lost contact devlog 10

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/arqFQVt
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/exodrifter_
itch: https://exodrifter.itch.io/lost-contact

The following content is a transcript of the video.


This is devlog 10 of lost contact, a narrative-driven, hidden object game about loneliness.

The biggest feature I implemented this week is the camera positioning. Before, the camera would always be placed in the same position regardless of how you entered the room. Now, the game places the camera near the door you came through, as if it were a first person game. This makes it much easier to maintain a sense of continuity between scenes.

The shader was also updated to use transparency. I found out that I could fix the transparency sorting issues I experienced early in the project by using render order to force the transparency to be sorted correctly.

Other than that, pretty much everything else I did this week was content related. I’ve realized that since all of the major mechanical systems for the game are implemented, if I kept making weekly devlogs like this, I won’t have much to say like in this video. The only kinds of updates I would have from here on out would be about new rooms, new dialog, and the occasional piece of code glue. Like this:

  • We’ve got some more rooms — 1F, 2E, 2F
  • There is a bunch of new dialogs
  • There are some chess pieces lying around in the levels now
  • And there’s more geometry in the bedroom scene from last week

As you can see, I went and made this video anyway, because it felt a bit odd to just stop making them without saying I was going to stop. But this won’t be the last video about lost contact! Instead, I’ll start focusing my efforts on making more interesting, focused videos about the game. I’m hoping these videos will also be more fun for me to make and that I can also use them in a marketing capacity, as odd as it feels to do that, to get people to become interested in what I’m making.

I’ll also transitioning into doing more marketing and administrative things — like, I’m applying and getting ready to table at conventions and I need to get a Steam page up. Right now, I’m actually going to be at Staple!, in Austin! A real event where I’ll have a table where I’ll allegedly be showing off my game and selling or giving away copies of my last game Gender Dysphoria!

Anyway, in the meantime, you can still find me streaming game development on Twitch and on my Discord server. Thanks for watching the devlogs up to this point — I hope they were interesting to you — and I hope to talk to you again soon.