Devlog #8: The demo is finally out!

2024-10-03 by lionbark (@iamlionbark)

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Half a year after the last update (weren't they supposed to be biweekly?), I decided enough is enough and have finally committed to releasing a demo, so here it is!

Some aspects of the art and music are still underdeveloped in places so it should still be considered early access - however, it's a fully playable, story-enclosed version of the first act.

All feedback is very welcome and if you are interested in providing more detailed feedback, please reach out to eddie at lionbark.com so I can send you dev key-bindings and the story script in text form.

1 Progress

Adding music was the last thing I talked about in the last update. Apart from the title screen, these were done with MuseScore and are more sketches of ideas rather than a final production. They are all quite short too so I'm hoping to flesh them out a bit more, but in the mean time please feel free to mute if it gets annoying.

Most of the art has stayed the same, with just a few more props added to the basement, but it would be nice to return and do another pass over these.

Figure 1: The basement bookshelf and the rug really ties the room together

Story-wise, the plot and setting hasn't significantly changed but I've tried to flesh out some more of the lore in places and extras, and also adding new messages at the start of each bunker scene when there is a time-skip for more exposition.

Figure 2: Pendant (top left) is displaying new messages received prior to the scene starting (and unread messages)

Getting feedback from my mentor was also a great help, especially around trying to give a unique voice to the each character.

In the last week, I've tried to move more of the exposition out of the script and into the interactables. The emotional arc Daphne goes through has become more nuanced and shifted over the last month, most noticeably the title drop has been moved to nearer the end of the act as she goes through something akin to the stages of grief.

1.1 Technical

I updated from Godot 4.2 to 4.3 in anticipation of taking advantage of the web exports as I had experienced some issues getting Macs running the game on Chrome's browser in a game jam earlier this year.

The update process was mostly painless, although I did have to change some drag and drop code as the initialisation code didn't seem to be running and I didn't have the chance to dig into why.

1.2 UI

I've been trying pick the rest of the low-hanging fruit for this; this involved:

Making the game launch in full-screen mode and finally putting a quit button in
Changing all of the buttons so that the cursor shows a pointing hand
Making disabled buttons visually clearer
Adding Forward/Back buttons to the Pendant UI
Adding a hint system
Manually placing the pages of the ebook toward the end of the act

Figure 3: Pendant UI with breadcrumbs and forward/back buttons

One minor issue that was a bridge too far is getting the font pixel-perfect; most fonts seem to be designed for 16pt and the text blurs if not used in integer multiples of 16 with my render settings; however I think 24pt is a better size.

In the future I'd like to use my mentor Sam's suggestion of creating multiple font families but in the meantime, this slightly blurry version of Avenipixel Regular in the web build will have to do!

1.3 Minigames

I tidied up most of the games, including adding a countdown timer to all of the real-time ones so that their starts weren't too abrupt.

Figure 4: In-game paint drawing minigame

Figure 5: Embedded e-book that appears in the final scene of the Act 1

Figure 6: Current UI of the scheduling activity

For the narrative crafting, I also pivoted into a Flappy Bird style of control, with optional pickups.

Figure 7: Talking to birthday party guests in the basement triggers this minigame

2 What's Next

It's been a long, long time since starting this project in April 2023 so I'm glad to take a break. However, I'm sure ideas will percolate for it in the background while I get feedback on where to take it next.

Check it out! https://lionbark.itch.io/age-of-heralds