Heya, Its the first of the month, and not only that but its also 2024! The year where this game will (hopefully) be released. To start things of in this years first Devlog: Mik hit 1000 wishlists, which is amazing! Appart of that, I have been working on both Mik and a secret side project of mine yet to be revealed... anyways here we go (yes this devlog is a lot of text):

Code rework

Like mentioned in last months devlog, I started reworking much of the older unstable and quite frankly shitty code to be more modular and not break all the time. Most notably I reworked the whole way levels are loaded but I wont bore you with all the details and scripts I changed (Id also be too lazy to even write all of that down).

Main Menu rework (again)

I added a few new features to the Main Menu: 1. New level loading&loading screen like previously mentioned 2. New Image pixelation fx 3. New scroll bar fx 4. Glow for all text 1. Go to "Code Rework" to read more. 2, Unlike before, where there would be little blocks appear in front of the Images to give the illusion of a pixelation effect, the Images are actually getting pixelated now, meaning that the texture is getting manipulated directly. I did this to make the effect more convincing and versatile to use. Here is the source code if anyone is interested: https://github.com/Stefaaan06/Unity-Image-Pixelator 3. The scroll bar now has animations when loaded in/out (see more on the video linked below) 4. All the UI in the main menu has a nice glow now! Video on Twitter: https://x.com/Stefaaan06/status/1741058018018545802

Custom OS

As you may know, the game had some computers. Mostly just models standing around with text on them and not being intaractable, with a few input panels scattered around in the game to allow for little puzzles. I didnt like that the computers couldnt be interacted with tho so I set out on a journy to create a costum ingame (fake) operating system. Now you might be thinking to yourself that this is largely a waste of time and wont benefit the game that much compared to say... finishing the actual game. Id agree BUT the beauty of being an independent game developer is that I can just do whatever I want! Tho Im aware that making even a realistic fake of an operating sytem would take ages, so my goal is to make it semi convincing and modular. The main goals are: a User system with custom logs for each user. A semi modular application system so I can create different (gameplay related) applications for different locations. And make all of that interactable by the player. Meaning that if the player has access to an Admin account he should be able to delete other accounts, delete logs... etc..... and maybe (very big maybe) even create custom applications? (not sure about this one since it would take even more time to create).

Switching render-pipelines

This is more of an "experimental" thing, but I have started the process of switching from Unitys built in, to Unitys Universal Render Pipeline (URP) which is one of the Scriptable Render Pipelines. I made this decision after yearly Unity-event where they announced new features for URP which could be quite useful for this game. Some older features are also not available on the built in render pipeline like Decals or custom render calls. I said that this is an experimental thing because I dont even know the results of how the project will look yet. To convert a project from one render pipeline to another one must use a tool to convert many assets, which can take ages if your game is moderatly large, so I have been stucking converting for 100 hours (I wish I were joking...) TLDR; I started switching Unity render pipelines to get new updates, better optimisation, some new features and a scriptable render pipeline.

Year In Review

As you all now, 2023 has come to a close, so I decided to make a little edit documenting my gamedev progress over this year: [previewyoutube=vuQ7qs9rfuY;full][/previewyoutube] Thats it with this Devlog. Lets hope that by the end of this year the game will be out and stay tuned for new sneak peeks regarding my rework of a certain old game of mine.... If youre interested in the game follow me on twitter and join my discord: https://www.twitter.com/@stefaaan06 https://discord.gg/JXn6Xa4VC4

[ 2024-01-01 20:57:35 CET ] [ Original post ]