Dec 27, 2023

Dragon Shelter - Robin

✨Hi, everyone!

Today’s dev diary will be dedicated to the emotions and the visual aspect that we've been diligently crafting.

Primary Emotions

Friendship, reunion, the significance of understanding others' feelings, tenderness, care, and collaboration.

We have a strong desire for everything to become peaceful. To unite people with joy, love, and coziness.

One of the main feelings in our game is unity, and reunification.

The world of Dragon Shelter, where our hero resides, has been left fractured after a great cataclysm that tore apart the world of humans, creatures, and dragons.

Emotions of a main character

Perhaps, some of you have had a garden, where you would work with your grandmother or parents. It's a sunny morning in summer, with sunlight filtering through the trees, butterflies fluttering about, and a sense of peace in your heart.

So here's our hero—a young man who wants to fix everything, set things right, roll up his sleeves, and help everyone. We want the player to feel like a unifier of the world and a friendship-builder.

The most important thing for our hero is to be a generous and caring friend, someone who believes that through teamwork, communication, and assistance, we can overcome old grievances and learn to be friends. He does all of this because of his strong empathy, so as not to feel the pain of other beings around him.

He feels a sense of responsibility and surprise when he discovers a dragon egg about to hatch. He realizes his crucial role and feels responsible for the well-being of the dragons.

The player's first task is to feed the dragon. Our hero spots some old tools—a scythe, a shovel, and an axe—that will help him with this task.

He needs to chop wood, prepare soup, and give the dragon his food.

All animations and some graphics are still prototypes to get closer to the desired style, so please don't be too strict (for now)).

Emotions of the Dragons

Dragons are creatures that are incapable of lying, or being hypocritical, and possess an extremely subtle sense of the world and the surrounding mood and emotions.

In their hearts, they are playful and mischievous. Due to their nature, they can be slightly aggressive.

Because of the global conflict, they have changed significantly, but we will tell you more about it in the future.

The dragons are highly empathetic and curious about the world around them and other creatures.

They aspire to help and support others, to study and understand their feelings, as well as to show compassion and aid in healing.

Dragons, in terms of their emotions, are in a stage akin to young adults. They are intelligent, full of enthusiasm and joy. Each dragon expresses their feelings and emotions uniquely, depending on their individuality and character.

And this is a part of the development idea for the dusty dragon and the woody one. :)

Teaching the Dragons

One of the core mechanics in the game will revolve around teaching the dragons. As mentioned earlier, dragons have a strong interest in the world around them, and in the previous post, we showed that they can adorn themselves with various items, get into places they shouldn't, and basically do what dragons like - being dragons.

Therefore, the hero must help the dragon understand what's good and what's not so good. While dragons may have their own willfulness, for the sake of the common good, learning is essential (not all dragons can get along with each other).

In the upcoming posts, we will showcase some mechanics and share insights into the feelings of other creatures in our cozy yet complex world. Stay tuned!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2712590/Dragon_Shelter

About Dragon Shelter

Dragon Shelter is an adorable farm-life game where you play as a young boy on a quest to rekindle the friendship between people and dragons. Restore an old farm, nurture your dragon pals, and explore a whimsical world filled with charm and wonder.

Stay connected with us and be part of our community on social media!

❤️ Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/rm4tahCM7n

🧡 Check out our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dragonshelterwf

💛 Read more about the game on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DragonShelterWF

💚 Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dragonshelterwf/

Dec 27, 2023

Speed Update

Undergrown - flxp

Hello there, it's been 4 months!!!
why I waited this long to send out an update???
the mystery is unknown, unsolved and oh hey, look its some patch notes vvv

(before we get to the patch notes)
I wanted to mention, by unanimous vote and my general boredom.
I will be spamming updates much more frequently.
that is all, read those notes now.

the-patch-notes:

fixed alot of minimap tile colors.

fixed old world data messing up button's text causing an error.

added multi-language translation support to all window titles.

added a `/place block_id` command, places a block at the mouse position.

added a preferred_layer for blocks themselves. (for the /place block_id command)

now certain tiles can influence the player's walking speed when touching them.

added more user-friendly multi-line support to .lang files.

fixed ui popups to process correctly and not visually update every frame.

optimized alot of world-related fps problems.

player buffs/debuffs now have proper tooltip / multi-line support.

fixed tooltips closing when some text is changed while viewing. (buff timer ui tooltips)

added object to manage machine processing for tiles.
- optimized machines to only calculate new changes.
- detects changes done to the machine's inventory.
- recalculates recipes and starts timers appropriately.

fixed crack animation on tiles being rendered in the air.

changed the egg plant fully grown sprite to be more visible against most backgrounds.

fixed inventory slot types to load from JSON data.

fixed achievements loading too early before steam could load.

fixed achievements crashing the game cause they loaded wrong.

fixed my pc, cause it blew up basically.

added the lush jungle biome.

added a few tiles for the vine biome.

made world generation like a billion times faster. (maybe even 2 billion)

fixed autotiling speeds.

broke world generator.

broke world spawnpoint.

broke world size.

world generator has been overhauled.

added 4 more biomes.

bug: worlds don't save tiles when generating a new world at the moment.

fixed some bugs with buttons.

added a scrollbar that does nothing on the titlescreen. (good addition)

fixed the titlescreen logo.

fixed a bunch of visual optimizations on the titlescreen.

added a few plants / ore specific biome tiles to the world generator.

added texturepack support. (almost)

fixed up the lighting to look more cool.

added a texturepack selector menu. (almost)

more fixes to the texturepack support menu.

added texturepack support:
the game will provide you with tools to copy the default textures to a folder,
creating a new texturepack for you to start modifying.

an `open texturepack folder` button was added.

you can reorder the texturepacks to have certain packs take priority. (top to bottom)

you can change texturepacks while playing / on the titlescreen.

you can add a "." at the start of a folder to ignore it "texturepacks/.texturepack folder to ignore/"

fixed autotiles not loading.

fixed tiles not redrawing properly.

new world generator now saves correctly.

added liquid lakes / rivers to biomes.

fixed some world generator loading messages.

rewrote the breaking of tile layers + priority.

fixed a floating point precision tile crack amount bug.

added decoration and carpet layers to the world.

fixed pixel offset for certain autotile scenerio, countertops now have correct offset.

fixed mouse selection for certain sprite offseted tiles.

fixed bug where you couldn't right click activate items / place blocks sometimes.

fixed a visual bug where the player's character renderer did not unequip certain items.

now you cannot place tiles on living creatures, including the player.

added decoration layer tiles.
(placed ontop of shorter walls like counters / tables)

reworked tile placing. (now its easier for me to work with)

you can now use a shovel for every tile below walls.

carpets and decoration layers now have
existance
paint
metadata

etc interactions etc etc

finished up the new textbox.

added in some biome-specific plants and soil types.

happy build number 10,000!!!

world save backups are now multithreaded.

entity script is more organized now.

item drops now have animation.

item drops can also emit light.

added multithreading to a few places inside world generator.

added alot of placeholder npcs.

fixed a few multithreading crashes.

added a staircase tile.

added a bunch of items and tiles.

added immobile state to npcs.

added ability to be able hit, but not deal damage to npcs.

fixed multi-threading issues with minimap.

fixed all godot z_index related errors with tiles and entities.

added some Gardener dialogue, plus first few interactions.

made entities capable of falling / jumping.

added experience bar.

added new import spritesheet animation: vertically.

added level up animation.

changed the color of tile collisions,
to help differentiate entity and static collisions. (debug)

added cursor sprites for locking / unlocking inventory slots.

merged tile watering timers over to a new faster design. (machine_processing)

machine processing data is now saved to the world.

added an armor_stand, or is it a mannequin?

added more specific class specification for entities. (dev stuff)

fixed the item trashing animation.

added the data management to wiring.

added picture frame png loading and tile rendering.

added fireworks for firework day.

added wire rendering, placement and removal.

added wire droopy rendering.

added a bounce animation to the wires.

wires now can be hidden.
by default you need to hold a wrench to see them. (item:id_wrench)

added sprite rendering to the wires.

added control_center tile.

added Peerma Code, a custom programming language
to access wire information, and write programs
to enable / disable tiles.
comes with compilation and error checking.

custom programming language almost have support for
"variable = other_variable + 9 + ..." operations

custom programming language:
still working on token grouping, to get it just right
now have string support " " ' '
now have parenthesis grouping
now have [] < square bracket grouping (for arrays and indexing)
group functions
functions are called `task`
using : for line ending like python
no indention syntax so need a function end keyword aswell (probably) (like lua for now)

fixed a few things with the textbox
can now scroll to line with mouse
enter / up / down etc, also scroll the lines if applicable
have a setting to `show_line_numbers` on the left side

if your world gets corrupted:
the load recent button will now say
"recent world corrupted, load backup?"
it will choose the latest autosave to copy.

trying to figure out order of operation for peermacode

finally, have some super basic code working in the control center tile

peermacode language - added simple operations:
if variable over number [

if variable under number [

variable = number

variable = variable

variable += number

print variable # prints to chat at the moment.

fixed compress_var() for real (herobrine also removed).

now we are sending all layers of the world to the client on join.
layers that work:
all layers.

layers that don't work:
all paint and metadata layers.

player puppet animations added: [aim, walk_aim].

world sends over perfectly.

created server-side events to trigger events in the client or the server.

optimized sending the world by 15%!!! omg!!

some more packets added.

fixed simulate_packet server-side.

finally fixed send_to_other_players() function
now everyone is synced up properly

added breaking and placing blocks through the server.

added breaking tile animation for the server.
(yes you can break blocks together for twice the speed)

synced 99% of all inventory packets.

completely re-writing all of the ui in the game real quick tehe :P. (I'm still working on this today..)

created ui_button.

created ui_panel.

created ui_linking.

created ui_text_node.

added bbcode rendering to the ui_text_node. (bold / italics / underline)

added image rendering to text_node.

added word wrapping.

starting to add proper word-segmentation to certain languages.
currently: japanese and chinese

added clickable hyperlinks.
added optional aliases to hyperlinks.

added bbcode text color.

refactored alot of functions, to use the syntax I use.

added offscreen tracking arrows to minimap markers.

fixed wooden stairs to teleport player to the right position.

made room_warps teleport player back to previously used warp.

fixed keybind for re-centering minimap camera on player.

added some translations to the minimap ui.

made minimap markers selectively trackable.

when zoomed in too much, minimap markers will vanish,
to allow players to see the pixels very close, uninterrupted.

some mouse priority and event order with npcs fixed.

added npc tugging / following the player. (with pathfinding)

added grass spreading (and other general tile spreading functions).

added conveyor belts.
they move entities and the player.
they don't move items yet. (coding that differently)
they share the same autotile type as rails currently
and will rotate themselves to match the neighboring conveyor belt.

added a tile rotate sprite and function
r / shift+r to rotate.

conveyor belts now transport items to:
neighbor conveyor belts
neighbor containers
or
the floor

currently all saving / loading of any world is broken (which is good) (currently re-writing)

spriteloading has multi-threading support now.

added theme support to the sprite loader.

fixed a handful of sprite helper functions
that most of the game relies on

fixed most animation related sprite problems

added `/cinematic_mode` command, to hide the ui via chat.

re-wrote world saving and loading. (world generator still WIP so cannot create new worlds at the moment)

added new setting "game_minimize_on_close".

been working alot on the multi-threaded world generator.
not merged into the game project quite yet but
we now have re-ordering for generation steps

steps:
clear_world
generate_simple_biome (places dirt walls and floors, with an outline on the walls)
create_structures
create_map_image (for debug, would show spoilers for the players)

fixed most of the fatal crash issues, a little hard to figure out what causes them

I also added a structure_helper class
which allows you to start the creation of a structure
and place it in the world

it has a few features inside a JSON file
allowing me to change what tiles it prefers its walls and floors out of
random size min and maxes
the ability for the room, to spawn another room
(only works for the first structure you initially called, so no recursive looping by default)

placing adjacent rooms
room overlap collision detection and re-attempts to generate the rooms
when failing to generate rooms due to overlap, we try again once more,
and delete the rooms in a backwards order
to hopefully have more than one room in the end
obviously you can just make sure its impossible to have an overlap based on sizes
but I wanted this option too

I also have a random chance value, for one of the adjacent rooms to spawn (configurable)

added command line argument `-disable_mods` for future mod crash loop prevention

added <username> tag to autocomplete commands

added a dedicated thread for light calculations

making a music maker in-game (basically a midi controller + DAW sorta thing)
added a few things to it
made certain things more independent

put force_update variable in the base class Node2Dv2

fixed the threaded_sprite_loader temp loading bar to be visible during loading of the sprites

mostly just re-adjusting code style

figured out a safe way to log messages with multi-threading.

made logger globally accessible.

I also organized all of the sprites in the game to be loaded more externally
which made the project load faster (on the dev end), but broke more exe export testing.
will have to fix that before I send out this update. (probably)
(done)

here are some more random images I could scrape up:

new ui right click context menu thingy

new ui button with ui text and emojification + bbcode support (italics / bold / underline)

Yeah so, some things I've entirely forgotten at this point are now in the game
The basic functions of the game are actually now completely broken,
due to the world generator rewrite +
world saving / loading being changed recently.
I approximate that will all be fine
once the world generator is in a merge-able state again.
anyways, we will see what's next
maybe I figure out the world gen, or just merge it now.
regardless there will be more daily updates from Undergrown in the near future.

Dec 27, 2023

THE END OF 2023

Fran Bow - Rebel Linda

THE END OF THE STORY
By Nati Martinsson.

Killmonday Games started with the idea of achieving creative freedom in the form of video games. Interactive experiences that would explore life in-itself, and with it play and the whole range of feelings.
As you know, we have released two games, Fran Bow and Little Misfortune, giving us economic freedom.
After the release of Little Misfortune, we wanted to expand the company, from being two people, Isak and I, to a larger team, so we could release something more complex.
The journey into expanding the company was incredibly scary and difficult, as none of us had previous experience being company owners and for that matter, bosses. We just wanted to create!

Details from the project "Benjamin Game"

To make possible the goal of expanding the company to later create more complex games, Isak and I got to take the role of “boss” and start guiding others to understand our vision. But things were not as expected. There were a lot of Human Resources matters to attend. With more people we needed better communication skills. We needed to understand how to delegate and how to navigate the everyday with feedback, guidance and creativity.

I saw the need to study, to gain insights on how things could be done. I read several books about company building, management systems and how to be a better leader. I attended a few courses in leadership both digitally and on sight. All of this, while also keeping an eye on the team as individuals, guiding the game projects we were creating and managing the Killmonday Shop.

Details from the project "Fran Bow 2"

My body was becoming a sad, angry, resentful husk, as I got less and less help from my partner, as the system to drive the company became more complex.

Isak was withdrawing from the responsibility as the stress was eating him alive. And indeed, I have no idea how I kept carrying this goal forward for so long myself. I was tired and saw no meaning in a lot of things I was doing, but it was for the “greater good”. The bigger game! While I was getting sicker and sicker. And this is due to my incapability to ask for help, open up and show myself vulnerable. I wasn’t able to ask for the right support and I was being a people pleaser with my employees. *Side note: This made them respect me less and less.

We did achieve a lot of things during this period, though, but my energy wasn’t keeping up and it wasn’t sustainable. And many of the projects weren’t completed either.

Details from Fran Bow Chapter 6

I was focused on achieving, to feel more secure about myself, my worth. To feel more loved or accepted. And it shames me to realize this now. It is a valuable experience for future endeavors. I’m already worthy and my skills mirror the experiences at this moment in time. I can’t be more nor less. And my creativity moves with me.

It took a few trials of canceled games, before we could finally realize; we can’t keep doing this. It’s making us miserable. It’s eating the creative soul of our beings.

We haven’t been able to release or stick to one project for 4 years now.
We have been sharing with our fans news about the Benjamin game, about a Fran Bow DLC and Fran Bow 2. We did work on all of these projects, believing this was what we could do together, but we always came to a point where things didn’t go where they needed to.
The latest project we got to cancel was coming along good. Until we realized if we do this we’re gonna go broke.

This year ends with us needing to let people go. To take a step back and heal the physical and emotional wounds of burnup and resentment. This year ends the story of expansion, as a traditional company, with employees.
We do need the help of others, but we will take the approach that has worked for us before; freelancers. Yeah!

Collaboration with freelancers for Fran Bow Chapter 6 minigames

We have decided with Isak to let go of the idea of traditional company building. And refocus on the meaningful stories that we envision and we are eager to redefine and re-discover our creative nature.

We are getting there, little by little, and as time is a layered reality, we know we will make it. But we don’t know how or when yet. I know there is a little lady and a tall skeleton in a tophat taking good care of us.

This year we were able to release Fran Bow on consoles and that was a great achievement. We also got the opportunity to work with Makeship and release really cute plushies of our beloved characters.
This year was about realizing who one really is and accepting it and loving it, is the biggest achievement yet, personally at least.

Now we are 3 beings working at Killmonday, Isak, Linda and I… We have become the triangle at last.

Thank you for being part of our journey and taking your time to read. Please reach out if you have any questions!

Happy times, many hugs and love,
yours truly, Nati

Dec 27, 2023

THE END OF 2023

Little Misfortune - Rebel Linda