Project Tilly Devlog #8

Today marks the end of week 8 of development, a quieter week this week as I got a little side tracked with some experimentation in C# and other life events/chores taking up a fair bit of the free time this week. Still there is a little progress to show, so here it is.

Improved App Setup

A little backed work has been done to more than 1 app to be on screen at once. In last week’s version the setup meant all apps would close when you minimised any of then. A simple mistake on my part for forgetting how my panel system worked. Splitting each app into its own canvas solved that issue easily. Along with that I’ve simplified what apps are on the laptop to the bare minimum for the prototype so I don’t spend months on this system xD

New Apps

musicapp

Music

The music player is going to have a few tracks on it to set a calming mood, the user will be able to pause and resume the tracks and the music will persist, so if the user starts playing music and then leaves the computer, the music will keep playing from the laptop until turned off.

photoapp

Photos

Photos will show a few photos in a few groups for the user to explore and look at, mostly for story telling but the user will also be able to change the laptop background via this app if they wish.

Messenger

While not blocked out yet, this will be where the user can communicate with the protagonists friend and family. The responses will be pre-determined by the user will have some intractability with the app and some visual effects for when they receive messages.

Laying and app states

Apps now also show a little indicator when they are open which persists unless they close the app with the red x button. Apps can be focused on my pressing the app in the drawer, I hoping next week to let the user also press the window to do this. Apps also have a coloured header and different sizes based on the app itself.

Next week

That’s about it for this week , next week will be more of the same, but hopefully linking the computer into the game more and getting some of the apps functioning.

Project Tilly Devlog #7

Hello again y’all. Today marks the end of week 7 working on Project Tilly with some good progress to so. Last week I mentioned that the next mechanic I would be working on was the computer interaction. Where the player could interact with a UI interface which would function like a normal computer interface. I also mentioned that this would take a few week to get sorted, which was a good call on my part, as I is going to take at-least 2 more weeks to get setup if not longer.

The main chunk of progress this week is with the UI side of the system, which can be seen in the video below:

The UI follows a kind of MacOS style with a few differences here and there. As I don’t actually own a mac I am going from online references and a Linux distro called Zorin which has a layout in a MacOS style which I run on my laptop.

Some of the little details

Apps

panel

I’ve created a modular system for apps which mean I can create more or less any app I like. The app icons are set by data so they are easy to define, while the panels that pop up when you open them are prefab variants that all derive from a base panel which has the buttons to minimise & close the app as well as the app name header. To save myself the headache of UI scaling, I’ve gone ahead and not added a expand to full screen button, I wouldn’t really need the full space to show the story.

Shut down

Pressing shutdown moves the player out of the computer scene group & back into their previous group. Currently this means you wake up each time you leave the computer which is kinda funny.

Aha…. it was all a dream…..” ~ Me

Scene Management

Last week I mentioned some work on Multi-scene, a code library I’ve created to help run games with more than 1 scene area which makes things a little more modular. I’ve been doing more this week, which has led to it being in a broken state. Yea I’ve been working on adding options to disable scenes without unloading them which meant I ran into some issues with the old system and getting it to load correctly. Its been fun…. debugging that.

That’s about it for this update, the next week will be more on the computer system & scene management to get it all working again xD

Project Tilly Devlog #6

Today marks the end of week 6 of development on Project Tilly. This week’s plan was to fix all the problems currently in the game so I could move forward for more stuff in the coming weeks. This has been achieved mostly, with a lot of little issues fixed and some obsolete code removed.

Here’s a little preview of how the existing content looks now, with a few UI adjustments to make the system feel a little more polished.

Some of the issues fixed include:

  • The pause menu could be opened when the journal was open and vice versa.
  • When interacting with doors, the door would sometimes not open correctly.
  • When interacting with doors, and spamming the interact button, the door would stack the inputs instead of just listening to the first input until the door was available again.
  • Fixed issues where the player would collide with the bed during the intro tutorial.
  • Re-worked the inventory system to be simplistic as the old system was a bit over-engineered for the job at hand.

Next week I’ll be moving on with computer system mechanic, where the player can use devices such as laptops & phones in a similar way to real life. This won’t be done in a week for sure, but it should only take a few weeks to get sorted so I might as well get started.

Project Tilly Devlog #5

Today marks the end of week 5 of development on Project Tilly. This week was another quiet one due to life taking priority, but a few things have been done on the project, which you can see below. Over the next 4 weeks I’ll have an extra day a week to work on the project, so hopefully that will help get more progress done in the coming weeks.

Wake Up Animation

This week I did some story design to the game and I decided to do a little work on some of the animations I would need for the project. One of these being a wake up and get out of bed sequence. On the backend this added a cutscene manager that allows elements of the game to have different states when a cutscene is started or completed. This animation will be improved on in future weeks, I already have plans to add hands and an eye blink effect to make it more realistic.

Doors

While nothing to write home about, I added interactable doors so the player can actually open/close the doors as they wish. This uses the same interactables system made last week with an addition to define if the item is an inventory item or not when interacted with.

unknown 2022 02 06 16 57

Backend

During the week I worked a little more on my Multi Scene system, which is used in this project. The new version adds the option for me to order when the multi-scene awake, enable & start interface methods run, as well as neatening up the code in the system.

If you are interested, you can get the system here:

Dark Mode

https://github.com/JonathanMCarter/MultiScene

Along with that I’ve been cleaning up some of the existing code, removing old scripts that are not in use etc.

Next weeks plan is to mostly clean up & fix any existing problems with the game in its current state. As at the rate I’m working at I will get muddled very easily, which is a common problem with projects of this size.

Project Tilly Devlog #4

Today marks the end of week 4 of development on Project Tilly. This week was a bit of a quiet one for development, mainly due to a lack to free time to work on it as life took priority. I have managed to get a little bit done as well as begun organising the plan for the demo level & what I need to make for it.

Interactables

The main system worked on this week is the interaction system. Its not a finished system yet as I’m still working on how this system will work with others in the game. I do now have an idea of how I want it to work. But it’ll rely on the a few base scripts being made correctly first which will be next weeks goal. Currently I have the selection side of it done with the hit object stored in a object that I can reference to any script easily, I’ve added a little UI to show the name of the selected item, but next week I hope to have it also display options here as well.

Items

Items are a bit part of the game as they can trigger memories, journal entries & bring the environment to life. The flat level will have plenty to interact with, the idea being you can mess around with it if you wish and move most of the object in the scene around should you wish.

wk4   headphones

Inventories

Player inventories are a little extra I wanted to add. Now in a game like this, it isn’t essential but I wanted the player to be able to equip for items like the headphones and gain a bonus from doing so. So for instance, the headphones when equipped and in use reduce the stress and or anxiety level of the main character a little which may help the player progress through a section that they cannot traverse otherwise. There will be more on this in a future week where I work on the player stats and mental health mechanics.

wk4   metadata

Project Planning

The last little bit I’ve done this week is organise what I need to do into tasks on Notion. If you don’t know what Notion is, it is a great note taking software that is very flexible and can be used in a variety of ways. In this case I’m using it to write down my plans for the game and organise the tasks I need to complete on a kotoban board style layout with both status and priority sorting the tasks into a neat order for me to look at. Each tasks is its own page which I can add to with to-do lists to breakdown each task and and references I made need such as articles or media which may help with the task. I’ll be using this throughout development as I create the game.

wk4   notion

That’s about it for this weeks update. I know last week I said a build would be around week 4-5, that is looking a little less likely with next week also having a few life events taking up the little free time I get during the week. Due to this I’m aiming to just get the systems for pickup up items and dropping them sorted, if I get that done early in the week I’ll do more on the inventory system along with any other outstanding tasks.