficult. I found a mixamo animation that worked for the other character but Pris is hand animated which is taking forever. I've been writing dialogue when I'm not fighting with the animation player & animation tree. Organizing this has been difficult, I have a lot of orphan data to clean up. I designed and modeled the second character to Pris's story. I'm still unsure on how much to reveal here as it would be massive spoilers.

☆ Pictures [mild spoilers] +

☆End notes+

Animating is hard. I'll work on more map areas soon, NPCs are coming later. 

☆Devlog 11/29/24+

I scrapped the beginning of the cutscene animation and will get back to completing that later. I noticed skinning errors and was just like ohhhh man. We aren't doing this today, scrap and fix it. So today as a refresher I started working on the Red Queen's castle. I decided I was going to modularly build it (am I using the correct terminology? hopefully.) by building a base tile of the architecture and will add more wall pieces according to the direction of the corridor. Still have to make furniture and the layout, I plan on adding a lot of ornate decorations. So far we have the giant golden heart chandelier and some fancy curtains. I'll add a golden trim to the walls later. I'm tempted to use the original psx shader from the first version of the project but I'll need to see how that looks with the reflections and lighting before committing to that, since i'm blending older and newer graphics technique as an artistic choice. I'm mixing hand drawn elements with meshes as a stylistic choice as well, something about drawing in elements into the texture is enjoyable for me. 

☆Pictures+

☆End notes+

I'm excited to see the castle interior form as I've had a lot of ideas for it. I'm planning to make the corridors maze like, since the original concept of the game was just going to be monsters in mazes. I'm going to fix the feet sculpting on the Red Queen model as well and give her a name. She also needs a crown and some extra details before I rig her. I think I'm giving her a big pyramid head style sword to drag against the tile. She's definitely the type to wreck her own home out of malice. Heart shaped furniture will be added, bodies and blood galore as well. I will probably darken the first generation crystal heart assets I made to fit the gothic theme more, and I was thinking of somehow adding a trail of blood behind the queen. I'll have a few days off some point soon for the holidays so if I'm quiet for a few days I'll be back. Thanks for tunin' in!

-Spooky || gothflakes

☆Devlog 12/1/24+

Happy December! I worked on the castle tile more. I didn't like the pillars so I remade them, added more detail to the ceiling, and changed up the chandeliers. I started mapping a corridor, I'm going to be playing around with that tonight and modeling some heart themed furniture. I resculpted the Red Queen's feet, sleeves, and legs as I didn't like how they looked. I also gave her a crown and sword. I made her hair longer as well. I'll be giving her some animations soon as I completed rigging her. I may add more details to her sword.

☆End notes+

It's comin' along.. I have to finish this map, build the end game map, make NPCs, code mechanics. I'm thinking of adding another setting for less quality graphics for people with potato PCs that disables reflections and fancy lighting. I'm working with Kevin from Fictium Sound Design for the soundtrack and his work is absolutely incredible. I'd like to model the NPCs soon so I can give them dialogue. I created a script for the trailer as well for when the time comes to make it. Lots of animating in the future.. hooray. Thanks for tunin' in.

-Spooky || gothflakes

☆Devlog 12/1/24+

Super focused lately, but I need to tone it down as I've been neglecting sleeping. I implemented new settings and finished the other buttons and changed the pause screen to include a settings button. I decided to add optimization options like lowering shadow quality and reflection quality with a toggle. I also took forever to figure out how to make a back button that can go back to previous scenes. I altered the forest lighting to be a bit darker and changed the lantern color. Added collision shapes to the trees finally. The queen has animations now, I'll get to coding her when her map is done.

☆Pictures+

☆End notes+

I've had the same posture as a shrimp for 10 hours, it hurts. I'm figuring out what I'd like to work on next, I should probably direct my focus to the queen's map. I premade the monster AI ages ago so there's that. Thanks for tunin' in!

-Spooky || gothflakes