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July Devlog
🕑 Added 2019-07-29 02:55:25 +0000 UTCThis month's tail-end has been a little quiet...because we're moving! On top of throwing everything we own into a shipping container bound for Canada, we're also transitioning to full-time work on Snacko in August. More time = more Snacko!
🍑 Interior Building
Last month, we showed off some interior building features like dyes. We finished that up the first week of July with fancy effects, cursor cues, and placing objects on other objects.
There are no restrictions on items that can be placed on surfaces. As long as it fits, it can be placed!
🍑 Fishes Become 3D
Fish are no longer sprites! We felt like there would be more potential fun with having models...like the ability to have an aquarium of sorts! We reworked the way fish AI works, and gave all the existing fishies a new body.
To give the new fish a new place to swim, we also updated our water shader. Much less jarring! The shoreline has also been given a face lift - the sand around the water's edge now gets darker and lighter to simulate the water wetting the sand. There's a tutorial on the way we handled the shader here.
🍑 More Sprites!
Last month, we added the ability to rotate the camera. Now there's 8 directions instead of 4. It was a lot of work, but it's much smoother now. Old actions that felt strange when there were only 4 directions such as shooting an arrow or casting your rod now feel much better to control.
🍑 New UI
The UI is our main focus for July. Our old UI was charming, but it was hard to read on smaller screens or for people with sight challenges. We've completely reworked the UI - not just the looks but also how the inventory is made, and how it controls. This time around, we're prioritizing controller support so it feels just as good to play with a controller as it does with a keyboard and mouse. This GIF below was recorded using a controller!
Below are some mock-ups of our new style. It retains a lot of the same colour scheme as the old one did, since we feel like nice gentle beige and browns are easy on the eyes, while still fitting in with the slightly rustic setting of Snacko.
These are still going through iterations, so some elements will likely change in the near future! We even tested these out on the Switch...even though we don't have a dev kit yet, we were able to upload a video of the game and use the YouTube app to eyeball the sizing of fonts and other elements.
It helped us understand a little better just how big - or how small - things could go before it became illegible or silly.
That's all for this week! August will be another short month as we'll be still settling into our new place and dealing with some paperwork - but after that, we hope being able to work full-time on Snacko means faster and more updates!
As always, thank you to all our lovely Snackie Guild members for supporting us. By pledging, patrons are helping us make this full-time endeavor a reality!
