Devlog No. 1 - Project Barkeep

Been a while since I published the announcement post so thought it was time to share the progress so far, especially since I kind of promised to update every month...Whoopsie

The past few months have been both gratifying and sluggish with the development, as I've been spending that time working out the foundation of the game. Figuring out how the basic systems in the game should work and implementing them, which means a lot of work happens under the hood so there's really not much to look at (even still).

Furthermore, since nothing really was in place I ended up scraping certain things as things didn't work out with what I had in mind. I'm also trying to consider modularity so that these systems can be easily extended or modified for the final game, as I'm currently only working within a prototype stage. In other words, everything has been quite time consuming up to this point...

Implemented since announcement post:

• Fixed Camera System, reminiscent of certain classic horror games but with some modern bells and whistles. Cameras are placed around the room and switch depending which part of the room you move to.
• The character moves relative to the camera's perspective, and only updates to a new relative movement delta when you let go of the movement input. Allowing the player to continuously walk through several camera zones without hitches.
• Extra bells and whistles:
• Certain cameras you can tilt around to see more of the surroundings, I'm also planning to make use of these in cutscenes
• Some camera zones have multiple cameras, so every time you enter a certain camera zones you will get a different perspective each time. Makes it more visually interesting.
• Post Processing, which currently has a Depth of Field effect that is focused on the player together with a Vignette and a touch of film grain. This is just a first iteration and I have much more planned for this. I've left out certain things as I need to wait until the final assets are in place, for example color grading using LUTs.
• However, a nice realization from setting up the post processing this early was that the look I'm going for will be very forgiving for the assets that I'll be making, so minor imperfections on the assets won't be something that'll be too visible in-game.
• Candles and a candle light particle effect, even though these weren't necessarily a core system I wanted to add some flair to the scene. Besides, they will be used later down the line so it's fine.
• These came from several asset packs where I combined the models from one with the particle effect from another, except I upgraded the particles to use the newer system in the engine and completely revamped how it initiates and places the candle lights on the models.
• Swapped out and integrated a new Animation System I got from an asset pack, this is still a very stock setup that I'll eventually personalize to each character when those come in.
• Implemented game mode switching between the default mode and the barkeeping mode, so when the player enters the bar you don't manually move around anymore as the controls should go to mixing drinks when you're behind the bar. Also includes nice transitions when entering and leaving the bar.
• Added time freezing and unfreezing, where time can gradually come to and out of a halt on command.

Doing these systems first felt like a necessary step as they could lead the way in terms of blocking out the bigger environment later on, since the perspective might inspire some interesting level design or at least guide the level design forward.

Below is a video featuring each bullet point from above so you can see how it looks in-game:

Until Next Devlog

For the next update I hope to at least have implemented the following features:

• Custom animations, extending the animation system to include stuff like taking a seat and looking at a target (something which isn't possible without the character eventually turning towards the target as well with the animation system I adopted)
• Fine tune the transition when swapping to barkeeping game mode, for example better animations when entering/leaving the bar where the character will actually grab onto the countertop doors and lift and move it out of the way.
• AI characters, if only the basic NPC types that don't really have any extensive dialogues
• Dialogue and conversations
• The beginnings of the barkeeping gameplay

Once the above are in place I feel like I should have enough in place to begin working on the characters for the game, as well as fleshing out the world more and hopefully I'll be able to start sharing more frequently as there will be more to actually show you!

Bonus Highlight

I made a custom Project Barkeep design for a Xbox One Controller using the Xbox Design Lab, a unofficial controller if you will. Very pleased with it and perfect for playtesting with!