Hey everyone! We're back with another week of updates! Well, okay that's kind of a lie. Since our first post was an introduction to our game and the team, we actually have TWO weeks of updates for you! We finished our alpha build (it needs some work we know) about two weeks ago now. Since then, we've been doing a ton of work to improve the player experience and finally get all of the systems and feelings we wanted into our game! The project now has an (almost) fully functional mutation system, new models and animations for Oscar and the other creatures, new UI elements and designs for both our combat system and our dialogue system, as well as a whole new bunch of models that are in the work. We also finally have some new logo designs for both Chimera and for Critter Knitter Studios, although both are still a work in progress for now.

Boring Code!!!

Alright, lets get my part out of the way. Lots of boring coding happened over the last two weeks. 

So, during the first week after completing our alpha, we have added a Combat Log with temporary assets, added some cool visual effects when Oscar gets infected, reworked how the alpha plays since we kind of just threw it together at the last minute. The most exciting part of all of this however, was adding a huge amount of modularity to the combat system. If you want more details, I will probably write up another devblog on the coding of this combat system soon (I made it, check out the Combat System Modularity devblog).

For the second week, we managed to finally add our mutation system to the game! The mutation system has always been a major part of our game, and while in combat we have had mutation abilities functional for awhile, there has not been a way to equip different mutations or interact with the over world with certain mutations. Now, you can unlock and equip different mutations during the game, which will give you new combat abilities as well as allowing you to find new interactions in the world. Different mutations will allow you to interact with different things. We also tweaked around with Oscar's movement and fixed a bunch of bugs left over from the alpha build. A big new change was experimenting with a new way of doing the camera! We were inspired by the old resident evil games and the static camera angles in each room. Now when exploring the house the player will see the world from a whole new perspective, although when in combat, you will return to the isometric top down viewpoint.

There is a bunch more we wanted to get done for the programming this week, but unfortunately I just didn't have enough time (I was busy I swear).

Pretty Art!!!

Time for the best part of the devblog, time to see all of the pretty art that was done.

We now have a logo for our game and our studio! While they are both still in development we have a pretty clear idea of how to improve their designs further and what else we want to have.

Over the last two weeks, we have added a bunch of new animations for Oscar, and also have added a version of Oscar covered in injuries. We also now have animations for our frogs, and have now begun the task of creating our "boss" model and animations.

We have now added a bunch of new UI elements for our dialogue system, giving it a cute, colorful and almost childlike aesthetic.

We have now created a bunch of new combat UI assets that still need to be implemented into the project in order to overhaul the combat UI currently in the game.

A bunch of new assets to help bring life to the environment have been modeled and are almost finished. 

Unfortunately I am a simple programmer and am not fully familiar with the art development process, so instead enjoy all of the screenshots we have of some of our new assets.

Business Stuff

Despite our love and passion for this project, we must also fulfill a few additional assignments as part of our degree, which will take time away from development. Don't worry, this doesn't change our plans going forward and won't cause us any issues, but they are tasks we must accomplish. I wont bore you with all of the business side, but just know, we had to write a lot of documentation. 

And that's pretty much it for this week! To us it felt like a ton of work, but after writing it all down its not super long. That doesn't mean we could do more. We are all still college students and have a limited amount of free time. With that said, we here at Critter Knitter love Oscar and the game he stars in and want to take it as far as we can. Thank you for reading all of this nonsense I am writing. We will be back with another update next week to fill you in on even more nonsense! 

Bye for now (and tell your friends about us)!!!