The Bane

Sorry there hasn't been much activity, but contrary to popular belief I am still working on The Little Things, and progress, though slow, is still trickling in.
The problem is the User Interface. Nearly everyone who has played so far has complained about it, and many of those that haven't voiced their concerns have still had trouble with it. It's clunky, it's awkward, it's not intuitive.

The thing is, I don't even know what I WANT it to do.

I've decided not to release any further material until I get this UI situation under control, just because it's really slowing down and complicating everything else I try to do. Once it's handled I'll have regular updates again, and probably a more 'full' demo rather than just a proof of concept.

Public Demo, bitches.

Time for that demo I promised! 13 screens of playable demo world await, along with a completed UI, game system, and several catchable, changeable things. My first proper demo release, rather than just a tech demo with all the features crammed in one room.
There's stuff to achieve, things to do, places to see.
So play it, won't you?

Thanks for keeping up with me so far, and here's to even more.

GET THE DEMO HERE!

See if you can catalog all the Things in the demo!

Chugga chugga chugga

As of last night, the foundational engine for The Little Things is complete. This means a lot of things, but most importantly, it means the bulk of coding is finished. What remains is content production. Now don't get me wrong, there's still lots
left to do before this is a complete game, and it will be many more weeks, but the important thing is that now that I have laid this modular foundation, adding this content is as easy as drawing up a sprite and plugging in a few numbers to make a creature, or throwing down a bunch of tiles to make a map. The way everything interacts is already calculated.

So while there's still a lot more work to be done, this work will be, by and large, easy work. No more slogging through code and pulling my hair out wondering why the hell things aren't working.
Sure, drawing sprites and making maps will take time, but it doesn't ever make mo go ARGH HOW DO I DO THIS or FFFFF WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING.
So the frustrating, right-brained, mathematics-'n'-syntax part is essentially finished. What's left is largely left-brained creative "you know what would be neat" stuff. And knowing this makes my exceedingly happy.

Also, I was going to release another demo, but I figure now that I've got the engine all settled and content production can begin, I might as well take the time to make some new rooms and critters and actually lay out a proper demo for once, rather than what we've had so far, which is basically test rooms crammed with all the gameplay features I could showcase in a nonsensical manner. So I figure if I take one or two days to put together something nice I can make something really worth showing. I'll post as soon as that's ready.

Hard to believe I've come this far in just one week.

Lazy Saturday

Things are still coming along pretty well, and lots of the basics of gameplay are done, and looking back at the big picture I realize just how far I've come in five days. I'm really pleased with this.

I added in item dialogs that allow you to loot them (e.g. from treasure chests), buy them and sell them. Merchants are all autonomous and have a lot of functionality, allowing for a diverse market that encourages travel. This will be a big step in laying the foundation for the game itself.
I've enabled animation overrides and temporary control-deprivation (just means you won't be able to jump when you shouldn't, for example) and I've also finished throwing in the ability to equip and use items, so with these combined I've got on-command actions and animations, which can later be worked into short, simplistic cutscenes.
Here's a look at some of what's new, including the two equippable items, paper and pebbles:

Some of the useable items are a lot of fun.

UI Continued: Inventory, Guide Book, Coinpouch and Container Belt

What a day it's been.
Got a lot done today. Added in the remaining UI elements, or at least the majority of them. Here's what we're looking at:
At the top, you'll be able to toggle between either the world mini-map or the Little Thing field guide our plucky protagonist is processing and penning.

The minimap is straightforward enough, showing all rooms you've been to and all exits from those rooms, making it easy to find your way around and keep track of places you've yet to explore. The minimap display can be switched out for the field guide display at any time by simply clicking the map or the book in the cluster of key items at the bottom center of the screen.

The Field Guide has two sections: on the right, the checklist, a grid of icons representing all the Things you've already caught. Click on one to jump to its page. On the left, the book lists important information about that particular Thing, including picture, name, where to find more, what it eats, if you'll need any special equipment to catch one, what containers it can be safely placed into, and finally a brief description of the critter and information on how to encourage a metamorphosis. When you catch one, all this information is automatically filled in by the protagonist, except for metamorphosis info, which is only unlocked when you successfully provoke the change. However, it is possible to fill in information in the guide without having caught the creature: books, gossip, common knowledge, and even at-a-cost info can dole out vital stats on uncaught creatures, including useful stuff like where to find one and what you'll need to catch it. Sometimes you might even get tips on how to make the creatures change as well.

The Inventory is simple enough: common, non-container items you collect will show up here. This includes food you can feed to your captured Little Things, tools, traps, pebbles, consumables, and so on. The quantity carried will be listed with it. Right-click any inventory item for a list of actions you can take -- generally examining, using, equipping, selling, or giving the item to a creature. Actions you can take on an item appear as icons in a dynamic radial menu, whose function is displayed when you mouse over them. Item names are also displayed on mouseover. This way, the inventory remains compact and orderly, without denying any necessary functions to the player.
Besides the radial menu, there are a number of neat features to the inventory. For example, each item has a designated space. If you've never found that item, the space will be blank. If you are carrying the item, it will be displayed in its space. If you had the item at one point but ran out and are no longer carrying any, the space will retain a silhouette of the item, and will still tell you its name when you mouse over it.

The Coinpouch simply displays the number of coins you are carrying in various denominations. You start out with gold coins, and the other lists will appear when you collect your first coin of that type.
Certain societies may only accept one type of coin, and some coins may have special, specific functions. Generally though, gold is the most common form of currency.

The Container Belt displays all your carried Little Thing Containers. The number of containers you can carry at one time is increased as the game progresses.
Containers are what you need to catch and store Little Things. Catching one with no free container is pointless -- you can't keep it! Containers come in 12 major types and are divided into 4 categories. You can find containers but generally they are purchased at merchants. Different merchants will sell not only different kinds of containers, but different colors! You may find one merchant selling blueglass and one selling greenglass. The difference is mostly an aesthetic one, whichever you prefer to keep your specific Things in. Things also come in slight color variations, with occasional rarities marking wildly different hues. It all depends on the type of creature, but no two are exactly alike!
When carrying an occupied container, you can give items to the occupying creature, switch the creature out into another container, set it free, examine it closely, or do a number of other things. But because space is limited, any Little Things you don't immediately need should be brought back home to your Collector's Hut and dropped off in storage, freeing up room to carry new, empty containers into the field.
Things can be sold and sometimes people will request a specific Thing in exchange for some kind of reward, so remember that there's no harm in catching multiples of the same species. A collector has to afford new gear somehow!

I feel like I've got a lot done yesterday. Many things mentioned above are still in the planning stages, but the bulk of the UI has been finished, and the task now is to work on integrating it all directly into the main gameplay. I'd say this is coming along quite nicely.

The new demo is HERE as before.
Note that the controls have changed. Hit F1 for a full list of commands.
You may want to notice in particular that the field guide and minimap can be swapped out with the digits 1 and 2.

Beginning UI: Minimap

Let me admit right now: I'm terrible at UIs. I like to think I can do a lot of things, but I can't organize a menu screen, design a bearable HUD, or draw a menu screen. I'm just godawful at figuring out how these things work out, and I've never succeeded in the past.
That said, delving into the UI for The Little Things is a real challenge for me, but I'm working at it as best I can and with proper planning, bit by bit, it's starting to come together.

This is the UI as I'd planned it for an all-purpose, single-screen menu. At the center, a pile of your equipment, including key items, of which there would be a small handful during the game, for example your Map, and later on, items to indicate you have achieved certain abilities, such as swimming. Arranged around these items would be a minimap showing all the rooms you've visited and how they're connected, an inventory showing the items you possess, a wealth readout of the number of coins you have in various denominations, and a row of Thing containers which would give a brief summary of themselves, plus an icon of the contained Thing, if there was one. There's also the encyclopedia, which will open its own menu, since it's the only element that needs a full screen to display the necessary info contained inside.
One of the biggest problems I ran into while designing this is the amount of empty space I'll have on-screen. I'm still deciding how to balance all the room.

And here's how it's coming along so far. The map is fully automated, meaning that to add new rooms all I have to do (besides build them to begin with) is plug in a few values like what exits they have, what key obstacles (e.g. water you need to swim through) they have, what color group they belong to, and so on. It's a snap, it locks the rooms together on the minimap, and the best part is that this system also makes room transitions easier, aligning all the rooms on a 1:1 scale and linking them to the grid. The end result of all this is that there's no "space-warping", meaning all the rooms will be exactly where they appear to be in relation to each other. This should give the world a good feel for distance, since all measurements will be accurate.
Additional features are already included, everything you'd expect: an arrow indicating which area you're currently in, rooms only appearing on the minimap if you've visited them, and possible exits showing up in rooms you've visited (even if you haven't visited their target) so you can tell at a glance where there are still loose ends and areas that remain unexplored.

In total, there's still a lot of UI left, but this whole minimap thing took maybe 80-90 minutes, and I think it came out very well. I'll keep you all posted as the UI develops from here on out.
Next up: Inventory items.

This fresh demo includes the minimap as explained above. Also new in this demo is the F1 help menu which lists the game controls and functions, including F4 which will toggle between screen modes (fullscreen/pixel-perfect).
I also fixed a MASSIVE bug in which the character would basically stop moving between room transitions, forcing the player to release a held movement key, then press it again. It was utterly terrible and I've been trying to fix it since version 1. Now that it's fixed I feel I've cleared a great hurdle.
The demo, which will be periodically updated, can be found at the same address as before, namely HERE.

The Little Things

After going over a lot of the code from Herodom, I realized just how much I'd have to totally rehaul, and eventually it occurred to me I was probably better off starting from scratch. It's an old project I started a long time ago and my grasp of coding was flimsy at best, and as a result the code is clunky, hard to work with, and completely ineffectual. This got me pretty down for a while, but I've worked out a way to get myself back into the groove, in terms of both technical workings and motivation: A small game which is simple, fun to create, will eventually serve as a springboard back into my other games, and will help me learn numerous things along the way so I don't make the same mistakes again.

Thus was born The Little Things.
The Little Things is a puzzle-platformer with a focus on exploration and collection. There aren't very many places you can die and the generally twitch controls are downplayed. The point of the game is to explore your world both above and below ground and collect the titular Little Things -- small living beings that can survive in tiny glass flasks and cages, which range from small insects and tiny creatures to worldly spirits and magical wisps. As a Lomite Collector, your primary task is to explore the fantastic world and collect these tiny things in their natural and unnatural environments, but along this path you'll also find yourself selling and trading them to interested buyers for specific equipment and tools, visiting strange people and places, and encouraging metamorphosis of your Little Things through animistic and alchemical means.
In short, it's Knytt meets Pokémon, without the combat.

You can play the demo (which is little more at this point than a proof of concept) HERE.
Controls are simple: Arrow keys move, look up, climb, drop through platforms, and crouch. CTRL jumps.
Nothing much to do in the demo, but as I said it's just a proof of concept.
I've spent about 6 hours on this so far.