CheesenessI spent some of today working on an in-game way of communicating development progress. This will be nice to have moving forward (test data pictured - the game's a long way from being that finished :D )
The march mid-month Bonesweeper progress status update is up, which talks about how I'll be tracking progress and where things are at right now. Enjoy! #gamedev #indiedev
https://www.patreon.com/posts/63910193
https://www.patreon.com/posts/63910193
I said it was going somewhere \o/
Had a few bugs creep into the map mockup with 3.4.3 (bad normals on meshes with shape keys, GI probe weirdness, and a rendering flicker). Sat down to start coming up with repro cases today and discovered that everything's addressed upstream in 3.4.4 RC2. Thanks #GodotEngine community!
The image is still not finished, but it's nice to have something in for the application icon. Doing the most important bits first #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev
First pass on making gameplay automatically scale to fit the current skeleton (gotta handle both itty bitty theropods and huge sauropods). There'll be some extra camera behaviours to help make things more interesting/fun for really biggosaurs, but this is good for now
One new thing that's going to be in the assembly phase is an optional less stressful "puzzle mode." Got a first pass on the controls in this evening, and I think it's going to be fun for people who struggled with the default Tetris-inspired "action mode" in the prototype.
Spent some of today's stream wrestling with perf overheads. Moving a Spatial to match the mouse cursor's position was impacting frame time, *if* the Spatial had children. Updating the Spatial's transform in _physics_process() rather than _process() made a huge difference o.0
None of the Spatial's children (direct or indirect) are physics objects. "Idle time" is pretty inscrutable in Godot's profiler and I'm at a loss to explain why the same action (modifying the Spatial's transform) seems to account for 14ms or so less when done in _physics_process()
Behold, a game loop \o/
There's nothing new there, but it feels very nice to have it all hooked up together (looking forward to working on expanded functionality and content that that allows). I also tidied up the icon a little more ^_^
Big dig sites aren't always a good fit for one play session. Need a break, but don't want to give up? No probs. Got the last fossil you need for a skeleton and want to go do that? Sure thing. Want to interleave progress on multiple dig sites one dig at a time? Um sure, I guess.
The map, dig and assembly gameplay loops are now implemented (along with saving/loading) enough that if I had more than one test skeleton, Bonesweeper would pretty much have feature parity with the prototype. I'm expecting the pace of development to ramp up a bit from here on out
Got a first pass on dig phase UI for current skeleton progress/found fossils. Super rough, but having this feedback helps ground the dig phase within the surrounding gameplay loops #screenshotsaturday
UI is still temp, but it's more functional. It is now possible to see how many of each fossil chunk is in your inventory in both the dig and assembly phases (and I finally implemented using the next chunk in your inventory during assembly if you had more than one)
Did a bit more work on profile management and character customisation today and made a second skin for the placeholder avatar model.
Added in some new dig location markers to help make it easier to differentiate between new and expiring sites, and when they're neither, there's another to let you know if you've previously visited #screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamedev
Added a new widget type for iterating through lists of indeterminate length. Works with mouse and keyboard navigation (though won't give focus to left or right neighbours). Dropdowns are good in a lot of contexts, but this feels cleaner here and takes fewer clicks to change.
Also added some tweens when dig sites appear/disappear to help communicate what's going on when you return from a dig site or assembling a skeleton (time intervals are being forced here with a debug shortcut)
Put a second placeholder marker model in, implemented colour customisation, and added the ability to edit a loaded profile this evening.
Blind-friendly TTS gameplay for the assembly phase's action mode is in (using the same implementation as the prototype for now). You don't have to see/see well to build a dinosaur skeleton.
I'm not doing a proper museum implementation for the upcoming early test builds, but I did want to give somewhere to see assembled skeletons, so I copied the temp character controller from my mock up and generated an environment scaled to fit the player's inventory of skeletons.
Muttaburrasaurus' big schnoz (this is from a placeholder skeleton in the style of the prototype's skeleton to replace the chunky "testodon" in the short term - final skeleton designs will likely be a bit different ^_^ )
Discovered a couple of fun bugs, and I need to rework some of the assembly camera positioning behaviour, but he's this guy in the temp museum
I've spent the past couple of days working on a Blender addon for managing skeleton metadata. It's still a little bare bones (ho ho ho), but even in its current state, it's going to dramatically speed up skeleton production time.
Spent most of today making tweaks and fixing some edge cases in my Blender addon for managing skeleton metadata. Here's a much more complex skeleton set up ready for export.
Made a little aussie sauropod (Diamantinasaurus) today. Getting the camera in a good spot to the the whole thing in the temp museum is a challenge. Here it is next to the "testodon" #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday
A bit later than usual, but here's a progress recap of @Bonesweeper development in April so far. Assembly is integrated, avatar customisation, two new skeletons, "time" passing in the map phase, and first test builds for patrons. Enjoy! #gamedev #indiedev
https://www.patreon.com/posts/65528797
https://www.patreon.com/posts/65528797
Fixed a bunch of bugs today and then took a break to make a silly skeleton. It's very good.
Spent a bunch of time writing out a new abstraction between dig sites and locations. Look and feel is still pretty temporary, but it's nice to be able to show information like what species can possibly be found at a dig site and what has been found at a visited site.
Did a bunch of misc fixes/little tweaks today. I think my favourite is showing the site name at the start of every dig (just says "Ready! Set! Dig!" in practice mode). The temp museum got similar treatment, which is less exciting, but nice to have.
Added more dig meshes to help show more variety in what you're digging up. Skeleton chunks can define a specific dig mesh to use (species-specific skull, or be assigned one based on the chunk name (generic tail vertebrae), or fall back to use a random generic mesh (generic femur)
Figured I've been working hard enough on stuff that I deserve a day off, so instead of doing that, I implemented a new/faster skeleton preview for map markers
Another late mid-month Bonesweeper status update for May. Thanks to the #LinuxGameJam2022 and the #HiveTime patch that just shipped, I haven't made much Bonesweeper progress, but I did find time to do/plan a few little bits and pieces. Enjoy! #gamedev #indiedev
https://www.patreon.com/posts/66768861
https://www.patreon.com/posts/66768861
Finally making some forward progress on dig site surrounds. Eventually this space will be populated with tables and tents and buckets and doodads, but for now, it's just nice to not have the dig site hanging in space
Wrote another Blender addon to handle exporting fossils' dig meshes, and repositioned/re-exported them all. Still a bit of fine tuning needed to guarantee they're not hovering/entirely underground, but it's already looking nicer and more varied.
Added a few ground texture variants to suggest different environments/biomes. It's a first pass, but it already adds some fun variation and sense of place #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev
Been doing mostly non-visual work for the past couple of weeks, so I haven't had much to share. Here's a little voxel experiment I started this evening while exploring stuff for museum customisation. Won't look or behave *anything* like this if I go with it ^_^
Added a setting that allows dig numbers to be highlighted like I had in the prototype today. Also works with coloured numbers.
Cubetastic
Working a bit more on the map screen background. Thinking of having a chance for a memento to be placed at the black marker points as you progress
Closer-to-on-time mid-month Bonesweeper status update for June is now up! Mostly cosmetic changes this month, but I've also been working on music and museum editing systems https://www.patreon.com/posts/68006288
Ah ha! I have achieved Number Godhood and mastered the rendering of Almost Longitude and Messy Latitude. I shall now ascend to a Pure Numeric Form. Or sleep. Whichever comes first. #gamedev #indiedev
Moved dig tile variation into a shader rather than modifying the actual geo before instantiating. It more than halves dig load times, so I've made "huge" dig sites bigger (1,221 tiles here!). I'll have to see whether it hurts perf on lower end GPUs before I commit
Here's a quick look at the current state of Bonesweeper. Very excited to announce that @KestrelPi has joined the project to compose some lovely music! #gamedev #indiedev https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD-_5zHiok0
Bonesweeper Progress Update I
OK, so it's not a screenshot, but I've just integrated the music handler and hooked up the map track that @KestrelPi has been working on, and bam, even at the main menu with its placeholder background, it's 200% more game #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday
Gave the placeholder Bonesweeper website a little tweak last night to remove the last of the prototype imagery (might need to refresh caches) https://bonesweeper.jbushproductions.com
New bonesweeper test builds are up! Digs that clear multiple tiles now have a little delay so you can see that cascade outwards. Might replace it with a proper fill function later, but for now, it's nice enough.
Tinysaurs now get built on a table (this "toyrannosaurus" is an easter egg - not typical Bonesweeper fare) #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev #fossilfriday
Finally got around to adding scroll bars to the generated settings menus. I'll probably tidy/streamline before release, but during development, I like to have settings for as much stuff as possible so that it's easy to compare different behaviours/configurations
Spent a bunch of time on stream replacing placeholder books for the map phase background. Had to put a few journals back upside down >:D
Here's the slightly late mid-month #Bonesweeper status update for July. Lots of small tweaks and fixes! https://www.patreon.com/posts/69331401
Dinoracha 
@Cheeseness Minesweeping but with bones instead. By jove I'm in.
@Dinoracha I have a playable prototype from last year up here if you're super keen! http://cheeseness.itch.io/bonesweeper
