Surprise, it's a big bugfix patch (with a couple of new features thrown in here and there)! We had wanted to get this out much earlier but got waylaid by some work that we can't talk about quite yet. Enough vague-posting, though, here's our giant list of changes:
Made “Chekhov” the consistent spelling of that family’s last name. I’m sure this won’t come back to haunt us.
The random encounter with Glocklins that describes meeting three of them will no longer be missing one in combat.
You can now grab Marvin a case of Snackle Cakes from any sufficiently large pile of Snackle Cakes.
The shambling monstrosity in the Zimmer House shadow rift should be easier to interact with via mouse control now.
The cursed key can now unlock the shed in the Tin Lizzies' Chop Shop.
Greta now actually gets to keep the Meat you spend on Familiar Chow.
Doc the hobo is now licensed to practice medicine on evidence.
You can no longer acquire multiple copies of How To Curse Like a Sailor.
The tiny and bizarre speck of red that was visible on the back of the Phi Upsilon Tau house is once again invisible. We assume it was a sniper's laser sight from some neighboring FPS game?
Phys Ed athletes can now be given supersoldier syrup even when they're not sad. Try saying "supersoldier syrup" six times real fast!
Dr. Adams finally remembered what he was going to say about the Chemicals building.
The ring of the raucous fracas will no longer make Phys. Ed matches chaotic.
Rasmussen's stuck plane has been made more robust.
By popular demand, the Longerfellow combination lock puzzles have been simplified (note that the solutions are different than before!)
You can now properly return a relative’s journal to Grover if you find it out in the world.
Jasper no longer talks to you about his cat when he isn't in the room with you.
A shadow pouch that had been inadvertently hidden behind the barrow-barrow at MacMillicancuddy’s farm is no longer out of reach.
A large wormhole that was sometimes errantly not swallowing a large object should correct itself if you visit its locale.
The haunted clam and hand-made katanas can now be productively dropped into the H***hole.
Worm boots are no longer automatically equipped when acquired.
Clive will now stop fidgeting with his katana once he doesn't have his katana any more.
If Letters isn't talking to you, he won't talk to you no matter what. This makes more sense than it sounds like, I swear.
Resolving the sickle’s curse before other objects' curses should no longer cause problems when trying to project into those curses.
Various anvils in the world are now better at being anvils.
The to-do list output for Ike Breeman's quests has been cleaned up to avoid duplication.
Your pet bird, if corrupted, will no longer uncorrupt itself every time it takes a bath.
Alphonse can no longer consume the President if the player has already consumed the President. Measure twice, eat once as they say!
If you’ve beaten the at the end of the game via combat, a new option should be available to you on all characters.
If you have portable crafting kits on your desk, they'll now correctly appear in the end credits sequence.
Errant birds will no longer appear during the credits. Authorized birds remain.
The player should no longer incorrectly appear in the antique store credits scene while trapped outside of space and time due to a temporal paradox.
Fixed a case where the Old Ham Mill credits sequence could lack any text.
Character save files should no longer (rarely) become stuck in the credits sequence.
A handful of sound effects have been added and others have been tweaked.
Placeholder sounds from the friendly stinkbug have been removed.
Friendly stinkbugs now properly show their names in combat. Their proper names.
Familiars that refuse to accompany you in fights no longer gain XP from those fights.
Clarence now actually gets all of the stat boosts we've been telling you he got.
Emmental Elementals should no longer spawn in the same space as other combatants and can no longer heal combatants past their maximum HP.
The bottlecap ring should (finally!) now actually do what it says on the bottlecap.
The Employee-of-the-Month award is no longer usable with no AP.
Super-Honky Horn now correctly only uses 1 AP instead of 2.
All fishing cast attacks should attach to their target instead of a fixed point in the air.
Molly's bullets now properly deal extra damage against enemies that are weak to physical damage.
Pillartrons and shadow growths no longer stand back up after being defeated.
A half-fish player's eyes no longer turn blue briefly when taking damage.
Invulnerable enemies are now even less vulnerable.
The sporadic and brief color inversions that happen as a hidden side effect of wearing a particularly Shadowy piece of jewelry (spoilerz!) will no longer occur if you select “disable flashing lights” from the Display options (note that that particular options sub-menu is only available from the title screen for technical reasons).
Arachnophilia and arachnophonia will no longer remain enabled when not visible in the options menu.
Everywhere the dial input interface is used, the last inputs the player chose will be populated on the next attempt.
Map items used from inventory now follow the same logic as the map icon (to prevent weird issues where you weren’t supposed to be able to use your map).
Saves previously stuck unable to free Charles because they uncursed the key before freeing him (see note above!) can now use the uncursed key to open the cage.
Mixers and garnishes are no longer missing their icons when Fancy Dan is making you a cocktail.
Separate equipment items that the player can have several of are now uniquely identified in the store interface, so selling one that’s not equipped won’t unequip one that is equipped.
Various stages of fence painting will no longer result in vestigial popup windows.
Long text output should now auto-paginate a bit more thoughtfully.
The map reticle should now be properly constrained to the map.
When the dialog speed is set to “Instant,” pressing space when the “More” prompt is visible should no longer scroll and also activate the first option. (Doh!)
Fixed a bunch of typos. That's got to be them awl, right?
We probably introduced a handful of new bugs, and there's definitely still some on our list that we haven't gotten to yet. Be sure to let us know if you encounter anything funky!
Updated player UI, not it shows the current weapon level and experience bar, move the mana bar to a bar as well and added a new more compact design. Also I updated the Skill menu with new illustrations I made myself for each playstyle. I will me adding more content now on until the release.
For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been working on making the cut scene – the first one, which would introduce the first part of the story to the player. What I’ve learned is that it’s much harder than I thought.
My assumptions before starting
I thought that since I have experience with animations and key framing, I would have ease going through the cutscene animations. After all, I have rigged characters ready to animate, all I need is a reference footage and I can start animating! Spoiler alert -> I was wrong. So very wrong.
Characters
Even if you have rigged characters, you might not have what you need. There are countless amounts of different rigs that different engines use to animate a character. E.g. Some characters might have 25 bones on their face just to control their expressions, others might just have 1 head bone because they don’t require facial expressions. They might be okay with just the head movement
3d Software
It took me 2 weeks just to get comfortable with Blender – an open source 3d software that many indies like myself use for animations, modelling and sculpting etc. The community is amazing and supportive, I had tonnes of people volunteering to help out. A special shout out to fudgenuggets87 whose great advice on reddit encouraged me to start learning blender.
Reference Footage
Note to self -> It’s impossible to record your own video from an orthographic view rather than a perspective view. It’s impossible to align your own reference footage with the animation because there will be no amount of angles that you can use to compensate for the fact that your camera has only 1 lens. And if you don’t use a reference footage, you risk animating your characters a little too cartoonish. Here’s what I mean:
Trying to sync the movement with my reference footage. Note how the feet and arms are not aligned fully because of the perspective of the camera So where am I now?
Finally, now I am fluent enough with Blender to produce an acceptable animation. But still, it takes me 3 hours to do about 15-20 seconds right. Having said that, All in your head game will not have more than 3 3 or 4 minutes of animated cutscenes. So I think we’re good for as far as the timeline is concerned.
Here’s a sneak peak of the new features of the level. What do you think?
As always, feel free to comment your feedback, email me or follow me on twitter. Thanks for reading, I’ll see you in the next one.
The human mind reels at the enormity and consequence of time that must follow from the fact that The Shrouded Isle came out in a year with a seemingly reasonable number (2017) and yet this means that, at time of writing, the Earth has revolved around the sun a full 5 times and is halfway towards a sixth!
It's been some years, is what I'm saying.
In honor of Lovecraftian Days (click through the banner at the top of the store page to find other eldritch delights), we're opening a portal through time to look back and ask the Kitfoxes of yesteryear a few questions, such as...
What is The Shrouded Isle? Why is The Shrouded Isle? How is The Shrouded Isle?
Surely you have no holidays of "rebirth" and "springtime" to attend tomorrow! So join us, you straggling remainders of the Houses past, to peer into the wonders of bygone eras:
Stream 1: Sunday April 9, 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern Stream 2: Sunday April 9, 6pm Pacific / 9pm Eastern
The spawn of a game jam, nurtured from a spore of potential, this game has since flowered and now reclines, sated, perhaps even bloated, with the adoration of the many it has consumed.
The last couple of weeks we've been showcasing the new Boss Battle. This week we implemented the ability to triggers links during each phase of a Boss Battle, allowing the designer to create custom fights! We'll be testing the new system and seeing what changes need to be made!
We'll be interacting with the chat so feel free to come chat with us and share any questions or suggestions you might have about the game.
We stream Super Dungeon Designer every Friday at 8:30pm ET on Twitch and to our Steam page.
Give us a follow on Twitch to get notifications when we're live:
FIXED - Picking up Tranquilized animals from cart or truck would sometimes display them as dead and could not be added to the Barn. FIXED - Dropped dead animals into a river could not be recovered. FIXED - Some info popups when looking at the stove would not go away until you look at another item/object. FIXED - Cart would sometimes clip through the floors in some POI buildings. FIXED - More Mike related issues. FIXED - Could not attack AI with Axes and Pickaxes. FIXED - AI would sometimes magically jump through doors. FIXED - Tech book blank page. CHANGE - More optimization of meshes and textures.
