legends-of-thrinar

[legends-of-thrinar]

WIP Wednesday Developer Log 1/31/2024

In Progress Screenshot

Devlog

This week I had enough bits and pieces put together to start setting up my main menu and the cut scenes that lead into the first memory. I set up the main menu and the background music, as well as ensured that the accessible menu worked on all the different parts of the cut scene and the main menu.

The settings menu got pulled out into its own component, and added to the main menu so that people can change the settings before starting the game. I also made it so that the New Game button starts the game immediately by transitioning to the backstory about Thrinar.

The cut scene itself was designed by using awaits; awaiting on button presses allows the animated cutscene to play in the background and loading all the necessary components (such as the map) to occur in the background while the player reads the story at their own pace. (Or has it narrarated, for blind and low vision players).

Once the player has read the whole story, and everything has loaded, the cutscene transitions into the gameplay for the inital memory - orbit.

Roundup of all Git commits this week:

Added ecosystems page in Echiridion GUI

Added outline for Main menu

Main menu loads settings, new game, and quits

Added cutscene that transitions to memory

Fixed a long loading bug in the cutscene that was caused by loading all the voices for TTS

Connected the main menu to the intro cutscene

[legends-of-thrinar]

WIP Wednesday 1/24/2024

In Progress Screenshot

Devlog

This week's work has been heavily focused on menus and accessibility. My first bit of work was finishing up the scan functionality, which allows users to scan for nearby objects. This is designed to help blind and low vision players by telling them about items that they can interact with.

Inside of a structure such as the Scout Pod (shown in the in-progress screenshot) the scan will show all gadgets, plants, inorganics, and animals that are within the structure, regardless of distance from the player. Outside of a structure, it will show gadgets, plants, inorganics, and animals within a 13 block radius of the player. Once the scan has opened the Scout Pod menu, the player can select the item they want to interact with, without having to manually walk there or locate it visually.

This also has the benefit of allowing the tutorial to be more diegetic - because even users can scan for gadgets and find them by name, so the tutorial can just say the device name. (The hints are still non-diegetic, because players need to know which buttons to press).

The second advancement this week was... the advancement system! This takes players step-by-step through the memories, including the initial Orbit memory by giving them prompts as they finish each step, and hints if a step is taking a while to complete.

After I got the advancements working, I started building the Enchiridion menu, and got the basic structure set up, but decided that since the Enchiridion is a high-information menu it was a good time to make sure the menus were navigable without sight. I did some research to determine best practices for game menus, and decided to go with Godot's build in TTS for now.

I built an AccessibleMenu that I am going to use for all my different menu screens, that reads out important contextual information when it opens, when it changes pages, and when the focused item changes. I also built out the functionality for an AccessibleButton that causes the TTS system to read out a tooltip in addition to the button.

Roundup of all Git commits this week:

Created scan functionaity

Added Enchiridion Menu

Added blind/low vision menus nd buttons

[legends-of-thrinar]

WIP Wednesday Developer Log - 1/17/2023

In Progress Screenshots

Devlog

This week's work was mostly work on the game's intro and first tutorial. There was a lot of programming to get the mechanisms for the first tutorial setup, and some coordination of a commission!

As far as programming goes, I added the ability to autoload translations and set up translations so that they can include both text and images for buttons, depending on the setting that the user selected. This has to be manually invoked anywhere where buttons might need to be included in the text, but that should be a limited number of places - currently just notifications along the top of the screen, tooltip options in the bottom corner, and controls in the scan functionality.

Speaking of the scan functionality, that got a huge amount of work this week. I built a lot of the logic needed to register structures as their own entities, with collision boxes that can handle Legends walking in and out of the structure. The structures also manage a list of all gadgets, plants, and animals within the structure, so that when a player presses the Scan button, a list of all items that are inside the structure will appear. This serves two purposes: blind/low vision players can easily find items within a structure without having to stumble around to find things, and new players can scan to see a list of gadgets to find ones that are mentioned in diegetic text. Currently, scan only works within structures, but the goal is to make it work outside of structures as well, with a radius of nearby items.

In between working on the scan functionality, I also got a bit diverted into working on the map that appears when the user interacts with the navigator. This involved learning about Godot's noise generation, and layering the noise generation for a humidity map with a temperature gradient. The plan is for the map to be infinite in the x direction, and looping in the y direction to simulate a globe without limiting the space the player has to play in. The map is still in the very rough stages and has not been balanced yet, but is already generating images that look like a believable world.

Another part of the first tutorial, though, is the cutscenes that give the play more background information about the world. I had a rough idea in my mind about what I wanted the intro cutscene to look like, but my pixel art skills are... not great... in the animation area. So I poked around on various forums for pixel art commissions, and found an artist who had done some space drawings and matched the lineless style that I have been using in my sprites. I sketched up a rough storyboard, and sent it to the artist, who did an AMAZING job pulling the thoughts straight out of my brain and turning them into a real animation.

Roundup of all Git commits this week:

Added autoload for translations

Added theme to make it easier to build menus

Added more functional Scout Pod UI

Added notification bar

Added ability to place controls in translated text

Started adding world generation noise

Made map of world generate when starting, and display in scout pod

Added scene for structures

When structures are added, they increase their hitbox to fill between closed 'walls’

Made scout pod register correctly

Added ability to connect Legend to structure

Partially implemented scanning UI

[legends-of-thrinar]

WIP Wednesday Developer Log - 1/11/2023

In-progress Screenshot

Devlog

My very first devlog is already a day behind, because life was pretty chaotic yesterday! Nonetheless, here's what's been going on in the development of Legends of Thrinar this week.

Because a lot of the very basic controls and actions are now complete, I have pivoted to work on the Memory system, which I am planning to use as the tutorials. The conceit is that upon crash-landing on Miccorral, the Seeker and the Settler lost significant amounts of their memories, which are only recovered when they find familiar items. When they find and touch one of the Memories, they will be transported back to their Scout Training, where they will be given a goal related to the Memory they touched, and coached through how to accomplish that goal.

The very first Memory is "Orbit", which actually occurs before landing on Miccorral. The Scout Pod has settled into orbit around Miccorral, and the Seeker and the Settler need to prepare for landing. The idea is that the Orbit Memory will walk the players through basic controls such as movement, interactions with items, and the various menus (Scout Pod menu, Enchiridion, and the inventory)

To that end, I've been working on the Scout Pod menu this week, with a particular eye towards accessibility. I created a page that displays all the controls for the game and allows players to switch which buttons control which actions. I also created a status page that displays the current status of the Scout Pod (ie, what task is needed to accomplish), and set it up so that it can be translated into any language. (Although right now the only languages are developer and English)

Roundup of all Git commits this week:

Added enchiridion menu

Added ability to display current controls

Added ability to change keybindings

Added node-repurposing in the Controls panel

Added Scout Pod to Main UI flow

Added translations

[legends-of-thrinar]

Legends of Thrinar is a base-building and exploration game centered around the last hopes of the Thrinese people; the Seeker and the Settler. They were launched in a Scout Pod from the dying worlds of Cannid and Callon as their solar system was devoured by the Great Entropic Wave. The Scout Pod was loaded with the supplies they would need to survive on a distant planet named Miccorral, as well as a gene bank that would allow them to rebuild the Thrinese civilization.

Unfortunately, their Pod malfunctioned in Miccorral’s atmosphere, and scattered them and their supplies across the surface of Miccorral. Now they must survive this unfamiliar land, and hopefully find their way back to one another.

Game is currently in development, with devlogs released once a week on WIP Wednesdays.

Links:

Devlogs: #shaping thrinar

Steam: [Under Construction]

Discord: Legends Of Thrinar

Email: legendsofthrinar@gmail.com