Here’s what I’ve been up to since last post.
Worked more on the Body Part editor. Version 2 of the prototype is about finished, save for some cleanup and testing. I decided to do my best to make it clear what slots represented what by arranging them like a human body.
I decided against having Arm and Leg slots be separate and made them into Limb slots. That way the player can have all legs, all arms, or whatever. Hell, people do torso runs in Kenshi so go for no limbs if you want – screw it. I’ll then be able to derive some kind of movement and manipulation scores based on the parts added.
I also added support for more limbs by adding an insect torso which has three pairs of limb slots. The editor can handle up to four pairs of limbs, but I haven’t decided if that will make the interface too cluttered. I’m going to try it out at some point and see how it goes.
The editor can also swap multi-slot body parts, which I’ve arranged in pairs. So a pair of bat wings for instance would take up a pair of limb slots. This made it less confusing to see where parts were going to end up when dragging the parts to their slot. I plan on displaying the body part over all the slots it will inhabit while it’s hovering over the destination slot. That will make it crystal clear.
I added pop-up windows so the player can edit the head’s slots like eyes, brain, mouth, and ears. Same thing with the torso so internal organs can be swapped. A right click on the respective body parts brings up the windows. Doesn’t seem too cumbersome.
All in all, it has turned out pretty decent. It doesn’t look pretty since I’m getting the functionality all set, but I’m hoping that it can be an easy to read and use interface.
I didn’t work on the body part stuff the whole time, though. I took about a month off from it because I was sick of looking at it. I spent that time learning how to draw on a tablet, making music, and picking up some other skills that I’ll need to work on another project. My wife has an idea for a survival horror game, so I’ve been learning how to make PS1 style graphics and whatnot.
I’m excited to move on from the body part swapping and get a proper prototype of the game setup. I want to focus on map generation for a bit to do something different. Then I’d like to add body parts and other items as pickups in the world and see if it’s any fun picking up pieces of entities and attaching them to the player’s body.
Below are a few demos of songs I’ve been working on. A few bass tracks and a spooky scary boi I wrote in high school and tossed into Ableton.