As we are publishing the devblog once a month, there is a lot of progress each time. We are entering new and exciting phase as a company as we are getting ready to show off the demo of Arrival of Punnu REALLY SOON! This means that we will have other exciting things coming up as well. So many new things for 2022! New levels, new designs, new Fantastic Energy... wait what? Yes you heard correct! We are rebuilding the whole game!
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And now, let's dive in and check out what has been cooking!
NOORA
I’ve been working with the Unreal Engine’s water system a bit more recently. I wanted to make the water react to the player’s movements by simulating ripples on the surface. It was a bit of a struggle and at first I had the simulation happening pretty much just above the character’s head instead of on the surface of the water (yes, I’m also confused). But luckily I managed to get past that point and we now have ripples!
TIPI
Made a breakthrough in the design for the Arrival of Punnu just this week. I have been wanting to add some more tempo and fight mechanics to the game, but could not fit them properly to the story. After playing Ori and the Will of Wisps for some time just to get inspired by the beautiful world and music and feeling it hit me:
We need to tie the abilities and charm system to the mission of the Punnu.
That way we can add all the required abilities with ease and give the player the heroic feeling since the little boy is being given a special gift. (The charms in the picture are sketches, but some are quite 100% sure to happen.)
Also if you have any wishes of what kind of abilities you would like posess in a platformer puzzle / adventure game like this, feel free to give us suggestions!
I have also been setting up the sound effects and mapping the overall stuff we need for the demo of Arrival of Punnu that is coming out… NEXT MONTH to steam *:screaming:*
I continued writing the story and finalizing level design for the 2nd part of the game and as we are aiming to make some puzzling nuts to crack, puzzles ye shall have.
MIKKO
Lots of advancements on mechanics were made during the past month as one of our punnus can now accomplish something that the others can’t. I’m talking about the yellow Light Punnu that can illuminate the area to reveal secrets and jump twice as high as the others!
Some puzzles already had their graphics implemented but now we finally have some mechanics there as well. The very first puzzle is now interactable and the foundations for rescuing Pullervo have been laid as well.
One of my personal favorites was implementing the pause and main menu functionalities with adjustable audio levels that are saved and persist even within the editor. This was my first time saving any data inside Unreal Engine and it was delightful to see how easy the engine makes it for us developers.
Scene switching was also implemented but that was a trivial task since all it takes is one function call at the right time.
Next up is fixing all the new bugs that came along with the newly added features and I expect that to take up most of the coming month. But such is the life of a programmer and I wouldn’t have it any other way :)
JOONAS
FE: I have made many FE monster 3D models again: fixing topology, lower polycount, more suitable UV for different “skins” and also making a bunch of new textures.
Here at left is an old model, and it has over 2000 polygons (too much). And right here is a brand new 3D model, more polished and it has only about 1000 polygons. The texture is new but at the same resolution, so basically this monster takes only half of the memory it took before. But with new texture, at least in my opinion, it looks much better now:D
I have also made many “dark skins” for the monsters. Every monster have it in the new version of the game, so I have a big workload to do XD
NOORA
For Fantastic Energy I have created some decal shaders for the Evil Areas. The areas will cover everything that gets on their way and they’ll have a cool spooky squiggly border! I also dabbled in some game design a bit too and wrote about how the game will progress from small fights to bigger bosses.
MIKKO
We got ourselves a new trainee Junnu who is already hard at work with the new and enhanced battle system for Fantastic Energy. That boy seems like he will achieve great things with proper guidance and hard work and I’m very happy with his efforts so far.
That's it for this time! We are really hoping to see you here next month as we continue our development and adventure!
With the best regards,
Punnu Game Team
