Project Vessel Update—Overall Progress + Thoughts (Patreon)

As mentioned previously, I don't think I've made enough progress to warrant a new demo. I feel like once I've finished what I consider the "tutorial" area (ie from where you start up until getting out of...wherever it is you woke up in), that will be worth a new demo. Hopefully I can get that done soonish. Thanks for your patience!

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EXTREME "TOO LONG DIDN'T READ" INCOMING:

As you can probably tell from having played the previous demos, this project is quite messy. A lot of that comes down to figuring out what works and what doesn't, but a good portion of that is down to a lack of proper planning on my part. Lesson learrned—future projects will be planned rigorously, and work won't begin until I can visualise the project. Other projects I have in mind feel much clearer than Project Vessel does, so hopefully Vessel will serve as a training ground before making other, more focused games.

An example of the messiness is how I initially handled collision. Originally, I implemented a form of momentum for the main character, so he sped up gradually to full speed, which I thought would look snazzy to a player. Then, I put in objects (ie rectangles with a name I could call in code form) and used these to block off the areas I didn't want a player to get to.

However, these two different things—the movement momentum and the walls—did not work together, as it was easy to just press two directional buttons and phase through any of these walls I made. I spent a few days messing with them, trying to get them to work, but in the end had to give up. I removed the momentum mechanic and also removed the walls as actual objects and put "walls" in the code, which are literally impossible for a player to get around even with all the speed and button mashing in the world. The time spent on fixing and figuring this out isn't visible in the project, but it took time away from making the good stuff.

Speaking of good stuff, part of the messiness of the project was spending too much time messing with technical code stuff that not many people would care about and not on the tums, the butts, the boobs. I'm slowly implementing those bits now, but with how messy the project currently is, I'm somewhat limited with how much I can put in without causing potential lag problems. Again, bad planning, lack of focus when planning. Lesson learned.

Another area of messiness is the dialogue. I spent a lot of time figuring out to deal with dialogue that would allow me to put in as much dialogue as I required without causing severe lag. The system I've devised works well, but oh man is it a headache to work around. Again, it's something you won't notice when playing the game, but there are hundreds (thousands?) of lines of code placing all the dialogue exactly where it needs to be. And even better, it's very easy to edit I need to, or add in more dialogue in between other lines. So for future projects, the capacity for more boring Dim dialogue is greater than ever, but will require careful balancing if I don't want to go blind from staring at hundreds of lines of brightly coloured code...

So what do I intend to do with this messy project? I want to finish this "level" at least, put in some bonus features (I've been adding in boob / butt expansion, and also fleshed out more dialogue for various situations) and perhaps say "this is all there is for Project Vessel. Let's start again, but on something better, more focused". Will I continue with these two characters, this world? Maybe. But the response to these characters has been muted (which is fair, people don't have much to go on, and adding in all the "story" to bring them to life doesn't seem worth it for this project ATM), so maybe a new, fresh project with some of my other OCs in starring roles would be more fruitful, more enjoyable to patrons. We can cross that bridge when we come to it.

The setting of this game was meant to be some kind of sci-fi future, with the characters thrown into an old world not like the sterile futurescape they inhabit, but working on it makes me realise that that kind of stuff doesn't do that much for me (in my own work, at least). I like projects set in modern times, in the society we're used to (or a version of it). Making my animations seem like they could possibly happen in the real world is more fun than a sci-fi setting where anything is possible. I won't abandon the sci-fi setting, but settings more typical to my usual OC animations seem more interesting to me than Project Vessel's at the moment.

If this post looks like a big wall of text, then you'd be right. A lot of this are thoughts I've had when posting the previous demos for the RPG, but decided it was too boring to bloat out a post, so I kept them to myself. But with no demo to distract you, you have to read it. Haha.

Current goals for Project Vessel: 

Fully implement expansions for boobs, butt and stomach (all are currently implemented, now I need to tie them to game mechanics and give them dialogue)
Add dialogue for all of those (So much dialogue...)
Add in SFX where needed (I'll be sparing with SFX, as too many will make the animation file too big, and thus cause lag)
Potentially add in an intro story sequence and ending sequence to make it feel complete (This will be the time for me to decide if I want to continue working on this particular world / scenario or not)

Thanks for reading, if you did. Understandable if you didn't. Once I've finished Rihanne's birth quickie I'll do some more work on this project, and hopefully I can whip it into a publishable state soon. For now, TTFN!

— Dim

Instead of having to walk back to her every time, the lady now comes with you, and hides in the menu. Now she can call you worthless without needing to backtrack!

 More award-winning Dim dialogue!

More dialogue, crammed in every crevice! And other body parts growing? I wonder if you have to trigger those separately? I'm sure the lady will give you a hint as to how to do it... (May be typos)