Hello you all! I hope you're all having a wonderful 2025 thus far; I'm certainly making good progress on the programming of The Ventilation segment! Let's take a look...
Puro dialogue programming:Puro has been added to the Ventilation area, he can be found on his home and be talked with there, and he will follow you throughout the ventilation's ducts further ahead, warning you about the dangers in the maze, unless you decide to tell him your 'despicable' thoughts of him... That's right, I think it's a good idea to introduce more player agency in Puro's relationship with you, if you really despise him, or just want to test a new branching path, you can "send him away permanently," but beware, as he may want to seek revenge from your hurtful actions in the future...
All in all, there's still a few dialogues missing from Puro, but the main behavior is there. The beta-stage dialogues will probably be more fleshed out, polished and small annoyances taken care of.All right, let's get into the enemy programming, which I had quite a few to make in order to make scripting for some levels and, MAINLY, for the Maze.
Enemy programming:Unique monster: Nightling!This is a new monster concept that I came up with and really wanted to implement for The Ventilation section, since I want dynamic, mobile enemies with unique mechanics to be roaming around in the shadowy corners of the vents, instead of static-placed transfur enemies, such as the pink shorts. My intention is to replace some of these static-placed transfur monsters with new, original monsters like this one! I won't tell you how he works, only that he's new and he's there... Hehe!
Snake Monster:Yep! This magnificent creature from the original is making it's appearance on Changed3D on this Ventilation area, and it comes with a disturbing visual twist, which I'll leave for you to... experience... I'm also quite proud with how the 3D model came out and the final textures on it!
Snow Leopard AI:This bad girl already had an enemy character, as you may have seen on The Library area, but had no AI, as she was made only for a Quick Time Event (QTE). Since we'll be seeing her on The Ventilation area, I just had to make her AI (and "reanimate" her, since her previous animations didn't fit well with an aggressive, pursuing enemy type), and now she can move and chase, and I've added her in a special place. Nice!
So, it's coming along nicely. Still, more effort is needed. I'm really working to make this an engaging and frightful (but fun) experience!
So, let's get into the last part of the programming developments...
Level programming:As I've discussed previously, I didn't want to use boxes to fill gaps, nor did I want to make the Maze a series of static traps that needs to be failed in order to advance each time (with no moving enemies at all! It all feels too... scripted...), making it a tedious process of testing, failing and restarting angered (which happened to me while playing the original game). So, in order to remedy this in Changed3D, I've decided to make the Maze a "dynamic threat", where enemies appear mostly randomly through ventilation ducts, and move around and leave periodically. The player needs to carefully analyze sounds and take careful decisions in order to advance, where traps are just risks being taken to subdue major risks.
While making this, I realized the player had nowhere to run to escape, so I reused the extendible bridges mechanic to create "safer spaces" or hiding spaces, in order to escape enemies. This worked nicely! Using the original "trap rooms" to instead create places to flee, but beware, this places are still dangerous!
Also, I finished some triggers and events that were needed for progression. You may see when you play the game (new alpha version coming soon), that much of the progression behavior is quite different from the original, as you may need to go to different places in the maze, and do different things to open a certain locked door, and other stuff. Well, these things have been in development and are mostly done!
But this is just the tip of the iceberg of what I'm actually doing; programming is a lot of hard work just to feel natural for the player. Where 6 hours of work with the darn ventilation ducts to make enemies spawn, travel and disappear through it DYNAMICALLY, the player only experiences it for 20-35 minutes, or even less! I'm actually working mostly on the aforementioned duct mechanic for AI Monsters, and meanwhile balancing the values so that it feels "random" and just difficult enough, and it all doesn't break in the process of playing it.Other than that, most of the programming is mostly done, I'd say the Ventilation Area is about 65% complete, I just need to complete remaining 3D models, make some missing animations, add remaining dialogues and polish existing ones, and finish some script events.
Well, I hope you enjoyed reading through these developments! A lot happened, I've been working non-stop, and I think a new Alpha version might come up sooner than expected :D
Thanks as always for supporting me, your generosity keeps me going, and your enthusiasm fills the project with love! See you soon!