First Playable Build

Yippie: I finally got some friends to test my game. 

Yippien't: My schedule said that the first playable build would be done two months ago. 

The game is playable from beginning to end, in its most bare form. I still need to add certain interactions but I have everything set up already, so I should be doing that soon-ish. Then I have to do the actually really cool models and texture them (fun fact! I started making the grass texture. It looks funky), doooo something something very cool, and yeah... Game! The game is gaming!

I wanted to see people play the game and explore the world, and see how they felt about the layout of the levels and distribution of collectibles. And I wanted some feedback on how it felt to actually play it and how it would be more enjoyable. So I asked some friends to help me out.

I saw three of my friends play, and another one sent me his feedback through text. Little did they know (they knew), I was analysing their play style and making my little notes on how my interaction system worked. It's not too bad. I will be refining my very much limited but still cool jackalope alphabet based on this.

I also wanted to see if the enemies were too hard or if I was just BAD.

It was the controls. I was aware that they were not the most optimised or comfortable, but sometimes it takes a bunch of people telling you to please fix the fucking camera in order for you to fix the fucking camera. Also, I had the Y axis inverted, but I thought it was the usual way... Turns out I'm just used to the funky way.

It is so fun to see people play my little game. It warms my heart and all that cheesy stuff.

I have fixed most of the issues that my guinea pigs found, so I plan on having a new version hopefully by this weekend. But I'd rather not jinx it.

VFX

I have been abstaining from creating the effects not because I don't want to do them, but because it feels like a reward. I love seeing shiny glowy things and it just feels too self indulgent to work on it to procrastinate my other tasks, but I've finally started to do some things! It's still a huge work in progress, but look at Dulce getting a light shard... The animation also makes it look so cute. Shout out to mixamo for carrying this project because lord knows I would shoot my foot before making every single animation myself.

Colour Progression

And I got the colour progression mechanic going! You start your journey and everything is dark and blue-ish, and as you collect light it starts to look brighter and more colourful. It's all happening through post processing and while at first I was confused as to how I could change it in run time, I found out that I could do it through the level blueprint and... Yay! Seeing it go from dark to light makes me really excited. Like, wow, this is actually what I envisioned and it is HAPPENING.

Treats and other things that make me happy

I ordered Dulce stickers for an event. I really, really wanna go all out (as much as I can) with my silly jackalope game.

Dulce's world is just so cool there is so much that will probably not make it into the game but what if...

Anyway!

My professor has also 3D printed a little Dulce for me, and I plan on getting mini Dulces for the same event.

Original music is on the works too, but it's still too early to say anything more than that.

Overall, things are definitely going. I am behind the desired schedule, but stuff is still happening.  Now that I have the general stuff, I get to work on the smaller details. Yay.