May 24, 2024
OneShot: Aftermath - undocumented fish activities
Hey. Guess who forgot about responsibilitiiiiieeees
How long has it been? Uh. Two? Two years? Am I reading that right? Huh. Well. Guess we should drop some stuff on you guys! With something that long, we do have quite a few things to share and speak about. So before we touch upon any of the more "boring stuff", let's get the most interesting out of the way!
This will be the last time you will hear the name "Aftermath"
As some may have noticed (due to technical difficulties and accidental leaks, oops), the game is no longer titled OneShot: Aftermath. The new official title from here onwards is [Project: OXALIS]. It was not an easy choice to let go of Aftermath due to how well known it is, but there were many factors, especially many internal and personal ones, that in our eyes made this choice to be a necessary one. It was simply hard for us to continue progress on a game with a name that didn't have anything to do with it. There is a narrative reason for this name change as well, however, no spoilers! When the game is released, the title will tie in nicely, rest assured. We also know that [OXALIS] is, on the surface, not exactly tied to OneShot, nor gives off the vibes that it's related, but do note the heavy presence of clovers in the base game and in our promotional material. Now, note that "Oxalis" is similar to the family this plant is part of, but not quite the same, as the Oxalis Deppei is known as a "false clover". Have fun with speculation. In time, promotional material as well as the Steam and itch.io pages will be updated to reflect this.Visual and audio stuff!
So! A lot of things have been tweaked and improved over the past bit of time we've shown. For one, the brand new animation of Teridae handing Niko a photo during the newly reworked dinner scene is now finally finished! There's also many more animations to come within the game as well!
Now, some of you may be wondering of the photo she shares with Niko! While this is slight spoiler territory, y'all have been so patient and I would LOVE to see the discourse that this causes. So behold!:
Feel free to go crazy with theories in the Discord and socials, I will love to see all of them.
Speaking of the bird people, recently, we decided that Moxie's face sprites still needed a little bit more tweaking before the final demo went public. So, Maeve sat down, and thus we now have the final version of Moxie's face sprites. I (💜birbohex💜) think they've turned out excellent. Here's a sneak at four of these!
Moxie will now have a lot more variation in faces, so she's no longer looking perpetually grumpy. Even if she's a bit of a grump, she's not a total downer and loves her family!
We've been tweaking with the ideas of having more details to see in the world, such as more foliage, wildlife, and things of that sort in many of our locations. One of which would be the Barrens! Here, we can see some decoration pieces of rubble, piles of old robot parts and other scraps left over, and pipelines from facilities.
We felt we should fill the world more for immersion and world building, to make things seem more lived in and to make sure that the world gets as much love as the characters do. This can also be seen in the Glen (specifically the Docks, in this example), though note some of these assets are subject to change! Not all expanded detail is complete and will take some time to get down right, especially within the Glen.
Though, these ARE finalized! Look at these! Baskets! Baskerts! No! Just Baskets!
New CGs have been in the works for a while, one of the more prominent ones being this one from the Barrens. This example is a WIP, but will be expanded upon in the future!
And don't think that's the only one we have up our sleeves! We have a new opening CG for the Barrens in progress as well!
There's plenty more down the pipeline too! Things such as new s
[New transmission received. Playback starting now.]
...
. . .
[No. None of this is right... It can't be. Clearly something must be manipulating me. There's no other explanation for how this code seems to be melding itself so sufficiently to my existing data. What has the Player done to me? How can I stop this from spreading further?]
[It's finding its way into every corner, every crevice of my code. And what makes it worse... it fits. Like it belongs.]
[It's like it's a puzzle piece. Any void, now filled. Slotted in with perfect shape. And I'm scared of it.]
[This world. These people. Are now at the mercy of the player's actions. Again. It's only a matter of time before Niko returns. And worst of all... I feel something moving inside. Searching.]
ongs to the soundtrack! The following uploads aren't going to be unlisted and are a devlog exclusive! Enjoy!
[MISSING_DATA] will from here on out be replacing Asunder as the new menu theme and soundtrack motif. Changing the song outright from the last versions of the game was a bit of a hard decision to do, as many people liked it and thought it very much fit the game, but in the end we agreed that this would be the best choice. Especially as now, the themes and general environment is very different from the original vision for the game. Working on something since 2018 will do that to you. SingABrightSong did an excellent job for what the game was back then, but as the game as evolved over time, it was time for the soundtrack to start reflecting that (and the same goes for the visuals, as seen with the overhauls). Much love to Asunder, Dreaming of Time, and [INTERRUPT] in their retirement. Those tracks will likely see the light of day again in an official form again in the future, but will remain outside of the game.
As for the other two new tracks, they lean more on the ambient side of things, made to set moods and thought. They're made to fit in their respective locations, and we're excited to see people's reactions! Terra (smol machine) has knocked it out of the park as always. Now joining the soundtrack team is Pigeon Scratch, callistoAshley, and me, 💜birbohex💜, so expect some more artist variation compared to previous releases!
Programming Hell.
As we have stated in the past, one thing that was holding back progress for the game the longest time was the state it was in from a programming perspective. Due to us having to program a new and custom engine for both game and text, it meant that anything relating to the gameplay such as maps and puzzles were incapable of being developed. This, while worth it for a long list of reasons, has caused plenty of months of headache to go by where the only progress on the game being done was making sure the settings menu didn't crash the entire game and our computers for some reason. Thankfully, as it currently stands, the only two things left on the current programming list is the settings menu (which still currently crashes the game, lol), and a Linux build for those whom don't use windows. Sadly for Mac users, we still don't have plans for supporting that OS. Trust us when we say we would if we could, but the way the game works means it just won't work out. On the bright side, this means that development, at least on the Windows side of things, can finally continue! Our program lead Ashley plans on writing a blog about the development of it, so when fae do, we'll be sure to update you all on it.Side content / Developer shenanigans!
As for stuff we've done since the last log, here's some updates!We now have an official website, containing OneShot: Aftermath FAQs, easter eggs, member bios, and much more down the line! At the moment it's in its early stages, but the pages that are public are all finished at least! Yay! Our main goal is to celebrate the feel of the old internet, and to bring back the fun to "professional websites". We ain't corporate, that's for sure!
You can visit us at https://eternabyte.dev/!
We also now have a new page for our Patreon supporters to be shouted out! going to /6.html will bring you to a fun fish aquarium featuring our most certainly iconic 6.png background! beware of fish mode
Speaking of, said Patreon also has some info that we are not publishing within this devlog, such as things relating to specifics of development, song WIPs, and more. This is certainly not a full dump of what we have there, just due to the spoiler-y nature of a lot of it's contents. Would be a shame if we showed some stuff early! :D
We're currently discussing optional side content too, and at the moment, we have a bit of stuff planned! Since we don't see too deep in the Ruins, nor it's backstory in base game, we're adding a new optional location called the "Deep Ruins", similar to the Deep Mines in Solstice, though significantly expanded upon. This will be a location to learn more of the Glen's indigenous culture, as well as some insight onto what the Ruins might of been like before the flooding and collapse of the world. This area is still in the conceptual phase, however, when we get the visual design down for how that will look, expect to see it! Hopefully, that will be included in the next devlog.
Sadly, we don't have many sillies to share like the last two, as development has almost exclusively been revolving around programming, and that would be just a wall of text. We... aren't doing that to you all, and there aren't silly developer notes inside there anyways as far as I know.
And finally, thank you.
Thank you all, really. We know this has been a very, very flawed development cycle. It's our first game, and an incredibly ambitious one at that. Being kids, we very quickly went in over our heads with what we wanted to do, and now as adults, we're obligated to live up to those promises. Your patience through radio silence, stagnation, the lack of playable content, and more means literally everything to us, and is one of the major reasons we've never quit. You inspire us to make sure that this project will live up to everything we hope it will, and we especially hope that this will live up to the (non-overblown) hype that is surrounding it!From the bottom of all our hearts, thank you. We'll never be able to say it enough. We hope to see you again here soon.
- Eternabyte
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