CheesenessAdded 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
Second dev blog video with my lovely voice/silly face #gamedev #indiedev https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAiQff2-AJw
Bonesweeper Progress Update II
Dig sites now indicate what epoch the formations are from, and limits the possible species found there to ones that occurred during that epoch. With eight epochs and four test skeletons, the game now feels very empty :D
The map room's empty shelves and window sills now populates with skulls and cacti as you complete skeletons and finish digs. There aren't many models just yet (same for the book references), but it's probably the first bit of progression content that will stay into the full game.
Made a piece of amber with an ant inclusion on stream today. Eventually these will show up as misc fossils in dig sites and during assembly. Need to write a shader so that I can have better control over how front faces are rendered vs back faces, but it's nice enough for now!
Working on generating a rad travel line. Started with ImmediateGeometry's line strip to get the position, etc. right, which looked good albeit 1px wide. Decided I could turn that into triangles and get width pretty easily, and whoops, that's not it :D
There we go \o/
First pass on misc fossil sorting in assembly mode is in. Still only amber for now, but laying the mechanics down is the priority right now ^_^ #screenshotsaturday
Misc fossils that have been sorted in the assembly phase now appear in the temp museum, and the temp ant-in-amber now has a bunch of different poses.
Got a new WIP dig music concept from @KestrelPi last night exploring a more sparse take on some previous iterations. I feel like we're narrowing in on the core musical identity for the dig phase, and that's super exciting for me! #screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamedev
Finally moving onto roughing out some of the museum customisation gameplay \o/
August mid-month status update for #Bonesweeper
is up! Misc fossils have been the flavour of the month! https://patreon.com/posts/70595473
is up! Misc fossils have been the flavour of the month! https://patreon.com/posts/70595473
And to go along with that, here's the third dev blog video looking at the last month's worth of progress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN9D9Nbc9R0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN9D9Nbc9R0
Bonesweeper Progress Update III
Spent some time refactoring SFX loading so that new audio can be added to/removed from events without making new builds, which will hopefully ease iteration on SFX moving forward now that I've brought @[email protected] on board to help out. Super excited to be working with her again!
Walkies
Need to add some smarts in so that out of date/redundant destinations are ignored, and turns are a bit more smooth, but players avatars now walk around dig sites \o/
Players' avatars now wander around during the assembly phase too
Thinking of adding the player avatar into the map phase background, and I'm just starting to realise that maybe past me took the shortcut of using exaggerated scale to control the DOF effect and FOV feel. Might need to make the avatar larger.
I wrote a little popup system that generates UI based on a few bits of data. For now, I'm only using it on first run to ask which Assembly phase mode should be used, but I'm expecting to use it for other notifications, questions, and maybe tutorials.
Placeholder text is how I keep myself sane during development (also got around to implementing an opt-in version check)
Dig end screen now has some dynamic camera movement
Here's the mid-month #Bonesweeper status update for September. Avatar walkies, a bunch of misc work, and bringing @[email protected] onto the project! https://www.patreon.com/posts/72011789
And here's the accompanying status update video covering major items from the past month or so's worth of development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHfQCYo3cQc
Bonesweeper Progress Update IV
Finally starting to implement different fossil finishes/fossilisation types (3 placeholders on here for now).
Made some new tile markers last Blendsday. Here's how they came out after a little tweaking
Been working on adding a little secondary travel line to act as a progress meter for loading dig sites (will be smoothed out eventually)
Spent half of today's dev stream wrestling with sine and cosine as I worked to add these dots to the end of my big travel lines. It's embarrassing, but still feels important to show/share that even with a teeny tiny maths brain like mine, it's still possible to muddle through
Here's the (very late) mid-month #Bonesweeper progress update for October. Misc tweaks and fixes from me for the most part, but more excitingly, new music from @KestrelPi and first audio from Jasmine
https://patreon.com/posts/73761319
https://patreon.com/posts/73761319
And here's the accompanying status update video covering major items from the last month or so. This video also includes @KestrelPi talking about his work on the game's soundtrack, and touches on the recent chat I had with Dr David Hocking, curator of vertebrate zoology and palaeontology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46l7fFTYPts
Bonesweeper Progress Update V
yin yang yoink@Cheeseness needs some wallpaper or floor texture probably? just imagine a giant ancient painting of a t-rex behind this
@oreolek Not planning murals, but I'm intending to let players pick flooring options. In that screenshot, I'm using some temp geometry to think about what sort of lighting options I want to provide and what level of control I'll let players have over them.