Be Not Afraid April Devlog

Hello, Halbury Angel enthusiasts! This is an April update for "Be Not Afraid." Last month, I thought I didn't get the time I wanted to work on this project and decided it would be better to save everything up for April's devlog.  

Learning Blender and 3D Modeling

This month I made a lot of progress in learning Blender. Previously, I didn't have any experience with 3D modelling apart from Solidworks in school. After countless tutorials, experimentation, and a fair share of scrubbing through videos to see what shortcuts people are using and not telling me about! I'm thrilled to announce that I was able to recreate myself in low poly PS1 form. It's absolutely cursed but I like her.

If you want to have a go at making one yourself, here are the tutorials I used by Stark Crafts: 

PS1 Head Tutorial

PS1 Body Tutorial

I'm not sure whether I actually want to use this model for anything, I might re-texture it in future. One 3D model I did put into the game was this cool Reception neon sign. I'm thinking about attaching a quick 'flickering' script to swap the materials at a random rate to make it a bit spookier but for now, I'm happy with it.

More animations and quest tasks

Another area I spent some time improving this month was fleshing out the quests and adding some basic animations to make the game feel more interactive. For example, as soon as you enter the caravan park, there is a van you can open up and inspect the inside. I added a quick animation to slide the van door back and play some audio. 

I understand this isn't the most exciting thing to talk about in a horror game but I'm trying very hard not to give away too much information, especially on quests because once you know all the solutions, it's not as fun.

Map Creation

I was concerned that the caravan park area was quite 'samey' and difficult to tell where you are, which is something I really like in old RE games but I don't want to make the player feel disoriented and quit out of annoyance. So I've introduced an interactive map feature. 

Luckily, the Retro Horror asset I'm using has a tool for this, however, the documentation seems to imply there's an existing problem with synchronising the map to the map in the actual game. Until I get to the bottom of this, the map doesn't show up in the game and is making it difficult to progress to things like indicating the completion status of rooms. 

The Future

As April comes to an end, the game's finished state is now in view. I know initially I had planned for an April release but I enjoy working on this project so much that I wanted to put more TLC into it. In May, the plan is to finish the main questline, use some of my new Blender skills to create some enemies and start crafting some sh*t your pants techno-horror. 

As always thank you for your support and for even reading this devlog at all. Look after yourselves, at least until the next update. Bye!