This is it you guys, the next big alpha update… v0.12.0! We jumped up a lot of numbers from last time because there were a lot of major changes!

GAME SAVING

This iteration is just a simple single-slot autosave without manual saving yet. The game saves on every room entrance, item get, and day/night toggle.

SETTINGS

• Audio: handle volume for master, music (which isn’t in yet lol), and sound effects
• Graphics: new shader updates for brightness/contrast, resolution/fullscreen management, choose level of pixel scaling (from pixel-perfect to max–I wouldn’t try pixel-perfect quite yet since the camera makes it hard to look at)
• Input: overhauled system, allowed primary/secondary inputs, added full remapping for keyboard and gamepad

MENU SYSTEM

The update that ties it all together. It’d be annoying if you couldn’t start a brand new game after finishing (I am assuming everyone will replay this at least thirty times) or if you had to change all the settings manually in the .ini file. Episode I just had a title card and some controls info stuffed in there.

OTHER

Added some SECRETS, some graphical updates, dungeon entrance day/night logic, and one unrelated bugfix (could get stuck reading one of the bookshelves).

This update is available to all patrons of the game! You can become a patron for as little as $1 at patreon.com/mrdaneeyul!

What’s up next?

• Music: new audio engine (the one used in Wandersong!)
• Darkness: gotta get those dungeons spooky
• More graphics!

-Added basic audio to menus. Needs work, but not gonna mess with it too much due to the impending audio engine overhaul.
-Tested camera easing option by flipping it in settings.ini. It works! This will go on the menu somewhere eventually.
-Researched how to implement a deadzone option in settings.ini, but I need to think about this one a bit more. Deferred.
-THIS MEANS MENUS (first pass) ARE DONE TOOOOOOO
-Removed “press space to use it” from ring description, since that could very well be inaccurate if player remaps controls. Don’t know if people will be confused about how to use the ring, but I guess we’ll see!
-Some dialogue writing.
-Worked on art for the dungeon “entrance.” Was stuck on this for a long time before jumping into the save/menu system hole, but I’m really happy with the progression the last day or two now.

Small update: I just completed the Episode II dungeon remodel!! It uses the build-a-final-key method like in Episode I, which allowed me to make the dungeon a bit less linear. It also meant I knocked down a wall or two, added another puzzle or two, and all around made something I’m much more satisfied with. :)

Still a long way to go, but the bones and muscle are more or less in place now, which means I can start adding skin very soon (ew, why was this the analogy I chose).

v0.5.0 is up on Itch for any and all patrons!

Hey all! Quick textish update for y’all. I’ve had the last few days off work and have been working away at The Waking Cloak quite a lot! Pieces are falling into place, and it’s beginning to feel like an actual game.

Here’s what’s been completed:

• Finished roll attack animations and added roll attacks into the game (I’m still tweaking these and fixing bugs)
  
• Implemented better collision (from a prototype I have; last time I talked about fixing collision, it was in the prototype)
• Fixed collisions with NPCs
• Fixed a weird movement bug with the sword attack
• Dialogue now triggers again, and using a better method (you can’t talk to NPCs while facing away from them anymore, lol)
• Fixed tall grass (for one, it would cause the brief screen pause whenever you hit the grass, even if i was cut, and for two, I accidentally made it solid while updating the collision… both have been fixed)
• Worked on sketching up puzzles and initial dungeon design for one of the items
• Updated the title screen some more and worked on animating a cloak for it

My laptop died, so I went old-school and sketched out ideas. I actually liked doing things this way!

Continued. Started figuring out how the early parts of a dungeon might work!

Animated cloak WIP! Gotta start by sketching out the basic lines. This has been a major learning process, but we’re getting there.

Hey everyone!

It’s halfway through National Novel Writing Month, and The Waking Cloak is on track. It’s currently the 14th of November, and par for today is 23,333 words–I’ve got 23,437 written! 

It’s been slightly bumpy (as usual for NaNoWriMo), but overall I’m really enjoying it this year.

I’ve written the first section of the story in full, and for the rest I’m just hopping around and writing whatever scenes I feel like (forcing myself to write chronologically is often much harder). I’ve explored a barrow, a tribe of turtles in the swamp, a spooky lighthouse with a mazewinder, and a kindly gibu farmer and his wife.

This version of the story is much more in-depth than you’ll see in the game, but it helps fill out the backstory, lore, and plot structure for me. And who knows… maybe the novel version of The Waking Cloak will be available for you to read someday…………..? (after the game comes out)

And that’s all! Just wanted to let you guys know it’s still going strong. Hope you have a great day. :)

Originally posted by gifsme

Hey…

Hey guys…

IT’S DECEMBER.

Do you know what this means? This means The Waking Cloak is gonna get some love. :)

More to come next week!

• Livestreamed while I drew ocean tiles for the game.
• Worked on the camera movement now that we’re in a new aspect ratio.
• Finished my Coast mockup.
• Finished most of my Field and Ruins mockup.

Not much going on until December. By then I’ll have most of my other time-sink commitments out of the way. :)

I had a fairly long, involved blog post typed up, but I don’t think it’s ready yet. It involves some discussion of The Waking Cloak’s theme, and 1) the story isn’t yet finalized and so neither is the theme, and 2) I want to get it right since it’s on some heavier topics. I may publish the post when things are more finalized when it would make more sense.

So I’m left without a post, and I suppose I’ll have to update you lot on the behind-the-scenes stuffs as to why I haven’t gotten more done.

First, I want to say with as much emphasis as possible: I will still continue to work on the game. I’m way too passionate about this project. It’s so much fun, and it’s a fantastic way to spend lunch breaks or evenings at home. The community’s response to this has been incredibly encouraging as well.

But basically, I won’t have much time to work on The Waking Cloak until December. Then we’ll get back to normal. Here’s why:

• My day job is about 10 hours/day, plus it’s crunch time on our project.
• My evening job doing a web development contract for September/October.
• My wonderful wife is holding down three jobs now that the school season has started (she’s a teacher and a coach), so I’m taking care of the house/pets/groceries/etc.
• The second draft of Starfall (my sci-fi/fantasy novel). Thankfully, I just finished that draft, but I’ve still got draft 2.5 to work on for my writers group.
• NaNoWriMo for November, which means planning in October. A while back, I made a commitment to do NaNoWriMo every year when feasible, and I’m pretty excited about the project too.

I don’t think all development on The Waking Cloak will cease until December (I can barely keep my hands off it), but these other commitments come first. 

I will still send out newsletters twice a month, since you guys are the best. They’ll probably be a little shorter, but they’ll grow back to their usual size once December comes around.

Thanks, everyone, for your support and interest in the game. You are very appreciated. :) I’ll poke my head up every now and then, but I’ll see you guys again for real in December.

I’m a developer because I like to solve puzzles.

While I’m in the thick of it, I hate the problem. It’s overwhelming, impassable, irritating. Then, when I have a breakthrough, when all the pieces of that puzzle fall into place, I feel unstoppable.

I was never any good at sports. I’m clumsy, terrible at small talk, not very observant and tend to be a little gullible and slow to pick up on humor. I will likely never feel the rush of making a touchdown or get excited to go to a meet-and-greet (that’s a thing… right?). But dang it if I don’t feel the life pulsing through my veins when I finally find the solution to a problem.

Nerd time:

So I’m mimicking the Game Boy Color, which has a resolution of 160x144. The Zelda titles on GameBoy have 16x16 pixel tiles and sprites–in other words, the screen is 10 tiles wide and 9 (minus one for the HUD, leaving 8) tiles high.

But this is tiny, especially on our computer screens (and even on a smartphone). Obviously, we don’t want to play in such a small window, so we scale up.

Here’s the issue: it’s really hard to scale up pixel graphics. I can multiply everything by 5, thus getting a 720px-high window, and everything looks cool. But if we want to scale up to a 1080px-high screen (currently the most common), we have to multiply that original resolution by 7.5… meaning some pixels will be bigger than others.

This happens whenever you try to multiply by a non-whole number with pixels. Here’s what it looks like at x1 (normal) and x1.5 (freaky):

To avoid this, I needed a whole number that all the common monitor sizes (720, 1080, 1440) were divisible by. 360 divides into all of these! Hooray! So I immediately began taking my x5 scale assets and dividing them in half so I could have a beautiful 360px-high window that could be scaled up.

And that’s when I encountered the second issue: I’m an idiot.

16x16 tiles and sprites multiplied by 5 (what I had originally) and then divided by 2 leaves us with 40x40 tiles. I am, essentially, multiplying 16 by 2.5. In other words, It’s the same issue as trying to scale 144 up to 1080: some “pixels” are bigger than others.

Annoyed, I worked on other functionality, and I was generally pretty productive. It kept gnawing at the back of my mind though: how will I display the game without making it blurry or distorted? And how would I display the game without giant black bars on either side of the screen?

The answer came a week or so later, and it was one that I didn’t quite want at first because it wasn’t “authentic” or some such hipster thing. Also it would be a fair bit of work.

I would change the game.

Well. I would change the game’s resolution anyway.

This was a pretty big decision, but it had to be made early lest I be forced to do even more work later. So after some math (math is hard, you guys) I determined essentially that the game screen would be twice as wide (20 tiles) and a little taller (10 tiles, plus a 20px-high GUI). 320x180. A 16:9 aspect ratio, which is the most common monitor size.

I was a little nervous about abandoning the screen ratio of the Game Boy, but you know what? It looks kinda cool. And the other retro kids are doing it–just look at Shovel Knight.

And in a stroke of beautiful luck, 320x180 scales perfectly to 720p, 1080p, 1440p, and 4k in 16:9. Puzzle pieces falling together.

The State of the UnionThe Waking Cloak:

• Added “state machines” which help with code design, organization, etc. The player has a “Walk” state, a “Stand” state, a “Using Item” state, and so on.
• Started combo system for attacks and item usage.
  
• Updated the resolution to 1) avoid black bars and 2) scale the game to any monitor size without pixel distortion (read the blog!!).
  
• Along with that, updated all my assets to their original size of 16x16.
• Worked on sub-pixel movement logic so that the small assets won’t be all jerky when they move around. Still working on this.
• Finished fifth mockup: The Roots of the Lotus Tree.
• Worked on sixth mockup: a coast with some… mysterious things. This was my first mockup in the new resolution, and so I also worked on a new HUD.
• Worked more on worldbuilding, backstory, and plot. Fun stuff!