This is the first project I’m trying to get on steam. Doing this as a hobbyist in my free time. Development started September of 2024 and I’m the sole programmer. I commissioned a friend for music and a different friend for the logo (credited properly ingame) but other than that I’ve been on my own.
It’s a flight exploration game, pulling from early 2000s nostalgia (trying not to say wii sports resort, but that’s what it is). And a very explicit statement about war, stress, and creating during stressful times.
Will try to keep this thread updated with progress, because I want to keep tabs on myself. It’s been a year and I feel like I haven’t made any significant progress, despite having a reasonably functional vertical slice and showing off at two in person conventions.
Incredibly boring update but important. I got the quest system saving and loading to disk properly (i think). Yes its saving to plaintext which isn’t the smartest but oh well. The tricky bit was changing from file to data loaded in memory with properly wired signals.
Added to my wishlist! I think pursuing the stylistic qualities of Wii Sports/Resort is absolutely worthwhile. I spent a ton of time flying around Wuhu in Sports and Pilotwings; I could see myself relaxing and flying through the environments you’ve shown here in a similar way. I hope development goes well; I really like the music you commissioned in the trailer!
New water texture who dis. Went pretty simple, just a scrolling noise texture with color, going more for style vibe. Maybe in a week I’ll think its too n64 but is fine for now.
Next up is the new islands, need to figure out how to make a dense forest not suck to navigate, and a lot of modelling.
For some reason I did a deep dive on pacific northwest agriculture and architecture because shush that’s why.
I need a way to quickly make large ruins, either giant robots or buildings/structures. I’m just one goblin. Though a bunch of asset pack prefabs don’t fit the style, idk what to do about that.
Looking at Pitchyagame and feeling like I don’t have a solid pitch, just being a flying game doesn’t really have enough punch? But I don’t know how to make things more marketable. I guess I just don’t and keep making this for me.
So I’ve been getting wrecked by ADHD and anxiety so going to try and focus down. What I would need to consider this game acceptable to be on steam:
50 collectable points of interest. Preferably 100. (I right now have ten)
This means loosely five islands, with stuff to find, secrets, quests, npcs.
Music for each island, again loosely.
A central NPC town area. Means buildings, quests, pathfinding, possibly schedules or behaviors.
An ending cutscene. I have ideas for it but need to write it out and do the scripting.
What needs to be done right now
Tweak the steering controls so you pitch faster
Add some math so that you retain speed after flattening out of a dive.
Redo a bunch of the UVs so they are generally similar size
Polish the UI by adding animations
Better player animations/particle effects
Sound effects for walking and jumping.
Add more inventory items and collectibles. (I don’t have a dependency graph for quest items, might need one)
Better indication that npcs have quests
npc animations
Change the radio tower into something less ugly
Figure out nice looking large trees
Put something else in the sky
Figure out how to blender geometry nodes ruins in bulk
add something on the back side of the island
Possibly a map to display shown points of interest.
Stuff that needs to be done in future
Check for working in wide screens
Steam api and steam achievements
This is a lot and I’m only one programmer who isn’t a great artist. I barely have worldbuilding details planned. I really can’t focus on anything, can’t even do the “just do something for five minutes” thing.
Good gods, multiple hours of fiddling with ui because I couldn’t get the small numbers in the inventory icons lined up right. Said screw it and just put it in the description panel. This isnt a factory game, it’s not too important
Two hours of fugue led to two hours of hyperfocus with no music and here we are. Map that live updates the player position and scrolls. Lots of hacks to make the test work and it’s vertically flipped because of course it is. It’s also off a bit because of container sizing idk. AND the position of the point is hardcoded since it felt like a waste to do it every runtime since it’s not changing. I’m going to go fall into bed now.
House interior music (+ six variations for different characters)
Island 1
Terrain
Points of interest
Two houses
Trees
A few interesting structures
Dialog
Npc data structure
Basic quests interacting with dialog
Inventory
Save and load for points of interest, items, quests
Ingame map and inventory
Flight and movement
Right now still feels like a tech demo and not a world
Need to do
Reorganize files
Polish movement more
Make acceleration and sliding suck less (have a temp solution of add velocity to a bonus number, but it’s jank)
Animations for transitioning out
Particles/Animation for landing from height
Add tricks like flip, roll etc
Some kind of drift mechanic. Need a visible change
Island 2 - Town
Terrain
Music
Pavement texture
Generic houses
Wizard tower 1
associated npc
Quest
Dialog
Wizard tower 2
associated npc
Quest
dialog
Hill with pirate ship
associated npc
Dialog
quest
Ruins
Gravestones
Destroyed buildings
Crater
Island 3 - Glassed forge
Terrain
Island 4 - ???
Sound effects
Quests
Esoterica
Worldbuilding stuff
Leaking reality looking shader
Props
Ending
Steam achievements
Clear steam cert
Advertise for launch
Schedule
Submit to steam april
Release May
I’m not sure I can do it. I did the terrain for island 2 in a couple hours, but getting everything to a polish level I am satisfied with doesn’t seem doable in that time
I’m doing this for the sake of the art, I know I will get double digit sales which nowhere near covers the cost of making it. But I also don’t think I will ever be satisfied with the quality so would just tweak stuff forever.
Recovering from a headache and doing some pondering
So two things stuck in my head right now.
One is the obojima thing and people not doing ghibli inspired right. The thing is that I’m trying, making it a point to show war wreckage and such, and demonstrating that this world sucks in spite of the pastoral community carved out in the games main play area. And I am making allusions to things that as a japanese american have personal history with. But I’m still scared that I’m not doing it well enough.
Leading into that is point two. I rewatched the Knights of Guinevere pilot and felt the immense rage and pain exuding from it. I’ve only felt similar from kitty horrorshow’s Anatomy. I want to get across a similar point, an impossible rage at the world I’m powerless to stop, but I don’t know quite how.
Also I need to log off bluesky unless I’m doing promo. I love the art from my friends but the stream of misery isn’t helping.
I think this is going to be a pretty unique challenge given the game’s presentation, but one that sounds really worthwhile to pursue. The Wii Sports/Wuhu Island aesthetic is very utopian, clean, manicured - which superficially clashes with the idea of a rebuilding post-war environment, but only superficially. I think there’s room for some really interesting contrast in the game’s content and its presentation (two things that are often developed as one and the same but don’t have to be). Everything looks beautiful - blue skies, patterned golf course-esque fields of grass, crystal blue water, but it’s always possible that picturesque environments have been crafted and maintained specifically to cover something else up.
that kind of contrast reminds me of what you might see in a total view of a theme park. Guests are presented with idyllic, highly-curated, thematic views of areas, but in every area they don’t need to see the buildings become purely utilitarian, dull, ugly, functional.
All that to say, I feel like you already have the building blocks to do some really interesting things from the aesthetics you’ve developed for the game.
Just popping in to say that I hadn’t seen this thread previously, but have now and am following with great interest. I think what you have so far looks great, and I look forward to where it goes! I really like the little animation that occurs during the walking-to-flying transition. Very cute!
Anyway, I don’t have any hot design tips to share, but I believe in you and you have my support (and dollars, eventually!)
I think this is going to be a pretty unique challenge given the game’s presentation, but one that sounds really worthwhile to pursue. The Wii Sports/Wuhu Island aesthetic is very utopian, clean, manicured - which superficially clashes with the idea of a rebuilding post-war environment, but only superficially. I think there’s room for some really interesting contrast in the game’s content and its presentation (two things that are often developed as one and the same but don’t have to be). Everything looks beautiful - blue skies, patterned golf course-esque fields of grass, crystal blue water, but it’s always possible that picturesque environments have been crafted and maintained specifically to cover something else up.