Project Oni - First Official Progress Log! (Patreon)

Good morning, evening, whatever it may be in your part of the world!

We’ve got the first progress log for Project Oni and it finally feels like a breath of fresh air. Doku and I have been trying out a new prototyping method, where the goal is to make things work as fast as possible, without wasting time on things that may end up getting scrapped or replaced. By getting the core mechanics working, we can make sure that the game has a solid foundation before we add a coat of paint over it and make it look nice. So please excuse the basic artwork we’re using at the moment! 

We’re currently about to enter the third part of the prototyping plan we talked about here. The first two parts are working at their base level, so let’s talk about them a little bit.

Player Movement:

8 Directional Movement: The sprite you see on screen can move in 8 directions. This will allow us to use both isometric views and side scrolling wherever we see fit. A large town could appear as isometric, but then a castle hallway or small room can adopt the side view. The main thing to keep in mind is that we keep the look uniform, so that switching between the two doesn’t look jarring.

Keyboard & Controller Support: We’ve managed to get basic movement and interactions working on both input methods. The gamepad support has only been tested on an Xbox controller, so there may be some issues down the line that we’ll need to take care of.

Sprite X,Y, Z Layering: This was a bit difficult to figure out and we might be running into some more problems with it. The game sprites need to be able to render both behind and in front of objects when walking past a certain point. Ultimately, the visual depth in isometric/2D games is all an illusion, and we’ll have to use a clever mix of sprite sorting and collision to avoid any odd looking overlap.

NPC/Item Interactions:

Basic Dialogue: The blue guy you see there in the screen shot can be approached and interacted with. We’re currently working on setting up the dialogue tree and should have something on that in the next progress log.

Item Pickups: The mushrooms you see there can be picked up. There’s no inventory at the moment but we’ll be prototyping that soon too.

That’s about it for now! It may not look glamorous but this is work that has to get done before we can make things visually appealing.

We may also be making this prototype playable for you guys, so stay tuned!

-Vanis & Doku