For the past couple months, I've been working on developing Bonesweeper into a bigger game, with the support of a grant from Screen Tasmania! I want to share as much of the process as I can. Keep an eye to this thread in the weeks and months to come! :) #gamedev#indiedeveloper
Bonesweeper draws inspiration from Minesweeper and Tetris, having you dig up fossils and then assemble them into skeletons. I released a rough prototype last year exploring those core concepts, which you can play today! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiW4770dkOQ
The full game will expand beyond the prototype, adding an interactive map to select dig sites from, a museum for assembled skeletons, and a customiseable player avatar (plus more species, more dig environments, and an optional less stressful skeleton assembly "puzzle mode")
I'm really excited for the new dig selection screen, which will have a slider for controlling geologic time to give some extra context for where fossils came from (and will probably have more than just Australia).
I'm also looking forward to the museum, which I hope will be a space for players to reflect on the cool stuff they've discovered, and maybe bump into` some educational content (like #HiveTime's "Beepedia" but more interactive) #fossilfriday
Experimenting with using shape keys to get seamless dirt tile variants. Not sure if I'll stick with it, but it's an interesting way of getting a bunch of variation from a single model #screenshotsaturday#gamedev#indiedev
I want to give players the choice of a number of different "flag" types as part of character customisation. I don't know how widely they're used, but I've seen these little plastic markers in photos and thought they were cute #screenshotsaturday#gamedev#indiedev
Spent last night implementing applying settings during play. Not particularly interesting work or outcomes, but it's nice to be doing this in more robust/flexible ways than I was in the original prototype
Continuing to work on dig gameplay, I did a first pass implementation of special abilities. Default dig actions are now defined as abilities (but without a cooldown), which unifies a bunch of code. Eventually these will have icons rather than text. #screenshotsaturday#indiedev#gamedev
I spent some of today working on an in-game way of communicating development progress. This will be nice to have moving forward (test data pictured - the game's a long way from being that finished :D )
Had a few bugs creep into the map mockup with 3.4.3 (bad normals on meshes with shape keys, GI probe weirdness, and a rendering flicker). Sat down to start coming up with repro cases today and discovered that everything's addressed upstream in 3.4.4 RC2. Thanks #GodotEngine community!
The image is still not finished, but it's nice to have something in for the application icon. Doing the most important bits first #screenshotsaturday#gamedev#indiedev
First pass on making gameplay automatically scale to fit the current skeleton (gotta handle both itty bitty theropods and huge sauropods). There'll be some extra camera behaviours to help make things more interesting/fun for really biggosaurs, but this is good for now
One new thing that's going to be in the assembly phase is an optional less stressful "puzzle mode." Got a first pass on the controls in this evening, and I think it's going to be fun for people who struggled with the default Tetris-inspired "action mode" in the prototype.
Spent some of today's stream wrestling with perf overheads. Moving a Spatial to match the mouse cursor's position was impacting frame time, if the Spatial had children. Updating the Spatial's transform in _physics_process() rather than _process() made a huge difference o.0
None of the Spatial's children (direct or indirect) are physics objects. "Idle time" is pretty inscrutable in Godot's profiler and I'm at a loss to explain why the same action (modifying the Spatial's transform) seems to account for 14ms or so less when done in _physics_process()
There's nothing new there, but it feels very nice to have it all hooked up together (looking forward to working on expanded functionality and content that that allows). I also tidied up the icon a little more ^_^
Big dig sites aren't always a good fit for one play session. Need a break, but don't want to give up? No probs. Got the last fossil you need for a skeleton and want to go do that? Sure thing. Want to interleave progress on multiple dig sites one dig at a time? Um sure, I guess.
The map, dig and assembly gameplay loops are now implemented (along with saving/loading) enough that if I had more than one test skeleton, Bonesweeper would pretty much have feature parity with the prototype. I'm expecting the pace of development to ramp up a bit from here on out
Got a first pass on dig phase UI for current skeleton progress/found fossils. Super rough, but having this feedback helps ground the dig phase within the surrounding gameplay loops #screenshotsaturday
UI is still temp, but it's more functional. It is now possible to see how many of each fossil chunk is in your inventory in both the dig and assembly phases (and I finally implemented using the next chunk in your inventory during assembly if you had more than one)
Added in some new dig location markers to help make it easier to differentiate between new and expiring sites, and when they're neither, there's another to let you know if you've previously visited #screenshotsaturday#indiedev#gamedev
Added a new widget type for iterating through lists of indeterminate length. Works with mouse and keyboard navigation (though won't give focus to left or right neighbours). Dropdowns are good in a lot of contexts, but this feels cleaner here and takes fewer clicks to change.
Also added some tweens when dig sites appear/disappear to help communicate what's going on when you return from a dig site or assembling a skeleton (time intervals are being forced here with a debug shortcut)
Blind-friendly TTS gameplay for the assembly phase's action mode is in (using the same implementation as the prototype for now). You don't have to see/see well to build a dinosaur skeleton.
I'm not doing a proper museum implementation for the upcoming early test builds, but I did want to give somewhere to see assembled skeletons, so I copied the temp character controller from my mock up and generated an environment scaled to fit the player's inventory of skeletons.
Muttaburrasaurus' big schnoz (this is from a placeholder skeleton in the style of the prototype's skeleton to replace the chunky "testodon" in the short term - final skeleton designs will likely be a bit different ^_^ )
I've spent the past couple of days working on a Blender addon for managing skeleton metadata. It's still a little bare bones (ho ho ho), but even in its current state, it's going to dramatically speed up skeleton production time.
Spent most of today making tweaks and fixing some edge cases in my Blender addon for managing skeleton metadata. Here's a much more complex skeleton set up ready for export.
Made a little aussie sauropod (Diamantinasaurus) today. Getting the camera in a good spot to the the whole thing in the temp museum is a challenge. Here it is next to the "testodon" #gamedev#indiedev#screenshotsaturday
A bit later than usual, but here's a progress recap of @Bonesweeper development in April so far. Assembly is integrated, avatar customisation, two new skeletons, "time" passing in the map phase, and first test builds for patrons. Enjoy! #gamedev#indiedev https://www.patreon.com/posts/65528797
Spent a bunch of time writing out a new abstraction between dig sites and locations. Look and feel is still pretty temporary, but it's nice to be able to show information like what species can possibly be found at a dig site and what has been found at a visited site.
Did a bunch of misc fixes/little tweaks today. I think my favourite is showing the site name at the start of every dig (just says "Ready! Set! Dig!" in practice mode). The temp museum got similar treatment, which is less exciting, but nice to have.
Added more dig meshes to help show more variety in what you're digging up. Skeleton chunks can define a specific dig mesh to use (species-specific skull, or be assigned one based on the chunk name (generic tail vertebrae), or fall back to use a random generic mesh (generic femur)
Figured I've been working hard enough on stuff that I deserve a day off, so instead of doing that, I implemented a new/faster skeleton preview for map markers
Finally making some forward progress on dig site surrounds. Eventually this space will be populated with tables and tents and buckets and doodads, but for now, it's just nice to not have the dig site hanging in space
Wrote another Blender addon to handle exporting fossils' dig meshes, and repositioned/re-exported them all. Still a bit of fine tuning needed to guarantee they're not hovering/entirely underground, but it's already looking nicer and more varied.
Added a few ground texture variants to suggest different environments/biomes. It's a first pass, but it already adds some fun variation and sense of place #screenshotsaturday#gamedev#indiedev
Been doing mostly non-visual work for the past couple of weeks, so I haven't had much to share. Here's a little voxel experiment I started this evening while exploring stuff for museum customisation. Won't look or behave anything like this if I go with it ^_^
Closer-to-on-time mid-month Bonesweeper status update for June is now up! Mostly cosmetic changes this month, but I've also been working on music and museum editing systems https://www.patreon.com/posts/68006288
Ah ha! I have achieved Number Godhood and mastered the rendering of Almost Longitude and Messy Latitude. I shall now ascend to a Pure Numeric Form. Or sleep. Whichever comes first. #gamedev#indiedev
Moved dig tile variation into a shader rather than modifying the actual geo before instantiating. It more than halves dig load times, so I've made "huge" dig sites bigger (1,221 tiles here!). I'll have to see whether it hurts perf on lower end GPUs before I commit
OK, so it's not a screenshot, but I've just integrated the music handler and hooked up the map track that @KestrelPi has been working on, and bam, even at the main menu with its placeholder background, it's 200% more game #gamedev#indiedev#screenshotsaturday
Gave the placeholder Bonesweeper website a little tweak last night to remove the last of the prototype imagery (might need to refresh caches) https://bonesweeper.jbushproductions.com
New bonesweeper test builds are up! Digs that clear multiple tiles now have a little delay so you can see that cascade outwards. Might replace it with a proper fill function later, but for now, it's nice enough.
Finally got around to adding scroll bars to the generated settings menus. I'll probably tidy/streamline before release, but during development, I like to have settings for as much stuff as possible so that it's easy to compare different behaviours/configurations
Dig sites now indicate what epoch the formations are from, and limits the possible species found there to ones that occurred during that epoch. With eight epochs and four test skeletons, the game now feels very empty :D
The map room's empty shelves and window sills now populates with skulls and cacti as you complete skeletons and finish digs. There aren't many models just yet (same for the book references), but it's probably the first bit of progression content that will stay into the full game.
Made a piece of amber with an ant inclusion on stream today. Eventually these will show up as misc fossils in dig sites and during assembly. Need to write a shader so that I can have better control over how front faces are rendered vs back faces, but it's nice enough for now!
Working on generating a rad travel line. Started with ImmediateGeometry's line strip to get the position, etc. right, which looked good albeit 1px wide. Decided I could turn that into triangles and get width pretty easily, and whoops, that's not it :D
First pass on misc fossil sorting in assembly mode is in. Still only amber for now, but laying the mechanics down is the priority right now ^_^ #screenshotsaturday
Got a new WIP dig music concept from @KestrelPi last night exploring a more sparse take on some previous iterations. I feel like we're narrowing in on the core musical identity for the dig phase, and that's super exciting for me! #screenshotsaturday#indiedev#gamedev
Spent some time refactoring SFX loading so that new audio can be added to/removed from events without making new builds, which will hopefully ease iteration on SFX moving forward now that I've brought @luminareth on board to help out. Super excited to be working with her again!
Need to add some smarts in so that out of date/redundant destinations are ignored, and turns are a bit more smooth, but players avatars now walk around dig sites \o/
Thinking of adding the player avatar into the map phase background, and I'm just starting to realise that maybe past me took the shortcut of using exaggerated scale to control the DOF effect and FOV feel. Might need to make the avatar larger.
I wrote a little popup system that generates UI based on a few bits of data. For now, I'm only using it on first run to ask which Assembly phase mode should be used, but I'm expecting to use it for other notifications, questions, and maybe tutorials.
Spent half of today's dev stream wrestling with sine and cosine as I worked to add these dots to the end of my big travel lines. It's embarrassing, but still feels important to show/share that even with a teeny tiny maths brain like mine, it's still possible to muddle through
Here's the (very late) mid-month #Bonesweeper progress update for October. Misc tweaks and fixes from me for the most part, but more excitingly, new music from @KestrelPi and first audio from Jasmine https://patreon.com/posts/73761319
And here's the accompanying status update video covering major items from the last month or so. This video also includes @KestrelPi talking about his work on the game's soundtrack, and touches on the recent chat I had with Dr David Hocking, curator of vertebrate zoology and palaeontology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46l7fFTYPts
Just implemented a new feature for Bonesweeper's "layered music player." It allows us to have a track that starts before the looping parts start, and can have overlap if desired. Godot's OGG stream class has a loop_offset, which would be a good fit for less complex use-cases.
Here's the November mid-month status update post for #Bonesweeper. Been mostly giving attention to behind-the-scenes museum stuff, but the map phase has gotten some love too, and there's a new WIP music track from @KestrelPi in the game. https://www.patreon.com/posts/74803288
And here's the accompanying video, covering the past month or so's worth of development, touching on "full specimens" and how they frame some types of rarity in the game, fleshing out the museum, and making map travel lines look nicer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrCne_BSznU #IndieDev#GameDev#FossilFriday
Still very temporary, and new rooms will be unlocked via the research screen, but I've nearly got this functional enough to allow players to grow their museums to house any number of specimens (probably won't put an upper limit in).
Looking forward to being able to have an exhibit that's just headless sauropods.
Can now add, remove, and traverse between rooms. Map works for fast travel, but you can just use a door to go to the next room as a more "immersive" option.
Still rudimentary (and made less exciting by only having one room shape in the game), but it's usable.
Added a few new room shapes - eventually I'll need to adjust them so that they follow respect some common length/width intervals to make piecing stuff together easier, but for now, it's fun to just have some variety
Mid-month status update for December is here. Since most of the past few weeks has gone to other projects, I've also included some reflections on the game's progress over its first year or so of production https://www.patreon.com/posts/76220967
Here's a little concept I scribbled last night while waiting for a rough cut of the most recent progress update video to render.
I'm a little embarrassed to share it because it's not even remotely accurate, but a) it's important to overcome that (with a disclaimer, of course), and b) concept pieces are about communicating ideas/intent rather than being perfect ^_^
Made some headway on getting the musem map keyboard/gamepay friendly today, and added a placeholder cursor to make input/interaction states a little more readable
Wrapped up keyboard/gamepad support for the museum map this morning, and also added a setting to randomise the initial unlocks for a skeleton as a possible way of getting a little more interesting variation in that always-feet-first doesn't provide. Also added an interface setting for customising the "placement shadow" colour
It's still just a first pass, but I've finally got the research phase implemented. You can now spend your surplus fossils on extra bits and pieces to customise your museum with (only additional rooms for now, but that'll expand to include skeleton mounts, display cases, informational displays, lighting, etc.). Once started, research progresses as you visit dig sites and work on assembling skeletons.
This represents a significant milestone! Every gameplay phase is now represented in the game to some extent. Until now, there was still a gameplay loop missing, and while I need to fill in a lot more content, do a visual pass, make it TTS-friendly, etc., I feel like I can now better demonstrate the "shape" of the game as a whole and it feels a little exciting to come back from a dig site to find some research has finished.
Still a long way from done, but this already feels like somewhere (also there's only two models here - it's amazing what a little rotation and scale will give you for "free")
And the accompanying video, which includes a visualisation of the flow of fossil chunks through the game's various gameplay phases now that the bare bones (ho ho ho) version of the Research phase is implemented. #gamedev#indiedev https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwu7GPdw8tI
I've been a bit slack on posting progress to social media. Not much has been happening that's visually interesting (and balancing contract work has been tricky). Here's a little something I did today. The temp chunk selector UI for the Research phase is now paginated (loads way faster) and has a nice spinny effect when mousing over chunks
Running very late again this month, but here's the regular mid-month progress update post. Topics include the Research phase background and a few quality-of-life tweaks https://www.patreon.com/posts/82270020
I've been slack with posting #FossilSweeper progress lately. Amber now gets rounded/polished after being sorted, and might have some different things (still placeholders for now)
Almost on-time with the mid-month progress update post this time! Topics include misc fossil gameplay and Research phase UI https://www.patreon.com/posts/83235903
Between Hive Time's World Bee Day update #LinuxGameJam2023 and #AdvJam2023, and contract work, progress has been pretty slow on the Fossil Sweeper front for the past few weeks. Have been working on display cases for misc fossils, though!
Here's the mid-month progress update. Not a lot of work over the past could of weeks thanks to other commitments, but I was able to make a little forward progress on some important museum stuff https://www.patreon.com/posts/84750897
Today I spent time on drag selection. Turns out that Godot's camera's far clipping distance to project_position() technically represents a point outside the frustum and gives weird values - makes sense, but it took a while to realise what was going on :D
I spent some time earlier this week improving my click and drag box selection implementation. To avoid redundant calculation, when multiple input events are received per tick or when no relevant input events have been received, but I'd forgotten an important line :D
As part of assessing how the current museum music implementation is likely to scale/map against a growing museum with a diversity of themed rooms, I put together a little example museum with a dozen or so rooms full of placeholder models and varied the lighting a little.
I think walking around the extended space does a better job of communicating where this is headed, but still feels empty without customiseable light placement and wall displays. This'll do for now though!
Here's the September mid-month progress update for Fossil Sweeper, a palaeontology game I've been making in #GodotEngine for a while now. Mostly museum work again this month! https://www.patreon.com/posts/89483806
Here's the (late) October mid-month progress update for my fossil diggy-uppy game Fossil Sweeper. Mostly focused on museum music UI and implementation stuff this month! https://www.patreon.com/posts/91445864
I also updated the temp lighting controls to work like the music HUD so that lighting can be changed while walking around the museum and looking at the specimens affected by that lighting.
Here's the November mid-month progress update for my fossil diggy-uppy game Fossil Sweeper. Composer Peter shares some thoughts on music process, and I've been doing more museum UI work https://www.patreon.com/posts/93156944
I wanted to better highlight where fossil chunks are within an assembled skeleton, so the chunk icons are now clickable. It's neat! #gamedev#godotengine#indiedev
Updated how selecting nearby items works for gamepad and keyboard controls to make it less fiddly - being able to select something you're near to without having to walk around to make it the closest nearby item is heaps nicer
Here's the December mid-month progress update for my fossil-diggy-uppy game Fossil Sweeper. Dig site size tuning, temp museum UI work, and some more TTS support https://www.patreon.com/posts/94804689
Updated the edit menu buttons to use the same focus cycling controls as proximity items in interact mode, which unlocks a bunch of museum functionaly that wasn't previously accessible with gamepad controls \o/
The January progress update video is running a little late (January's been busy in general, and this video is a bit bigger than usual). I've still been doing bits and pieces though.
Today I finished implementing size variation for skeletons across the assembly phase/museum. Not sure to what extent I'm going to try to express ontogeny, but regardless, it's cool to have every skeleton be unique now \o/
Still unsure on expressing ontogeny in this, but if I do, smaller will have younger features
Better late than never, here's the January mid-month progress update for my fossil-diggy-uppy game Fossil Sweeper. More temp museum controls for keyboard and gamepad, and some reflections on the second year of development https://www.patreon.com/posts/97815055
Expanding the perimeter by one tile in cardinal directions helps get rid of the single-tile "protrusions" seen on the far left side of the previous screenshot (those tend to be awkward/more likely to require a guess, which is less-interesting gameplay).
Still need to think about what all this means for coordinates when playing with TTS (don't think I'll do anything special, but there's a big amount of "wasted" coordinate space in the top left and bottom left).
Because these are generated, I get a bunch of variation for free. I don't think that variation feels like "content," but it helps make digs feel less samey, which is a big deal for the sort of game this is.
I've still got a bunch of other stuff to wrap up before I can start focusing in earnest on content and variation density, but it's exciting to on the cusp of.
I mocked up some museum floor textures for the last video, and variation there from such a minimal change is more than I expected.
I spent some of today's stream poking around with hotloading meshes and attaching them to existing skeletons (for character customisation).
I already do this in places with skeleton fossil chunks, and I'd done some previous experiments, but it seems I'd overlooked that vertex group information seems to get broken/stomped on if meshes are exported separately - and not consistently (if they're imported as separate files, that's fine). A little frustrating, but I think I have something workable.
While working on a visualisation of the new non-square dig site generation stuff for the upcoming dev log video, this shape came up and made me think of a steg. It was nice to take a break and draw this little friend for fun #PaleoArt#PixelArt
@aral@lashman It's complicated when there are stakeholders and other oblications in conflict. I am looking forward to the current period of divided attention being over before the year is out.
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