april 6, 2023


after watching a video about rain world's development, I realize that there could be some value in making more in-depth dev logs, so I'm going to try beginning these update posts with some more detailed thoughts of mine. one, because it's good for motivation. and two... well... because I want to!

anyways, Untitled Cave Game! even though it doesn't have a name, I do have some goals for this project.

the main overarching goal is getting the cave generation to a great place. essentially, I want to combine the feeling of discovering a new beautiful location in hollow knight with the exploration aspect of minecraft's caves. I think those sources of inspiration are obvious, and clearly there's a long way to go, but the bones are there I think.

to start, I should focus on getting the look and feel of a "general" cave figured out. I do want to have biomes in the future, but that should not be a focus for now. so... what's a "general" cave? that's the first hurdle. I'm going to let the vibe naturally develop, and this'll come from tweaking noise variables and the decoration algorithm, and making new sprites slowly over time. sounds wishy-washy, but this is a project for fun, so I'm optimistic!


~


new features:

- dust particles to emphasize player movement

- basic loading screen while the cave is generating

- massively improved generation time -- down from 8-10 seconds to 2-3 seconds (both in my browser)

- improved traversability checks and corrections

- more decorative rocks

- minor tweaks to player animation


questions for feedback:

- did the game load for you? if so, does generation time feel excessively long?

- how does the player "feel"? do jumps, wall-clings, and wall-jumps feel fair? is the movement speed right for the size of the screen?

- thoughts on the dust particles?

- at any point, were you unable to reach somewhere? if so, please share a screenshot that includes the seed!


todo:

- fix generation so player spawns on solid ground

- even more decorations! some in the foreground, some parallax, additional types besides rocks.

- improve the main shader and find a way to do exact color replacement in godot 4.0.

Files

build_20230406.zip 9.2 MB
Apr 06, 2023

Get Silt Spawn (Demo)

Comments

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(+1)

I saw that video as well! I think we tend to forget how powerful logging the story of a game's creation is, even if this is just a little art project.

The game felt great to me. Loaded fast, loved how the dust bunny moved with the dust particles. Managed to reach pretty much anywhere.

I was quite surprised by seeing one of the big rocks (Yes a background rock got me excited) and I wonder if there could be things hidden within the cave that the player doesn't know about. Having something handcrafted could break the pattern of monotony of going through random caves but not telling the player about it could bring a real sense of discovery to it.

Keep doing what you're doing! This is going great 

(+1)

wow thank you for the amazing feedback Tigran! I'm incredibly happy to hear so much positivity, even from the game in its super early state!

I think your experience with the big rock is a really good sign that the layout of the cave will serve the main goal I have for it. that is, nurturing a desire to explore and the satisfaction of finding something interesting. as for handcrafted things, I do want to have a handful of NPCs that randomly show up and have dialogue that progresses with each chat. but currently, that's second-fiddle to the main objective... which I haven't even decided on yet, hahaha.

anyways, thanks again for the kind words and feedback!! it was a wonderful surprise :)