Hey all, code guy here. This devlog is more of a test than anything, since it's about the first time I do something like this.

I may be referencing the past a bit even though this is the first article. For some context, please check the game's Brief Development History article.

So, we've been pretty busy on this game lately. Quite a couple interesting things being added as we speak, including but not limited to:

BETTER CAMERA

This is actually one of the first things that have been worked on in the latest iteration of this game.

Compared to last time, the game's camera is a lot more stable and easy to work with now. Not to mention pixel-perfect.

I managed to include proper shake, offset and zoom functions, something which I wasn't really successful in doing last year.

(Camera demo)

REDONE ARTWORK

Some time also went into reworking some of the game's art, creating new assets and overall solidifying its artstyle.

(Sam got a new haircut.)

(Large text sprites now feel more expressive and animated, as to fit the game's aesthetic better)

On top of that, we also started some work on the various guest rooms that the player may or may not be able to visit!

(One of the many guest rooms in the game.)

PRETTY VISUALS

I started to face one of my fears surrounding development on this thing, and finally decided to tackle shaders. GLSL isn't exactly the easiest language to work with, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

(I wanna drink that water)

LOCALIZATION

Yes, that is a thing that is set to be included in the game, fun fact!

Currently we only have like 3 planned languages (excluding English), though we can expand that number, if/when we recruit new folks to help with localization in other languages.

As of recently we managed to solve a pretty big problem surrounding just how exactly localization can be applied to dialogue so that text effects can be applied to it without breaking. This was probably the largest step towards actually having something that can be effectively used, and knowing it all figured out makes this all the more exciting. In other words, huge.

On top of that, all the game's main fonts now include the Extended Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, which makes room for the implementation of tons of other languages!

(A peek at Russian localization-- shoutout to HydroOxide2)

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

For the spring devlog, we hope to be able to add updates regarding:

• Cutscene stuff [IN PROGRESS]

• An interactive shop system

• Tasks + Sam's Journal

• A Save/Load system [IN PROGRESS]

• Settings

...so the basic stuff. Yeah... we can't really dabble too much into the actual game's story without the necessary tools for it, so that will have to wait unfortunately. Though we do have some ideas in stock, so stay tuned!