Welcome to a much anticipated new major update of Fech The Ferret, version 1.0.0alpha. With no doubt the biggest update the game ever had. [previewyoutube=WiOqwHd5vVw;full][/previewyoutube] I'll try to be quick and sum up the intent behind this update. As many of you know, I've been working on Fech for 7 years and a half now, the game has been a team effort since Spring 2020. Until a few months ago making Fech was a diligent process of taking two steps forward and one step back as we patched/edited/replaced stuff that wouldn't work with the growing complexity of the project. In summer 2023 we got ourselves in a bit of a perfect storm: we realized that the old dialogue system was at odds with our worklow, that way too much code was running concurrentlly thus making interactibles nigh impossible to code and - on top of this all - a newly improved Fech 3D model was on its way to completion. It was time for some project-wide restructuring, hopefully the basis to get on the path to completing the game. So two new people joined the team! Determined Bun as the new writer and Chaoko taking the role of 3D animator on the project. We began remaking all NPC interactions to be much more flexible with a new dialogue system of our own, Fech's animations got remade from scratch for the new model and - lastly - I was finally convinced to port and rewrite ALL gameplay code to work using state machines. Everything you'll read below is either outlining this process or describing the happy consequences of getting into this new approach to working, such as the introduction of cutscene, more minigames and much better collectibles. And with that, I'll leave you to perhaps the longest devlog to date. Have fun reading!

HIGHLIGHTS:

2023-06-20 Entirely redone the dialogue system. It now supports character portraits, text animations and character animations 2023-07-28 Moved from Character Controller to Rigidbody for Fech's movements 2023-08-05 Redone Fech's physics system from scratch. Better grounding, rotations and handling. Fixed all issues tied to slopes and climbing. Improved overall feel providing a much smoother experience. 2023-08-09 Dive roll mechanic changed to feel more like a short boost after a brief pause in the air 2023-08-13 Redone camera height control to be much simpler and more reliable. Works while dashing too 2023-08-16 Redone the spine bending system to be more natural-looking (later changed again to be simpler) 2023-09-26 Look of the sewers has been polished and revamped 2023-09-28 Goose chase added 2023-10-28 Began transitioning to a State Machine system to handle Fech. Fixed countless bugs tied to interactibles 2023-10-28 The team is now complete! New writer and animator. Updated credits to reflect that 2023-11-07 Dialogues in the game have been overhauled. New HUD for NPCs has been added 2023-11-07 Massively cut down on Garbage Collection and removed periodic framerate spikes. The framerate should be a lot more stable! 2023-11-12 New Fech model with remade animations! 2023-11-14 New Quests and NPCs! Also, bunnies! 2023-11-16 Fech can wear clothes now! Go find them around the world! 2023-11-18 Added many new animations that allow gameplay to feel more expressive 2023-11-20 Porfu travels all around the world to sell his goods now! 2023-11-22 The old centre is good to go! If only there was a bridge to reach it... 2023-11-26 Redone the climbing system to closely mimic the base mechanics but with more animations and bigger wall variety support 2023-11-27 Marmocle's market is ready and it's got a few minigames to play! 2023-11-27 Added ferrest and quarry cutscenes to the game, look at that ferret go! 2023-11-28 Added Fech meeting Powie 2023-11-29 No longer alone, Powie sticks by Fech's side now 2023-11-30 Fech's notes have been remade for better navigability and a nicer display of clothes and comics 2023-11-30 Comics finally added to the game! 2023-12-05 Updated online code: clothes and better animation syncing! 2023-12-06 Removed pal pulling from the game entirely: we'll redo the mechanic at a later time 2023-12-07 Game now autosaves every time the player touches water. Easier to understand, opening the menu is no longer needed

CHANGES:

-Added idle animations to squids -New shops in Marmocle -Increased physics calculations as part of moving to a rigidbody system to handle Fech's physics -Camera improvements, shots feel like they flow much more freely now -Swimming is a little slippery now -Slope movement now carries over when losing grounding. The player can theoretically launch themselves in the air if speed is sufficient -Slightly re-balanced the roll: a little slower, lasts a little longer -Slight increase to max swimming speed -Added HUD animation for Fech taking damage -Marginal improvements to the look of the credits tab -Added a water splash effect -Somewhat nicer water look -More wind to grass in the river -Changing the camera angle with the right stick now leads it to sticking into that position for some time -Updated resolution scaling settings to provide more granular control -Physics code is now computed 120 times per second instead of 30, the Physics simulatations happen instead always exactly once per frame. This might lead to a smoother experience and more consistent framerates without any significant CPU overhead -Reduced code overhead of respawning Fech -Optimized discord integration by updating it only when needed -Significantly increased the size of input prompts -Added a new zipline at the start of the quarry to backtrack more easily -New structures in the ferrest and river zones, slightly improved the overall visibility -Added subtle spine bending to Fech rolling -Thumbstick camera controls are much faster now -Quadruped walk camera is a little closer now -Quadruped walk and dash camera shots are more similar, the blend more nicely between each other -Dash camera is a tiny bit closer now. These camera edits aim to make the game a little more immersive -Increased size of UI prompt -Polished Zipline: faster, smoother and with a new camera shot -Small tweaks to dashing to feel a little snappier -Many small tweaks to gravity acceleration depending on Fech's state -Added squash and stretch to rolling -Dropping while rolling gives 50% more stamina now -Added a waterslide at the end of the river -Added dialogue and better interactions to the power plant -Unexpected feature: thanks to the better climbing system, trees are now climbable -Temporarily removed explosion from the quarry battery -Marmocle has out of bound trees now -Removed stripes from previously unclimbable walls. Now there's no longer any hard limit on what can be climbed -Fech is much faster at turning when walking on all fours -Tweaked the notification system to look a little more consistent with the overall style of the game -Colours are little bit more vivid overall -New save notice animation, it plays as soon as it happens, rendered on top of everything -Save animation no longer shares the same space as the notifications -Due to how the dialogue system works, the game saves very often now. Will be tweaked further in the future -Added underwater distortion -Significant optimization improvements in the quarry: sections now load and unload much more effectively thanks to proper partitioning of props and interactibles -Removed ability to manually save progress in the menu, replaced with resetting Fech's position (as oppose to resetting the save file) -Better rhythm ara camera: closer to Fech and with nicer vertical movement -The ara gate has to be loaded only once. Restarting aras is less annoying now -Restored a little bit of spine bending when using treadmills -Much improved spine bending on online players. It now perfectly mimics the local behaviour -Ziplines are much faster now -Fech control sensitivity in rhythm aras are no longer dependent on the speed of the level -Made the clothes and notes notice more apparent after Fech wakes up -Adjusted ara tuuti to work without pal pulling -Added a very basic implementation of wall jumping -Improved the feel of ara pins -Camera improvements when rolling -Added a little dialogue at the start of the ferrest -Removed roadmap from the menu

FIXES:

-Fixed bug that would have the player stuck in a climbing position if they climbed a wall right before entering a rhythm ara -Fixed collision bug tied to interacting with triggers -Removed demo barrier that was incorrectly left in the quarry -Fixed lack of rotation when walking on slopes -Accidentally fixed some gravity bug with the poles by remaking physics -Fixed swimming bug that would lead to a small vertical force being applied even when standing outside of the water -Fixed animation triggering when entering water -Fixed other small issues with animation triggering such as jump animation not triggering at times -Tiny adjustments in the second half of the ferrest, backtracking is now allowed -Potentially big performance fix, many objects were rendering backfaces -Fixed foliage slider not removing nearly as many trees as it was supposed to. Major performance improvement for integrated graphic cards -Pollen boxes and out of bound tree trunks now correctly support fog -Fixed more issues with triggering animations as part of rebuilding the Animator to use State Machines -Debug characters have been removed from Marmocle -Fixed all major bugs in the power plant -Fixed all major bugs tied to poles -Fixed a few bugs in the glasshouse at the end of the river zone -No more jittery look on unclimbable stripes now that's they're removed -As part of a UI overhaul, Fech notes are now navigable with a controller -Mostly fixed falling through the ground bug when respawning out of an enclosed level -Fixed most of water not triggering a save position or respawning in inconvenient places -Fixed ara essential bug, now it's playable again -Fixed main music bugs in rhythm ara -Removed the unfinished defective online "business" code -Online players now can correctly show up as sleeping if they join the network before starting to play -Fixed and improved visibility on the quest/item notice -It's no longer possible to pause on the treadmill section at the ara gate. This would lead to a situation where it's impossible to unpause -Small UI transition fixes -Fixed server region not showing up when auto-connecting to the network -Fixed a few networking UI bugs related to allowing players to connect to a new region / room -Fixed a bug with resetting Fech's position

KNOWN ISSUES:

-Same old camera collision issues tied to underpasses. Might be more of a design issue than else at this point -Cloud saves don't work on Linux yet -Fech himself oddly doesn't support shadow cascades. Set shadows to low -Marmocle is likely to be very heavy on slower machines. This will be dealt with over time -A lot of music and sound effects are missing at the moment -Some vfx and particles are missing -Rhythm aras are in need of a partial overhaul is expected in the future -Production quality of cutscenes and NPC interactions varies a lot. These elements are still very much under development Closing thoughts. I decided to drop the update cards thing. They looked really nice, but I would usually end up completely missing the mark with assuming incoming priorities and actually deciding what to work on. So this time around I'm just saying what my current intentions are for the next major update: Partial rework of how rhythm aras. They need significant polish if not some major changes altogether. Bringing back / completing missing gameplay features, so basically the pal pulling. Delivering a new zone or level. New features to the online play now that we have a state machine making everything easier to manage. Anyway, congrats for reaching the end of the devlog! As usualy I suggest joining the discord community for random updates and direct feedback. playfe.ch/discord Cheers!

[ 2023-12-08 13:56:24 CET ] [ Original post ]