Demo is out :D

I call it “duct-taped-version” Critters – cute cubs in a cruel world

Time for some Demo update :)

It seems I’m on schedule to release a demo of the current game state this week (likely on sunday), while it’s not really pretty, it got some of the functionalities I wanted in it 🙂 from biome adaption, to mutations, to spinning tornados of death, that will throw your cute innocent cubs into the air and kill them ^_^
But since I’m so so close to it all the time, I will really need some feedback on how the game feels right now.
There are some elements, that I know need work (like cubs still not able to climb over tiny mounds XD) and the controls feel more like floating, rather than walking right now :D, but I figured it would be better to test some of the things now, when it’s still early and changes are easier (because of less code wobblyness) .
Also I’m gonna try and introduce an update schedule now, cause I think I might be able to handle it from now on. I hope XD
So every friday now, starting now 😀 (15 minutes before midnight to saturday XD)

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HacknPlan and some crittercalypse XD

I’m glad that finally my “forced” vacation is over, but after a week of my daughter going to daycare, we both catched a cold and I was really not happy about it, because I already struggled a lot last week with getting myself to tackle the more “scary” things that need to be done to make progress in the actual game, rather than the advertising part or other way easier things (like making a shader for fog surrounding the bottom of the islands O.o)
ok I admit, it wasn’t necessarily easier, but it allowed me to believe I would make progress while doing something that has not much importance attached to it….so in one way I would feel less like screwing up something important, but if I would screw it up, it wouldn’t really matter. But that’s also exactly the problem *sighs* Since it really doesn’t contribute to any gameplay and is more eyecandy than anything else….
And it made me anxious and doubt myself and made me feel and think that I might not be able to finish Critters afterall, if I keep doing this.
Soooo after sitting down with some friends to talk about it, I came to the conclusion that i need to do what i felt like avoiding all this time: set a date and a plan on when i want to have a playable demo done with an at least crude version of all the new mechanics that i wanted after the Ludum Dare version of the game. Something that i can compile and give to people to playtest it, something tangible, that makes me actually feel like i can do this! What I set out for.
And coincidentially and luckily I had stumbled on a game dev video (I watch a lot of those) where one dev was using HacknPlan, a service, last time I heard about, was advertises as beeing like trello for game devs, but oh boy, I don’t understand why they would be underselling their product by comparing it to trello 🙂

I used Trello for a long time now and what always bugged me, is that it seemed to lack any form of categorizing that would allow you to practically make folders and make everything look less cluttered, while there were lists and color-tags and such, I found it always ending up in a mess, organisatory and overwhelming to look at 😮
So when I heard of hacknplan to be like trello, I thought it would not be worth looking into, because I already had settled with Trello and have a lot of content in there.
Until a few days ago, I actually looked into it and found out, that it had exactly the kind of subcategories and planning tools I was so desperately missing in trello 😀
Not only that, but because it’s optimized for game devs, the lists and tasks provided are already fitting mostly to my Project(s), so I barely need to do any setup or changes to what’s there and can just start adding tasks 😀
Also another nice function is, that I can put in time estimates and later on can actually see if my estimate was correct or not and that way, if I do this for a longer time, I might actually be able to estimate things more accurately 😀
Oh also, since I figured i needed a due date for a demo etc. with that nice “Milestone” setup, I made exactly the playable demo a milestone and wrote down everything that I think is needed to understand and be able to play the game like it’s meant to, with it’s bare bones 🙂
heck it even shows if the estimates i made for each task is actually time wise fitting with my due date XD This is taking soooo much of planning off my shoulders 🙂

So after I set up everything last night for the coming 2 weeks (yeah it’s quite tight deadline I made) I actually got everything done I had planned for today 😀 despite me and my daughter being sick ^^ I’m so happy about that 😀

here some screenshots and gifs I made from it XD:

practically, what I implemented today is, that I can spawn in new critters on pressing L and kill them all by pressing K XD
and I found out, that apparently my game didn’t break when I spawned in more than one litter 😀 which is great ^^ it’s just getting a bit fps heavy after adding too many and when all the debug prints are taking over the console log XD

Also, those are the new models 🙂 still with missing mouths and currently they are only having random colors for all their colorable body parts 🙂 so they are kind of monochrome, but that will change ^^ As well as the randomness in general.
Ideally it’s gonna be like this:

and more ideally their colors would be dependent on each other, to avoid unpleasant or color combinations that would make patterns invisible.

Also, I have a little sneak peek on the banner I’m working on 😀 which is close to finish 😀

I’m actually really excited about it’s progress and the ingame eyes will be made more closely to resemble those drawn ones 🙂 I hope I can also make some shaders to get a proper cartoon like specular and iridiscent iris reflections 😀 haha
I love how their eyes look like gems XD