Next Big Thing?

So... the main reason there wasn't an update this sunday (breaking the streak) is because I figured instead of starting the next big plot stuff, I should just knock out one of the small one-off gimmick levels first. Turns out, it has grown into something that's now neither of these things. Behold, the current state of The Public Domain, the movie world.

As you can probably see, two things are going on here:

1. This thing is friggin' huge, larger than the entire Burger Nexus hub.
2. It's only half finished so far. (See point 1)

I didn't feel like going from having a couple half-finished levels in the game and then drop an update that keeps them half finished, so I'll push it back further until it's done before I release a new version. Not happy about holding back quality-of-life improvements again, but then again, does anybody really bother downloading a new version just for those?

When the level's done there's gonna be two new boss fights, a lot of new enemies, vehicle mechanics, and three separate storylines (one for each movie). The soundtrack isn't complete yet but already has eleven songs just for this one level! Sheesh! I just wanted to write some quick gags at the copyright system's expense but then everything just kinda grew outta proportion... scope creep strikes again.

Next Small Things?

There's been a bunch of quality-of-life improvements as well, like balancing (UFOs have gotten speed and attack range nerfs) and fixing some janky melee attack animations. I have ideas for a couple small actual gimmick levels as well, if things speed up from here with the movie world hopefully I can put some of those into the game as well so there's more exploration to be done. Currently most of the Nugget Mines hub is empty because I literally don't have levels to put in it, for instance - getting that done would be nice so it feels more real.

I also wanna just randomly go back and edit previous areas with new secrets - a lot of the stuff I've "churned" out tends to just feel like a commute on a revisit (at least with dev goggles): something functional that takes you from one area to another, but without surprises. And I do wanna make things keep feeling surprising all the way through. For instance, relying on fake walls to hide secrets starts to feel old, so I've started experiments with spicing up the formula: a slide path that has a fake FLOOR you drop into when you expect to just get through, a fake wall you only find if you push a pushable block into it, and so on.

What About The Plot?

The Nugget Mines plot is pretty much written and the main question now is how to get it into the game in a more practical sense - ideally it shouldn't ruin the nonlinearity but it's pretty much dependant on you interacting with a certain character (and you need to find critical information in one particular level to progress - emphasis here being on "particular level" because it's mostly going to be the same type of story delivery vessel as Saltman's Lair, finding the critical info is not going to be missable). The freeform nature and the set story progression are at odds so I might need to cheat a bit and e.g. have the character just show up wherever you go or something. Still thinking about that.

Terse needs to have more scenes going forward - a big reason they exist is that I figured "Chara basically shows up outta nowhere with no buildup" plus them being based on the other kid in the intro slides (which I drew before finalizing Muri's design) but currently they show up exactly once and are completely disconnected from the local area narratives - that'll need to change, and I have ideas for two more encounters (one where they're trying to kill Eugene and one where they're getting existential in the 8-bit world).

(And of course, it would be great to flesh Terse out more instead of them just being the edgy, cartoonishly evil rival - I wanna make them and their actions more believable, maybe even relatable)

Side note - I feel like there's more stuff to explore with regard to the nature of NPCs and how aware the 8-bit foxlings are: for most of the NPCs I tried to mimic the dialogue you'd see in old games, where everybody gets very short lines and it's all cryptic thanks to space and memory limitations...

...then there's a handful (the warp room one and the flagpole one) that have to explain more complicated concepts (Gupreda visited with her grandkids, there's an outside world etc) and they feel much more like real people than the funny limited dialogue NPCs in a way that almost feels like... awakened? Touched by knowledge beyond 8-bit understanding? (Since they're both specifically aware of outsiders). Something to chew on for later but it'd be fun to put a twist on this concept - it's easier to go from 8-bit to the main game's modern pixelart world to show growth and reaching eldritch understanding than it would be to go from the base game to something truly incomprehensible.

When Update?

I can't see well enough into the future to make any like, promises written in blood, but it would be nice to get it wrapped up before another 2 weeks passes. But I'll keep you guys updated in these devlogs twice per month at the very least!

Stay flippin', folks!

/Yal