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1. Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:06:01 UTC Cheeseness

   For the past couple months, I've been working on developing Bonesweeper into a bigger game, with the support of a grant from Screen Tasmania! I want to share as much of the process as I can. Keep an eye to this thread in the weeks and months to come! :) #gamedev #indiedeveloper

   • Tagomago repeated this.
   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:05:54 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     I've also added some camera controls, with the intention of having some dig sites that are bigger than a single screen when fully zoomed out.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:05:55 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Playing around with avatar scale during the dig phase #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:05:55 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Dig phase is getting closer to being functional in the new codebase

     Tagomago repeated this.
   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:05:56 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Experimenting with using shape keys to get seamless dirt tile variants. Not sure if I'll stick with it, but it's an interesting way of getting a bunch of variation from a single model #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:05:57 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     I'm also looking forward to the museum, which I hope will be a space for players to reflect on the cool stuff they've discovered, and maybe bump into` some educational content (like #HiveTime's "Beepedia" but more interactive) #fossilfriday

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:05:58 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     The full game will expand beyond the prototype, adding an interactive map to select dig sites from, a museum for assembled skeletons, and a customiseable player avatar (plus more species, more dig environments, and an optional less stressful skeleton assembly "puzzle mode")

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:05:58 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     I'm really excited for the new dig selection screen, which will have a slider for controlling geologic time to give some extra context for where fossils came from (and will probably have more than just Australia).

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:05:59 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     If you'd like to see how the prototype came together over a month or so, you can check out these threads
     https://mastodon.social/@Cheeseness/105712742537625211
     https://mastodon.social/@Cheeseness/105733349194371746

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Feb-2022 15:06:00 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Bonesweeper draws inspiration from Minesweeper and Tetris, having you dig up fossils and then assemble them into skeletons. I released a rough prototype last year exploring those core concepts, which you can play today! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiW4770dkOQ

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:30 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     I said it was going somewhere \o/

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:31 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Did a rough first pass on a triceratops skull icon today

     Tagomago repeated this.
   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:32 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     I spent some of today working on an in-game way of communicating development progress. This will be nice to have moving forward (test data pictured - the game's a long way from being that finished :D )

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:32 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     The march mid-month Bonesweeper progress status update is up, which talks about how I'll be tracking progress and where things are at right now. Enjoy! #gamedev #indiedev
     https://www.patreon.com/posts/63910193

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:33 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     This is going somewhere, I promise

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:34 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Me: Oh yes, I'll be doing much better looking skeletons in the full version of Bonesweeper.
     Also me: Behold: Testodon!

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:35 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Spent last night implementing applying settings during play. Not particularly interesting work or outcomes, but it's nice to be doing this in more robust/flexible ways than I was in the original prototype

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:35 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Continuing to work on dig gameplay, I did a first pass implementation of special abilities. Default dig actions are now defined as abilities (but without a cooldown), which unifies a bunch of code. Eventually these will have icons rather than text. #screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamedev

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:36 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Hard might be tuned just a touch too hard right now

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:55:37 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     I want to give players the choice of a number of different "flag" types as part of character customisation. I don't know how widely they're used, but I've seen these little plastic markers in photos and thought they were cute #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev

   • Tagomago (tagomago@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:56:27 UTC Tagomago

     in reply to

     @Cheeseness A lot of kids are gonna love this, I gather.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:56:45 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     • Tagomago

     @tagomago The main one is me!

   • Tagomago (tagomago@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Mar-2022 07:57:23 UTC Tagomago

     in reply to

     @Cheeseness Me too!!

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 21-Mar-2022 18:37:47 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     One new thing that's going to be in the assembly phase is an optional less stressful "puzzle mode." Got a first pass on the controls in this evening, and I think it's going to be fun for people who struggled with the default Tetris-inspired "action mode" in the prototype.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 21-Mar-2022 18:37:48 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     First pass on making gameplay automatically scale to fit the current skeleton (gotta handle both itty bitty theropods and huge sauropods). There'll be some extra camera behaviours to help make things more interesting/fun for really biggosaurs, but this is good for now

     Tagomago repeated this.
   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 21-Mar-2022 18:37:49 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     The image is still not finished, but it's nice to have something in for the application icon. Doing the most important bits first #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 21-Mar-2022 18:37:50 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Had a few bugs creep into the map mockup with 3.4.3 (bad normals on meshes with shape keys, GI probe weirdness, and a rendering flicker). Sat down to start coming up with repro cases today and discovered that everything's addressed upstream in 3.4.4 RC2. Thanks #GodotEngine community!

   • Tagomago (tagomago@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 26-Mar-2022 13:15:18 UTC Tagomago

     in reply to

     @Cheeseness You can reuse them for an Ikea game.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 26-Mar-2022 13:15:19 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Made some nicer shelves today #screenshotsaturday

     Tagomago repeated this.
   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 26-Mar-2022 13:15:23 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     None of the Spatial's children (direct or indirect) are physics objects. "Idle time" is pretty inscrutable in Godot's profiler and I'm at a loss to explain why the same action (modifying the Spatial's transform) seems to account for 14ms or so less when done in _physics_process()

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 26-Mar-2022 13:15:24 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Spent some of today's stream wrestling with perf overheads. Moving a Spatial to match the mouse cursor's position was impacting frame time, *if* the Spatial had children. Updating the Spatial's transform in _physics_process() rather than _process() made a huge difference o.0

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 27-Mar-2022 02:36:00 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     • Tagomago

     @tagomago I know nothing about Ikea ^_^

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 27-Mar-2022 13:03:49 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Behold, a game loop \o/

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Mar-2022 13:13:45 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Big dig sites aren't always a good fit for one play session. Need a break, but don't want to give up? No probs. Got the last fossil you need for a skeleton and want to go do that? Sure thing. Want to interleave progress on multiple dig sites one dig at a time? Um sure, I guess.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Mar-2022 13:13:47 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     There's nothing new there, but it feels very nice to have it all hooked up together (looking forward to working on expanded functionality and content that that allows). I also tidied up the icon a little more ^_^

     Tagomago repeated this.
   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:19 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     There we go. This feels a bit more like ground. That'll do for now.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:20 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Debugging some of my surrounds generation code. That doesn't look right...

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:20 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Better

     Tagomago repeated this.
   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:21 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Wrote another Blender addon to handle exporting fossils' dig meshes, and repositioned/re-exported them all. Still a bit of fine tuning needed to guarantee they're not hovering/entirely underground, but it's already looking nicer and more varied.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:22 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Finally making some forward progress on dig site surrounds. Eventually this space will be populated with tables and tents and buckets and doodads, but for now, it's just nice to not have the dig site hanging in space

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:24 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Another late mid-month Bonesweeper status update for May. Thanks to the #LinuxGameJam2022 and the #HiveTime patch that just shipped, I haven't made much Bonesweeper progress, but I did find time to do/plan a few little bits and pieces. Enjoy! #gamedev #indiedev
     https://www.patreon.com/posts/66768861

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:25 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Added more dig meshes to help show more variety in what you're digging up. Skeleton chunks can define a specific dig mesh to use (species-specific skull, or be assigned one based on the chunk name (generic tail vertebrae), or fall back to use a random generic mesh (generic femur)

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:25 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Figured I've been working hard enough on stuff that I deserve a day off, so instead of doing that, I implemented a new/faster skeleton preview for map markers

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:26 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Did a bunch of misc fixes/little tweaks today. I think my favourite is showing the site name at the start of every dig (just says "Ready! Set! Dig!" in practice mode). The temp museum got similar treatment, which is less exciting, but nice to have.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:27 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Spent a bunch of time writing out a new abstraction between dig sites and locations. Look and feel is still pretty temporary, but it's nice to be able to show information like what species can possibly be found at a dig site and what has been found at a visited site.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:28 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Fixed a bunch of bugs today and then took a break to make a silly skeleton. It's very good.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:29 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Made a little aussie sauropod (Diamantinasaurus) today. Getting the camera in a good spot to the the whole thing in the temp museum is a challenge. Here it is next to the "testodon" #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:29 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     A bit later than usual, but here's a progress recap of @Bonesweeper development in April so far. Assembly is integrated, avatar customisation, two new skeletons, "time" passing in the map phase, and first test builds for patrons. Enjoy! #gamedev #indiedev
     https://www.patreon.com/posts/65528797

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:30 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Spent most of today making tweaks and fixing some edge cases in my Blender addon for managing skeleton metadata. Here's a much more complex skeleton set up ready for export.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:31 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     I've spent the past couple of days working on a Blender addon for managing skeleton metadata. It's still a little bare bones (ho ho ho), but even in its current state, it's going to dramatically speed up skeleton production time.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:32 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Muttaburrasaurus' big schnoz (this is from a placeholder skeleton in the style of the prototype's skeleton to replace the chunky "testodon" in the short term - final skeleton designs will likely be a bit different ^_^ )

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:32 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Discovered a couple of fun bugs, and I need to rework some of the assembly camera positioning behaviour, but he's this guy in the temp museum

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:33 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     I'm not doing a proper museum implementation for the upcoming early test builds, but I did want to give somewhere to see assembled skeletons, so I copied the temp character controller from my mock up and generated an environment scaled to fit the player's inventory of skeletons.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:34 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Blind-friendly TTS gameplay for the assembly phase's action mode is in (using the same implementation as the prototype for now). You don't have to see/see well to build a dinosaur skeleton.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:35 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Also added some tweens when dig sites appear/disappear to help communicate what's going on when you return from a dig site or assembling a skeleton (time intervals are being forced here with a debug shortcut)

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:35 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Put a second placeholder marker model in, implemented colour customisation, and added the ability to edit a loaded profile this evening.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:36 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Added a new widget type for iterating through lists of indeterminate length. Works with mouse and keyboard navigation (though won't give focus to left or right neighbours). Dropdowns are good in a lot of contexts, but this feels cleaner here and takes fewer clicks to change.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:37 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Added in some new dig location markers to help make it easier to differentiate between new and expiring sites, and when they're neither, there's another to let you know if you've previously visited #screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamedev

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:38 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Did a bit more work on profile management and character customisation today and made a second skin for the placeholder avatar model.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:39 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     UI layout mock up for the profile selection screen

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:39 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Got that functional enough for now. Multiple profiles is in and behaving.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:40 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     UI is still temp, but it's more functional. It is now possible to see how many of each fossil chunk is in your inventory in both the dig and assembly phases (and I finally implemented using the next chunk in your inventory during assembly if you had more than one)

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:41 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     The map, dig and assembly gameplay loops are now implemented (along with saving/loading) enough that if I had more than one test skeleton, Bonesweeper would pretty much have feature parity with the prototype. I'm expecting the pace of development to ramp up a bit from here on out

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 02-Jun-2022 09:42:41 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Got a first pass on dig phase UI for current skeleton progress/found fossils. Super rough, but having this feedback helps ground the dig phase within the surrounding gameplay loops #screenshotsaturday

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:43 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Moved dig tile variation into a shader rather than modifying the actual geo before instantiating. It more than halves dig load times, so I've made "huge" dig sites bigger (1,221 tiles here!). I'll have to see whether it hurts perf on lower end GPUs before I commit

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:44 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Closer-to-on-time mid-month Bonesweeper status update for June is now up! Mostly cosmetic changes this month, but I've also been working on music and museum editing systems https://www.patreon.com/posts/68006288

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:44 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Ah ha! I have achieved Number Godhood and mastered the rendering of Almost Longitude and Messy Latitude. I shall now ascend to a Pure Numeric Form. Or sleep. Whichever comes first. #gamedev #indiedev

     Tagomago repeated this.
   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:46 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Working a bit more on the map screen background. Thinking of having a chance for a memento to be placed at the black marker points as you progress

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:47 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Getting closer to something usable #screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamedev

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:48 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Cubetastic

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:49 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Been doing mostly non-visual work for the past couple of weeks, so I haven't had much to share. Here's a little voxel experiment I started this evening while exploring stuff for museum customisation. Won't look or behave *anything* like this if I go with it ^_^

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:49 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Added a setting that allows dig numbers to be highlighted like I had in the prototype today. Also works with coloured numbers.

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:50 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Added a few ground texture variants to suggest different environments/biomes. It's a first pass, but it already adds some fun variation and sense of place #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev

   • Cheeseness (cheeseness@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jun-2022 14:25:51 UTC Cheeseness

     in reply to

     Rock \m/