The Natural World In Polygons (and translation)

HELLO EVERYONE!!!

I haven't posted a dev log in AGES, but better late than never I guess.

I'm getting ready to push another large update out as Pre-Alpha 7. I won't be taking the game out of Pre-Alpha until both the apartment interior and apartment exterior are completely done. Both of which I started a very long time ago but never really got to a state I'm proud of.

But enough about that. NATURE!!

It's really hard to get right with low-poly limitations. But at the same time, a super pixelated screen means you can barely see things anyways. There's a lot you can get away with.

I started the new forest level with a very simple idea in mind. Did I follow it? Sort of??

Pictured above is how the level looked when I started it in October. Super basic blocking, but it let me get a vision for what I wanted for the level. A lot of which I ended up at least allowing to inspire me for the final version.

This is how it looked after I added the first piece of terrain. It was just some textured land with both 3D and pre-rendered trees along the sides. In-fact, the texture of the flat trees along the side were actually directly rendered from my tree models in blender, so they should look quite fitting with the actual 3D trees.

Now for the final version of the map I have right now:

Woah! What happened!!?? (three more months of procrastinated work)

As you can see, I expanded the forest out, changing the small opening in the trees to view the lake to a full rocky beach that allows you to walk right up to the water.

With this, you might also notice a familiar building across the lake. It's directly pulled from the apartment exterior. I modelled this off of a real Russian building in Moscow, which I thought was fitting for the vibe I wanted to push with this area. Additionally, it makes sense to see familiar things in dreams, doesn't it? After all, seeing something out your window every day is bound to get it engrained into your memory. 

My plan is to allow you to visit a fully fleshed out version of this structure in the future, it'll serve as the transition to the next area. I thought this was a good idea because how quickly your attention is drawn to it. You'd likely immediately start thinking "what is that?" or "can i go there?".

I also plan to add a connection point in the small pond area to the right of the lake, which I'll speak more on in another dev log once I have a clear goal.

Let me just add, I love how the trees turned out:

They're like... almost edible-looking...

Anyways, onto translation!!!

I'm gonna keep this one short because I know most people won't really benefit from a Japanese translation right now. BUT, adding multi-language support could open the doors to a ton of different languages in the future. Plus, in its current state, the game's text isn't really that complicated. I'm basically done the core Japanese translation despite the fact that I'm still studying it mostly as a beginner.

You know what I HATE though? CSV FILES!!!!

I hate them i hate them i hate them. They always break and are so tedious to export and Godot just stops accepting them sometimes and I have to like reload the project 8 times just to get the stupid locale file to load. anyways rant over

I will be releasing a new alpha build soon (once you don't start in the debug world anymore :P so keep your eyes peeled for that. It'll have everything I showcased here and more!

As usual, you're welcome to join the development Discord server for updates (once there's actually people there) over HERE!!