I have inevitably fallen behind with these posts. I wanted to smash out a quick week 3 devlog a few days ago—just for the sake of keeping the streak going—but I’ve been busy. The whole team has. And with good reason! I’ll get the biggest news out of the way:
We have a functional pre-alpha build! It can be found here.
This was a big deal for Fred and I (the programmers). The combat system, thus far only functional in theory, actually did what we designed it to do: spell a word, target an enemy, and see their health go down the correct amount. That’s the whole build; there is no win state. But it felt good nonetheless.
We’re proud of how flexible and generic our systems are. We have our base Combatant class (from which Player and Enemy inherit) and this general SpellAttack class. These spell attacks can be instantiated by any combatant, with any target, and filled with a range of elemental effects. There’s nothing ground-breaking about it, but it works and it’s ours.
We still have our work cut out for us for Alpha (11 days from now). We still need to get in:
- our proper enemy logic, so they can act as a group and take turns
- our enemy customization tools in the inspector
- saving and loading progress (we’ll just have one ‘profile’ in the game)
- some simple data collection (average word length, longest word spelled, average turn time, etc.)
- events between levels (an overland map of some sort)
… and probably lots of other stuff. But this build works, it can be replayed, and there is a game in there, if not a very exciting one. But I find the spelling fun, and I feel like the core rune interactions are snappy and satisfying.
We’ve made progress in other areas too, of course. Since this post covers two weeks I’ll have to be selective.
Music
I made some music! This is something I have trouble not doing, regardless of whether or not I expect it to end up in a final product. But as a project takes shape, particularly as I see art coming together, I just want to throw together musical concepts. And honestly—the merits of my creative output aside—getting original music in place adds a lot to an early game build. Conversations about musical direction can also be fraught, so it’s good to begin them early in a project.
For now, I just want to present a range of ideas to the team. We may very well end up making use of the royalty-free music our designers have access to, but I’d at least like to try and create something more original, personal and distinct. So here are the five sketches I put together:
I had a few specific influences in mind while I made these. The ‘LoFi’ tracks were inspired by Yoku’s Island Express (Jesse Harlin) and Splatoon (Toru Minegishi).
‘Haven’ is a darker riff on ‘Forest Haven’ from the soundtrack to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I don’t know which of the game’s composers made this track, so I’ll just credit all four of them: Kenta Nagata, Hajime Wakai, Toru Minegishi, and Koji Kondo.
‘Cavernous’ took inspiration from ‘Cave’ from the Pikmin 3 soundtrack. Once again, Nintendo’s preference for shared credit leaves me with no choice but to rattle off a few legendary names: Asuka Hayazaki, Atsuko Asahi, and Hajime Wakai.
‘Orchestral Groove’ came from nowhere. I’m still not sure about that one.
The ‘LoFi’ tracks got the most positive response from the team. I’m not too surprised. These were the ones I came up with first. Jesse Harlin really understood the feel and pace of Yoku’s Island Express when he composed his music. Magical Spell Masters shares some of these gameplay qualities. We need the music to sit nicely with the cerebral, stop-start nature of the gameplay. A lot of the game is just spent pondering over the letters, so the music needs to be ambient and out of the way. At the same time, we don’t want clichéd, orchestral high-fantasy fare. The slow-tempo, hip hop vibe fits nicely, and I’d like to explore it further.
My personal favourite sketch, however, is ‘Cavernous’. It began as an attempt—not my first—to recreate the digital piano sound used in the Pikmin 3 ‘Cave’ and ‘Rain’ tracks. I wanted to tap into that deep, dark ambience the composers create. I don’t mind if this idea doesn’t end up in the game. It was just fun to make.
Art
Sean’s work on the player and boss is a regular treat and frequent source of interesting conversations. Recently, he was interested in the group’s thoughts on the way the tail of the boss cat (Neko-mancer) meets its butt. Visually speaking, I mean. He had a concept with a little hole at the back around the base of the tail. We thought it looked a bit like the ‘access hatch’ of an old-timey union suit. We eventually agreed that it should just meet the fabric of the cat’s robes without fanfare.
Jamie has been spending time with Shader Graph (in addition to working on various scenery models). Our magic runes will have nifty materials that match their elements: ice, water, fire, poison, electricity, and nature. We want them to feel dynamic and tactile, so this is important work with a considerable learning curve. It might be valuable for Fred or myself to learn a bit more about Shader Graph. It never hurts for programmers to be across the in-engine tools that artists are expected to use. As user-friendly as something like Shader Graph tries to be, shaders are inherently complex and fiddly.
Lighting and Environment
This last week we’ve enjoyed a more refined Alchemy Lab greybox, courtesy of our designers Finn Mahoney and Sean Brady (and all the lovely props our artists are making). Here it is:
I like it—the scale, the big windows, the interesting nooks and crannies, the way the central floor space leaves a big chunk of room for the grid. We originally intended to have a straight side-on camera, but I think we’re veering towards a skewed angle like this because, aside from being visually a little more cinematic, it makes it easier to display a row of enemies and their respective health bars.
But what I really want to mention are the lighting experiments that Brandon and Sean have been undertaking:
Seeing the greybox lit up like this was a thrill. Apparently there are some teething issues related to URP lighting, but this adds so much to the feel and character of the space. I look at those pools of coloured lighting with a pang of nostalgia, reminded of old Unreal Engine games I used to play (and still do) like Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex.
Next week, I hope to have some proper combat (with working enemies) to show off. Until then!