(Note: Originally posted here)
Happy Halloween, Sleepyheads! š» I wish I could have worked on some fun spooky stuff to show yāall this month, but Iām trying to stick to the plan. In last monthās update, I laid out a very optimistic list of what I wanted to do this month, understanding that I likely wouldnāt get it all done. Though I didnāt do all of it, I got the most important things wrapped up: there is now a playtest build available on Steam for anyone that backed Little Nemo at the Sleepwalker tier or above (this is the āš¾ Early Builds Accessā reward).ā
Some quick notes about this build: thereās almost no content in there right now. This build was mostly for me to get a feel for uploading a build to Steam, see how it runs on peoplesā computers, and find any bugs that pop up from the get go. Make sure to keep an eye out for updates as Iāll be working on bringing in the content that was in the Kickstarter private demo, and then some. If youāre not already in the Discord, please join so you can share your feedback in the #sleepwalker-feedback channel (please note, you need the Sleepwalker or Guardian roles to access that channel, so just ping Dave, thatās me š, in the Discord if you should have access and donāt yet). Thanks to all the Sleepwalkers and Guardians for your support and for testing out these early builds. Itāll be a huge boon to have yāall scouting for issues and helping identify stuff that needs tweaking. ā¤ļø
So figuring out how to get squared away with builds on Steam without having a store presence ready yet for Little Nemo was one of the big tasks I was happy to wrap up this month. But of course thereās plenty more I finished up. And hereās what is inarguably one of the most critical, and most requested features that kept popping up from the Kickstarter private demo:
You can now pet the cat. š»
The cat sound effects arenāt in there yet, but Iām happy with the animation for Nemo. Since backers at the Cat Guardian tier will eventually have their cats in the game, this minor feature was a must. Once our Guardian backersā cats start getting put into the game, there will be a special menu option (available to everyone) to choose from the list of Cat Guardians. When you select a cat, the cat sprite/color scheme/sound effects/Leo wall poster will all be swapped out to represent the selected cat. Iām really looking forward to getting photo references from all the Cat Guardians and implementing this (hopefully sometime maybe early next year?)
The Pajama and Little Buddy systems are now fully functional:
Hereās Nemo swapping out the currently equipped PJs and Little Buddy while in the bedroom
Right now there are only six PJs and two Little Buddies completed, but the UI and flow for acquiring new ones have been fleshed out. The Little Buddy system was a bit tricky to polish up because it required pathfinding, which can get fairly complex in a platformer environment. This is why youāll often see familiars/buddies in games float around near the player, able to clip through walls. But I want the buddies to tag along and jump around with Nemo moving in a similar way. Hereās a peek at the pathfinding logic with some pathing gizmos turned on:
Here the red line represents the path BOB is taking through the world to follow Nemo.
I also polished up the dialogue UI a bit and added a lip-syncing feature. This is something I knew I kind of wanted, but just hadnāt had time to tackle just yet. Here you can see Flipās mouth and eyes controlled by the dialogue as it is read. The sound effects have also been overhauled a bit, so Iāve uploaded this as a video.
And then some other things I worked on in rapid fire that arenāt as fun to show off:
I have some in-progress tasks to finish up, but Iām trying to stay focused on the task of getting a very polished piece of the early game wrapped up and in the hands of Sleepwalkers to poke holes in it. The goal here is to get a good build that I could possibly use as a limited time demo to kick off Little Nemoās Steam store presence/wishlist campaign sometime this winter.
So if all goes well Iāll update the early build over the next week or so, so that thereās actually a bit of content to explore in there, and then continue polishing it and working towards having something that feels ādemo readyā by the end of the month.
So thatās it for this month! Thanks for reading to the bottom, and as always, please let me know what you enjoyed or would like to hear more about in the comments below, or join us in the Discord server. š
Until next month!
-Dave