February Devlog - Resort Visuals (Patreon)

Hello again and welcome back to another Rockin' Resort devlog! This month's (or rather last month's) post is a little late but that doesn't mean I've been slacking off. It's quite the opposite, in fact. I was working on Rockin' Resort all of Febuary and there's a lot to show off!

The main focus for February has been on visuals but I've also gotten a lot of writing done as well as some fancy new code. I got a little busy at the end of the month which delayed this post a bit but were here now, so let's dive into the updates!

Character shading

(Amber is cute!)

The first item on my list is the new character shader I've written. It's a fairly basic toon/stylized shader with a gradient to determine the lighting color. Before, I was using Godot's bulit-in toon shader but it's fairly awful when it comes to getting correct cell shading. This new shader should still look correct in dark environments and with multiple lights, even tinted ones!

I've also added a simple outline. I was originally going with a lineless style like what I did in Date a Mink 3D since most outline solutions in Godot have one or several issues. Currently, I feel that the outlines complete the visual style but I may change my mind again. Do you prefer the characters with or without outlines?

Landscaping

I've been working on the environments of the demo island and that meant creating a bunch of custom assets. I've placed them using ProtonScatter, which allows me to scatter the objects around, which has fit my needs fairly well. It's fairly similar to the bush/tree tool I made earlier (which isn't the best fit for this tropical scene).

I've learned a lot about importing 3D models into Godot as part of this process as well as how to better approach greyboxing (level design). I want the demo to look nice so this process took longer than I expected but knowing how these systems work will help speed up this process a lot in the future.

Script Writing

Last month, I started writing scripts for the game. This is done in a couple phases at the moment. First, I write the dialogue in Inky including any variations and choices. Once that's done, the characters will need animations and the dialogue will need to be integrated with those animations.

Currently, everyone except for Julia has dialogue written (Julia's scene will require the animation coming first) and I'm hoping to start animating the girls soon.

Floating text

Since Rockin' Resort is a 3D game with a movable camera, the text in the scene should be able to adapt. I could just have a simple UI button (and a few scenes do have them) but I feel floating text fits best. There a bunch of ways to create text in 3D scenes in Godot but most of them don't work with my highlighting system.

I tried the built-in 3D label but overlaying shaders causes issues. TextMesh works really well until you try to modify the text (to point to a position in 3D space) and update the outline at the same time which crashes Godot. The solution I ended up going with is to render a 2D viewport as a Sprite3D which is a bit more involved but works well.

The text isn't a major update but it's something I spent a couple nights on and felt like showcasing.

What's Next?

Depending on how development goes, I may have the demo ready next month but I want to make sure everything's polished so it may be a bit longer. The characters need their animations and there are a few more assets I need to create. That said, there's not too much that needs to be done so I'm excited to get something playable out soon.

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Thanks as always for supporting my art and game development! I've been trying to stay focused so that Rockin' Resort turns out good and having some funding to pay rent and the like continues to help me out a lot. I have a lot of work to do, so expect more news soon!