Hey everyone!
This week’s progress was heavily focused on the Contextual Dialogue System, including the Action Cue System and Action Proposal System. These systems tie together dialogue, player actions, NPC behaviour, and animation syncing — and they’ve easily become one of the largest, most complex features in the project so far. A true monster, but it’s finally starting to come alive in-game.
⚙️ Contextual Action & Dialogue Systems
A huge amount of work went into:
Action Cues – detecting and matching player or NPC-triggered actions
Action Proposals – allowing NPCs to suggest or react to actions
Interaction Flow Logic – refining timing, approval checks, and behavioural responses
Animation & Expression Integration – prepping the system to drive facial expressions and body animations smoothly
These systems will greatly enhance immersion once fully connected.
🌤️ Lighting & Visual Improvements
A lot of time was also spent improving the game’s overall look:
🌞 Daytime lighting reworked for better balance and realism
🌙 Night scenes improved to avoid overly dark areas while keeping the mood and contrast
💡 Screen Space Global Illumination (SSGI) added
Higher-quality indirect lighting
No major performance cost
🕳️ Ambient Occlusion added for better depth, shadow grounding, and overall realism
These changes make environments — both indoors and outdoors — feel much more natural and cohesive.
🔮 What’s Next
The next steps are continuing to integrate the Contextual Action System across conversations and animations, and preparing the groundwork for more advanced NPC behavior.
Also, I'm still hooking up the AI settings to experiment with the Dialogue System.
This system is big and demanding, but once complete, it will massively elevate the gameplay experience.
Thanks for the continued support — more updates coming soon! 💜— Blast