(Yes, I'm still working on this And a lot!) Hey! After countless delays, [the 2022 DEMO Update] thing is finally ready! (You really know you messed up when you originally called it [the 2021 DEMO Update], huh?) https://store.steampowered.com/app/904460/ First, sorry for the lack of updates over the last few months. Trust me, that doesnt mean I havent been working. I invested a great part of this time learning code, creating tools and systems, porting the game to a new version of the engine, and well, doing everything in my hands to make the mechanics and presentation be as polished as possible. (This is going to be a pretty long, boring update note, so please, ignore it now or hang in there with me.) (If you found something weird/broken, please report it to contact@portvalleygame.com, and Ill fix it ASP.)

Okay! About the update itself:

This is an updated version of [the 2020 DEMO]. This means that the puzzle structure and plot are basically the same. However, apart from endless mechanical and visual improvements, you will find 2 times de amount of dialogues, new animations, brand-new scenes, and a bunch of surprises. (I'd recommend checking everything out, just in case) Some things the update brings to the table: [olist]

A new Game Engine version with many performance improvements

I decided to port the whole game to a new engine version (not without complications!) to take advantage of some features. This affected performance, but I managed to keep it graphically inexpensive thanks to some cheap tricks. (Actually, the game should load 3-4 times faster now!) This update made possible most things youll see on this list... so Id say it was worth it.

A real-time Light/Shadows system

The game uses 3 different techniques to make backgrounds and characters react to lights in a somewhat realistic way. For example, characters and items now drop shadows and are affected by dynamic light sources.

New Character Animation System

Apart from traditional animation, Ive designed a system that makes characters subtly (or not that subtly) move and rotate their heads/torsos procedurally, so they never really stand still in place.
Making this was not easy. But l really think it gives a lot of life to them, (even if theyre indeed literally just standing still).

A fully animated Cursor

The old cursor had 3 animations. The new one over 30, and context-sensitive!
This is, by far, the trickiest thing Ive animated so far, so lets hope it doesnt just break! Heres the map of how animations are linked:
(No, I dont get it either.)

Hold Click to walk/run

This was a players suggestion that I immediately added because I loved it. Hold click and move the cursor to walk, move it a bit further to run. Easy-peasy!
This is 100% optional and compatible with traditional point & click movement so, dont worry, you can use your preferred movement system at any time.

A new Inventory

It now has 6 available slots (crazy stuff!), and it's fully animated and compatible with the mouse wheel to make your life a little less extremely tedious. This means you can finally use the wheel to show/hide the inventory and shift between items! Additionally, if your mouse is fancy enough, you can just use the secondary wheel to shift between items without needing to hover the inventory. (Now, thats convenient!)
Also, every item has been redrawn to fit the new inventory design, allowing for more detailed and interesting sprites.

A new Pause Menu

Not much to say. The old one was incredibly lame, and Ive always liked games with cool menu designs. I tried to make one and this is the result:

Music

Ive been working with a couple of composers on an original, professional soundtrack for the game. In the demo, you will see (hear?) some of those tracks, as well as remastered/cleaner versions of already existing ones. But, of course, this is still a work in progress. (You cant really show music with GIFs, sorry.)

An original Font

I couldnt find a pixel art font that I liked So, I made one, pixel by pixel, letter by letter.
I called it RedArrow, and its free to use for anyone, by the way.

And, of course, new content, redesigned backgrounds and thousands of bug fixes.

[/olist] ___

Now, about the game itself

Some questions someone may ask: [olist]

So, what have you been doing all this time?

Mostly writing code and debugging. I invested these past few months properly learning code and building my own set of tools to stop relying on 3rd party solutions, as they tended to be buggy and limit the features I had in mind. Unity is not RPG Marker, its a competent 3D engine, and I knew I wasnt taking full advantage of it. Thanks to these tools, things will go WAY faster once the asset creation part is over, which is the longest and most frustrating part. After all, I'm a single person writing, drawing and animating every single thing of this game. (And, for some reason, I do like to animate a lot of useless stuff?!) These tools have completely changed the way the game is built, how characters/objects are animated, how dialogues/texts are displayed, how the camera works, how sprites react to lights, how sounds play, how characters move etc. So, yeah, its a pretty big step up.

If it's only an update, what the heck took so long?

Being honest, this demo was never meant to be updated again. Retroactively adding mechanics is never a great idea, and adding tricky stuff like the new character animation engine meant I literally had to remake and reanimate every single character of the demo for every single scene... And that, trust me, it's not exactly easy! Furthermore, this demo update has served as an "anticipated testing phase" for all the stuff Ive been working on. So, if a bug was found, or I wanted to improve/add a feature, the update had to be pushed back, as it wouldnt make sense to update it knowing it was unfinished/buggy or would be outdated in a week. And, of course... There were also annoying last-minute bugs and incompatibility issues with Linux and macOS versions. I finally decided to fix everything, in every version, before pushing any update. And this is basically all Ive been doing, almost exclusively, for the last few weeks. (It has not been fun!)

Why only an update?! Why not a new demo, YOU LAZY *****!!

So, when I released [the 2020 DEMO], I said I wouldn't release any other new demo until the game was finished for a reason: I always invest absurd amounts of time making them! Even if they're vertical slices of the game, I always try to make them feel like "self-contained episodes" with an organic progression and ending. Thus, dialogues have to be rewritten, puzzles need to be redesigned and, of course, additional scenes have to be written in to fill in gaps and provide context. Its just too much work. However, as I wanted to have something new to show you guys, I decided to "just update the already existing demo with all the stuff I had been working on"... Which didn't exactly work as intended, as this probably took more time than making a whole new one!

How's development going?

It's going well! After literal months of stressful debugging, I think I'll go back to drawing for a while and hopefully finish the remaining backgrounds, (which are not that many at this point). But, dont worry, writing code was not all I had time to do: The plot is already written (as are most of the dialogues), puzzles are designed, the "code part" should be finished now (hopefully!), we're working on the soundtrack, and there are just a bunch of backgrounds and characters left to design and animate. (Will I provide anything similar to a release date, then? No! Because Ive already proven how terrible Im at that!) After finishing the art creation part, things should speed up A LOT, as I'll finally be able to focus entirely on scene building, which is what my tools are actually most useful for. [/olist] Oh, and here are a bunch of new screenshots just because:






And, again, please just let me know if anything explodes, okay...? (If possible, notify any bug to: contact@portvalleygame.com and Ill fix it ASAP) Anyway, have fun!

[ 2022-03-07 12:30:27 CET ] [ Original post ]