We’re halfway into June, and it’s about time for another update on our progress with Project Subterranean. As usual, I have included a short demo video, which is available further down this post (it’s my way of tricking you into reading the whole thing).

This week we haven’t really been working on any major features, but we have made some minor improvements, and gotten started on some character outlines and even started writing the script.

Dialogues

Kalle started working on support for colored dialogues. It’s still not quite finished, as you have to manually define the text color within the level itself. I’m thinking we should probably color the text depending on what type of object is speaking / thinking / or being read from. We’ll see what happens. At least we’ve got basic support going.

The other addition to the dialogues is that I’ve made it so that the height for the dialogue options is dynamically calculated depending on the number of available options. Before, any option after the fourth would be pushed off the screen. Now that won’t be a problem.

Interface

Kalle also added support for alternating mouse cursors. Depending on what you’re hovering over, a different cursor is displayed. From what I’ve heard, the code is… Not great, but it works - which is what we’re going for right now.

Another little feature that is somewhat interface related is that I’ve made it so that looking is the default action. So when you try to use or pick something up, it defaults to looking if there’s no associated response to using or picking up the object.

Character outlines and script draft

I’ve really gotten started with the character outlines now. The main character is pretty much finished, and I’ve gotten a long way on some of the office characters as well. Designing the characters takes a long time though, as you can really only work on one at a time. At least I can’t.

If you want to read the character outlines, they are available here: Character Outlines (.odt format)

Artwork

Kalle made a new branch for artwork, where he created some pretty nice mockups based on sketches made earlier. If you want to check it out, go here: artwork (.ZIP containing .SVGs).

Testing environment

Finally, Kalle fixed up the testing room to make it closer to what the actual first scene of the game will be like. The graphics are still just dummies, and the puzzle will probably be changed, but it’s still neat to have a testing area that looks like a real room.

The new testing room along with the puzzle can be seen in the demo video down below.