Hi everyone!
I'm going to put together dev logs where I write a little about what me and my dog, Hotdog, are up to. I hope you enjoy it!
NPC dogs may leave rooms when quests and encounters are over, but because I avoid removing entities from my game (it keeps the code simpler), I moved the dogs to an empty place outside the map. But despite that I'm fully aware the dogs aren't real, I felt bad for them that they got to exist in an empty void outside the level.
So, I created a network of small rooms connected by doors, with grass and flowers, where they can hang out. There's nothing in the code that make them interact in this state, but who am I say to say they don't go all "toy story" when not observed? These rooms are unreachable by the player unless the game is modded.
Rhythm Doggo uses cellular automation for visual effects. Cellular automation is a way to animate pixels moving and evolving in interesting and unpredictable patterns. I often use it to respond to other things in the game, like patterns emerging from footsteps. My variant is an extended version of "Weighted Conway" which itself is based on "Conway's Game of Life", implemented as a compute shader so it can run on the graphics card.
There's a cool site at https://mcell.ca/app/ where you can try experimenting with cellular automation. This site helped me a lot during the development for inspiration.
A few days ago, it finally became possible to play the full story from beginning to end, which I celebrated with a pizza. I also accidentally deleted hours of work because I used version control wrong, an event that called for a "pity pizza". There's a pizza for all encounters in life!
I hope you enjoyed this devlog. Hotdog says "bark bark"!