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quite a bit of time has passed since i last posted an update (a year and a half!!). obviously, this is not ideal and i wish i was not so busy, but i have been working on studio apart(ment) the whole time! i swear! i really want to make monthly blogposts a thing, so here is my attempt at restarting this trend and providing some proof that this game does, in fact, exist!
as a quick reminder, studio apart(ment) is a roguelite x life sim game where you play 7 days of a life sim before the map resets, although you keep things such as your inventory, upgrades, and your apartment. since the last update, i've worked on many things, a lot of which i can't really show (unless anyone wants to see minor bug fixes and dialogue code). i'll show some of the interesting parts, though!
this is where the bulk of the work i've been doing lies. planning a city that feels immersive takes a lot of iteration, and as i've been working on this project for almost 4 years, the idea has gone through a lot. here's where we are right now. the game will start off with four main districts. the first two, which i've been working on over the past year, are the arts and the fishing district. let's first look at the arts district.
[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/42075011/c8f8a9919bb7a9c560bef1dd87d1b85c85bfe7df.png"][/img]this is an example (unfinished) generation of the arts district. this was also the first area i wanted to tackle in my procedural generation overhaul, and it's probably also going to be the simplest. i want there to be a central park, which will be really important to the intro and how the story progresses. here's a look at what the player's building looks like:
[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/42075011/d318baa63db0d85fd132b516e062f33c89efe3c5.png"][/img]
admittedly, there is not much to say or show here. again, much of the work is behind the scenes, and as i work on this project alone as a university student, i don't have much time to focus on making models and content. this part will come later, when i focus on adding content and polish to the game.
let's talk about the fishing district now! this district comprises of a mainland and several islands, connected by bridges (ignore the missing water, it is gone for optimization reasons).[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/42075011/ded5ae60ddc1ef35d1508e053fb2e9aff4f8e713.png"][/img]
[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/42075011/a9dfa3076e0c876c3aeb5702d10ce15f7b295bf6.png"][/img][img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/42075011/7d083bc6365ddeab7c9608781551e7abb4f187fa.png"][/img]making this district has been really fun! i think it looks really unique and feels awesome to traverse. of course, it is a bit barren right now, but it is still in development. coupled with the fishing system (which is already implemented and is really fun so far), i think this district has a lot of potential in terms of questlines, shops, npcs, and music.
i wanted to share some ui updates! ui tends to not ever be very final for me, and i really love designing and redesigning ui. here are some comparisons:
[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/42075011/c5693eb9ec859e6d3c0badac93b4fd440d924601.png"][/img][img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/42075011/3a05935bbccb2efbf457cd89c589ca3fa4ac4b19.png"][/img]
this is definitely the least flashy update i have, but i think it is worth noting. making a dialogue system is really, really hard. because of this, i ended up rewriting my dialogue system somewhat. writing npcs that feel interesting and unique is something i really care about, and one detail i really want to emphasize in comparison to animal crossing (which this game is heavily inspired by). thus, i've been taking my time creating a system that will allow me to quickly add in dialogue that is interesting and flows from the player perspective. i think i've gotten to a good spot, and i'm excited to create some fun characters to interact with.
i think this is definitely not representative of how much work has been done since the last update (it's a LOT), but here's some extra miscellaneous things i've done:
rewrote the traffic system completely to work on splines and to have intersections, collision detection, and realistic acceleration
many intro quests
reworked a lot of models to work with the art style
SO many npc reworks including restructuring the classes, creating a state machine and and improved dialogue selection system
written/modified a lot of shaders better
many bug fixes including jittery player movement
lots of planning
exciting! my goals now are to finish up the fishing district and get started on the next 2 districts! something exciting is that the time it took to finish (mostly) the fishing district was about 3 weeks, which is MUCH faster than the months it took me to get the arts district working, although that district needed the entire procedural generation system to be rewritten, so it took longer. i'm hopeful that the remaining 2 districts can be finished by summer's end, which will put us in an amazing spot to start playtesting and do demos! i am very excited for this and the game is shaping up amazing.
until next month, zai jian!
hello everyone! another month of development has passed by so i'm here to write another update about the game's progress through august. it was an admittedly slow month but a lot of very important work for sure. as a quick refresher, studio apart(ment) is a life sim x roguelite set in a city, where at the end of every week the map resets and you can use your progress in the week to buy upgrades and improve your world (and maybe find out what the hell is causing it in the first place).
hello everyone! it's been a year since i posted the last update but i will try to be more consistent about posting updates in the future. with that said here's what's been added in the last year or so.
as a reminder, studio apart(ment) is a life sim meets roguelite where you play 7 days of a life sim before restarting, although some things stay, like your relationships, inventory, and upgrades. between runs you can unlock upgrades to find new areas, abilities, and activities.
Hello everyone!
The past few weeks have been spent working on procedural generation in studio apart(ment) so I thought I would put out an update on how it's going and some other things going on with the development. The game is definitely being made and I want to get some sort of a beta out before the end of the summer if I can.
Procedurally generating the city
This was initially super daunting to think about. since it's one of the core pillars of a roguelite, it can make or break the fun of it. A badly generated map can feel unfair and frustrating, and nobody wants that. I decided to make the city out of several blocks; the advantage of this being that it's easier to predictably place things like lamp posts, buildings, benches, and exits.
A few months ago i did try doing this much more randomly. The results were cool but not very usable and was just too random.
So I took a stab at actually generating the map and i started out by placing some roads. Easy enough, I just used a noise function to create a map and we had this.
Then I had to trace it with some sidewalks. This wasn't hard in theory, but I had to fiddle around with the numbers a fair bit. I ended up with this, and I was pretty happy so far.
I then made the exits which involved a ton of scene loading information I won't get into, but that took a fair bit of time. Most recently I have started on adding in buildings. One thing I love about the roguelite Hades is that it balances procedural and predesigned rooms really well. Every dungeon in that game features a random mix of predesigned rooms, which ensures a fair dungeon every time while still providing variety. To incorporate this, I decided that each city block would be its own predesigned block, which will make the city not feel extremely generic at every single block. I need to model a lot of buildings for that, but at the moment we have something that looks like this:
Overall I think it's heading in the right direction, and I think that in the end the procedural generation should turn out really well and make the experience of playing a life sim feel fresh repeatedly.
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