This is a bit of a short devlog because I took a week off last week. Here’s what I worked on.
Dialog Editor
Working on dialogs from inside Unreal engine or using a text editor can get a bit confusing, especially if there are a lot of jumps anre branching paths to keep track of. So I toyed with the idea of making a node-based dialog that works specifically with my format, and spent an afternoon to see how viable it can be, especially because I never wrote a program with GUI before. I started with Python’s TKinter, but it was too annoying and limited and I switched to PyQT and had a much better experience.
I did not implement full editing yet, for now it only reads existing CSV files (I used dialog files from the old demo) and auto arranges nodes and adds links.
I learned a lot doing this, but I’m putting it aside for a bit, until I actually need to write a lot of long dialog, where it makes sense to use it instead of Unreal’s default data table editor.
Art
I worked a bit on blockouts, mostly interiors of homes. There is one old house interior in particular. I wanted to make it small and calustrophobic, but not unwelcoming. Heavily inspirated from my old childhood house, but also taking a lot of liberty with it. Here are a few colored blockouts.
It’s a good starting point for more interior props. I’m especially missing beds, furniture, fridges and other larger appliances, and also some food and groceries.
I worked on other important places, but not as detailed as this one. The areas in order are : mosque exterior (interior is inaccessible, for lore reasons), dorms where the player sleeps, a (poorly lit) café, and a classroom.
I’m going to keep making more blockouts, then I can finally start implementing the basic story and interactions for the game.
Interaction System
I implemented modifying journal entries from the interaction system. Only specifying “Journal, Entry1” adds the entry called “Entry1” to your journal, but using “Journal, Entry1, Crossed” modifies it to become crossed out. Here’s a test with an entry and 2 tasks.
While I was doing it I found a new bug with some pending entries not properly clearing the pending status, and another where interaction isn’t disabled while the journal is open.
I tested the saving and loading feature and it seems to work fine. No issues to report so far.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you again next time.