Skantish: March Devlog

Since the last post about the state of the game was made almost a month ago, I thought I'd do another - and maybe turn this into a more regular thing.

TLDR; I'm working on new mechanics and weapons for the next area while trying to work in preproduction storywriting and etc. However, I planned to have the first Bi-Monthly build out on the 15th. Not sure if I should postpone it to next month (as there's not a lot yet), release it as-is, or maybe change the schedule to monthly builds instead of bi-monthly.

After the demo's release, I've largely been taking a break to practice drawing art, while working on patches for the game. I've also come up with the conceptual layout for 0.2.0, however a lot of the finer details are still up in the air, and I haven't the time (or honestly, inspiration) to draw concept art yet for the ideas I have.

It's not in good form to talk about this kind of thing publicly - especially considering it may sour my image (as if it's possible for it to get much worse) despite the fact I know I still work faster and more consistently than most other developers. However, I want to put it out there that I've had pretty serious depression that gnaws on me every single day, making it hard to find motivation to work on things. This results in my workflow having an ebb and flow to it, where I get a lot done in shorter bursts, while spending a lot of time spinning my wheels and spiraling.

Again, I have managed to get some conceptual work done, as well as a couple new mechanics into the game since the last demo build... I guess I should start with the two things I have done so far.

  I added in a Debug Room, as well as a Debug Mode that saves/loads games separately from your main game save. This is basically a cheat mode, that allows you to spawn in any item in the game for free (through utilizing the shop system). I might mess around with this further, adding a cheat debug .ini file allowing you to tune different variables, but I'm not sure how interested people would be in it.

I've also been working on making the water object more robust, allowing for a new mechanic I've seen people asking for: Underwater movement. This is an unlockable, permanent upgrade to Naomi's movement, and of course there's different underwater physics compared to normal movement. I've also made water a little prettier by adding bubble particles to it, and tweaking the wave distortion shader used throughout the game. 

Besides those two things, I'll next be working on a mechanic allowing Naomi to warp to previously discovered areas, status ailments and buffs, then the new weapons that were voted on a couple weeks ago.

I'm not sure how much I'll be able to get done before the 15th for the first bi-monthly build, and I don't want them to leave a sour taste by under-delivering. So, I'm considering either pushing them back to next month, or simply doing monthly builds that make smaller incremental changes to the game. I'd love feedback as to which would be more appreciated, though I'm leaning toward just doing monthly builds at the moment.

Getting into more conceptual/pre-production stuff, I'm planning for the next zone to have four boss fights, with the two aforementioned Naomi upgrades (Water Breathing & Warping) to be introduced throughout the story. Overall, the next zone would span two major areas again, similar to the first zone. (Though, I may break them up into four areas in-game, but thematically they'd only make up two.)

The zone will be focused primarily on the Vexoi - a race of vulpine manids who practice secret magick thanks to their lineage. As Naomi arrives, she finds herself in the midst of a civil war amongst the vexoi, as a corrupting force seems to have overtaken a large swath of their kinsmen. Of course, this all is reflected by the happenings in the underwater cavern hinted at in 0.1.0, with remnants of an ancient vexoi civilization for Naomi to explore, plunder, and be threatened by.

The other major mechanic I'd like to introduce, or rather re-introduce, would be Ambush Rooms. These were last seen in Thirstchasm, as little mini-games that'd result in either win/lose scenes. However, when I was first drafting my ideas for that project, the initial thought was to have rooms where a large number of enemies drop in and attack the player. Whether due to technical difficulties or lack of experience, I decided to change the idea into what it later became. For Skantish, though, I'd like to implement the mechanic as I had originally intended it, and throw in a handful of these rooms for the player to find throughout the game. (Including previous demo areas.) If I decide to do both sub/dom scenes, this would likely be the only place they appear in the game.

That's about all I can think to write for this post. Just felt the need to write something, since I know most people subscribed don't keep up with the Discord, where I mainly ramble about this kind of stuff.