Zone Sweet Zone: Progress Report 5/8-The Rest Of May

hEY EVERYBODY,

so! first and foremost: i completely forgot tcaf was this month!!! i drove this year, which meant four (!!) days on the road and two at the con, with a few days of Exhaustion tacked on the end. this wrecked my work rhythm and sleep schedule for a bit so i didn't get as much done as i expected, but things have smoothed out now. so: what DID i get done??? let's dig in

ALL'S STAIR IN LOVE AND, WAR, this isnt a good sentence,

stairs! yahoo!! you need em to move between floors. i mean, you can use the elevator too, but i feel like stairs are the primary method of moving through floors. they let you move up the building organically, checkin' out the zones on each floor as you go through.

originally, i was thinking of having a discrete load between each floor of the building, with each floor in its own scene. but i tried this, and it felt... bad!!! especially with how nice the fade transition between hallway and zone felt. so, i schemed up somethin a lil trickier.

each floor in zone sweet zone has the same basic layout, so i wanted to see if i could get away with just moving the player + stairs and changing up the variables for what's present on each floor. and.. it works!!

from the player's point of view, it looks like they're going up/down stairs, but actually they're gettin yanked back to the same hallway geometry every time. but, even though the geometry's the same...

... the zones present on each floor (and anything else that should be different) still changes! a Stairs Success Story.

GEOMETRY UPDATES

i was gettin to the point where i needed geometry that was a lil closer to final in order to make sure things work and look right. so, i spent a bunch of time in maya... (WHICH IM STILL, VERY LEARNING,)

this stuff still isn't final, but it's closer! the general shapes are there. still lots to work on here...

SECRET WINDOW'S

ok, so like, you know how rooms in animal crossing don't have windows you can actually see out of. this has always bugged the Heck out of me. the claustrophobic-ness of this is dampened somewhat by the fact that you get to go outside and wander around, but that's not really a thing in zone!! also, you've got that snes-RPG-style abyss outside of each room, which prevents me from putting any actual geometry outside of a window...

... or does it????

i started looking into a thing called the stencil buffer, which lets you basically hide objects unless they're viewed through another object. it's a lil tricky to set up, but it does just what i want: you can look Outside through a window, but if the camera is positioned outside the room geometry in "physical space," all you see is RPG abyss.

this is also useful for things other than windows, like hiding the portion of stairs/elevator you shouldn't be able to see above the walls, etc.

most importantly, it lets me do fun stuff with windows inside zones! you'll be able to freely pick up and place windows, and with this i can customize what shows up through them. maybe you want a window with a mountain view? how about an underwater one, or a giant aquarium wall? forest? ground level neighborhood view on the 34th floor? anything's possible!!!

SNAPPY CAM

there's not a lot to say about this one, but i fixed up the camera!!! it's snappy now rather than fully freecam. it rotates in increments of 45 degrees horizontally and 25 degrees vertically, and has 4 zoom levels. it looks and feels a lot nicer now!

I PUT A CLOWN IN MY GAME, BUT IT'S JUST FOR ME

there are a lot of systems in zone sweet zone, and i'm already drowning in temporary debug buttons which im constantly forgetting. in order to relieve some of that stress, i had to put together a lil debug command line for myself.

this makes testing a whole lot easier for me! And, it's Fun&Friendly.

for instance, i can save/load to and from any zone as long as i'm within any zone area. before i had to actually run to the other room and load stuff organically!!! that's a lotta wasted time. anyway, this isn't something players will ever get to see or use but i'm proud of it!!! it sure makes MY life easier.

ALSO I OPTIMIZED THE ZONE SAVE/LOAD CODE A BUNCH

so it's better + works more consistently now. dont worry about it.

OK THAT'S PRETTY MUCH IT. SO, NEXT WEEK...

alright! wahoo. i'm gonna try to get back to weekly updates w/this thing, since i don't have any cross-country trips next month to knock me on my ass. SO: the plan for this next week of work is...

1) elevator! gotta get that thing working. making the debug command line actually taught me a lot of what i'm gonna need to know for it, so i'm chompin at the bit to get started on that.

2) tidy up the geometry more! there's still a lot of stencil buffer stuff i gotta set up, and i wanna see about getting some textures and detail on the walls. also wanna get some nice fade in/out going for moving between the hallway and the elevator/stairwell!

3) make more freakin furniture!!!! some windows and Some Furniture Besides Two TVs would be nice...

4) NPCs!!! it's time to start populating this world w/some pals

OH YEAH HEY IT'S THE END OF THE MONTH

so! here's a reminder of what each month of patronage means!

1) your tenant level goes up! this increases your max Mist Reservoir, which means you can put more furniture around. folks who pledged at the beginning of this month/during the Bonus Forgiveness Period are currently tenant level 1, and will be level 2 if they pledge again for next month!

2) you'll be awarded a mist coin for each tenant level you have to your name! mist coins let you purchase Real furniture created by Goddess Aikaea which doesn't consume Mist Reservoir to place in your zone. Real furniture can also be Flavored to customize it further! i need to think of a better name for Real furniture!!!

3) YOU SUPPORT ME!!!!! all these game bonuses are cool but this is the most important one of all, imo!!! patreon is my sole source of income and everyone keeps me fed, watered and able to work on Zone Sweet Zone and other projects!!! (REACHES FOR ITEM HAVER) 

i also wanna stress - if you ever can't afford to continue supporting, that's totally okay!! as long as you've pledged $5 once, your zone will persist for all eternity and you can still play. you'll keep your tenant level, too, but it'll stop increasing. bUT UM, i hope you'll want to continue supporting me and my work anyway!!!

the game should, mists willing, launch next month!! that doesn't mean it'll be DONE because there's a ton of stuff i wanna keep adding, but it means y'all can Get In There. i'm excited to see what you'll put together, and i hope you're excited to see what i put together in the coming weeks!!

OK THAT'S IT!!! thank you everyone!!!

it's been a weird month adjusting to treating this like my day job but there's truly nothing i'd rather be doing.

anyway here's a gif of something that's definitely not going to be in the final game