Improvements and a few hiccups turned into good news

Hey everyone!

First off, I want to apologize for going radio silent this past month. I truly appreciate your patience. I’ve been hard at work on the three demos I promised, and while progress hasn’t been without its challenges, I’m excited to share where things stand.

Last month, I put together the cutscenes for the first time, but I wasn’t happy with how the walking animations turned out. They felt too robotic because I was using the same procedural movement system from the point-and-click gameplay. It just didn’t have the fluidity I was aiming for. So, I went back to the drawing board.

I dug up some backups from an older version of the game and resurrected the engine’s native sequencer system, adapting it to work with the custom sequencer I created. This gave me more control over the animations and made the movements look much smoother. However, when I tested the game, I ran into a bunch of bugs caused by conflicts between the two sequencers. On top of that, the native sequencer is a bit… well, broken (which is why I made my own in the first place). But it does have one big advantage: it lets me preview animations while editing, which is crucial for getting the fluidity I’m after.

So, I decided to upgrade my custom sequencer to work more like the native one, including adding the ability to customize controllers if needed. After a lot of tweaking, everything is finally working, and I’m now in the process of reassembling the scenes for the third time. Third time’s the charm, and I’m really happy with how it’s coming together.

Another thing I’ve been wrestling with is the in-game phone messaging system. It’s not working as I’d hoped, and one of the demos relies on it. I’m going to keep working on it.

I had two “casualties,” but thankfully, both turned out okay in the end.

First, my cell phone has finally retired. It was so old that the apps I use for work stopped working altogether. I had to bite the bullet and buy a new one, which wasn’t ideal since it means starting the year with an unexpected expense. But on the bright side, my new phone can actually run games! I tested it with the Halloween mini-game, and it worked beautifully. This opens up the possibility of porting the main game to Android in the future, which is something I’d love to explore.

The second casualty was my monitor who gave up the ghost. But luckily, a friend who recently graduated had a spare one lying around and gifted it to me. Her monitor is smaller, but the colors are much more vibrant and accurate than my old one. This is actually a huge win because it’ll help me fine-tune the color grading in the game and make everything look even more beautiful.

Despite all the hiccups, reassembling the cutscenes is turning out to be a quicker process, which aligns with my goal of delivering updates more frequently. So you won’t have to wait a year between updates—I’m aiming for a couple of months at most.

I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your support and understanding. Your encouragement means the world to me, and it’s what keeps me going, even when things get tricky. I’ll be back soon with more updates, and I can’t wait to share the demos with you when they’re ready.

Take care, and thank you for being part of this journey!

Bye for now.