02.12.2024

November just flew by, holy moly.

So, what happened in December?

Mostly Assets! Since i made them and finished all of them - at least for the first World, and i could finally get going in the actual Creation of the first World!

Encountering this means i also started to draw the first NPC of my Game, the Pilot of the Ghostworld! Since they will alert you to hurry, once you stepped out of the first Building!

If you want to know whats going on there, feel free to join the Mailing List! I will post Screenshots!

That also means i soon need to finally dig into a Dialogue System - but at least there's Dialogic from Godot to help me out, it's a great tool for exactly this one Purpose!

Next to Gamedev, i also was at two Conventions, one of them being Comiccon Stuttgart! Sadly they didn't go so well, i made lots of cool new Stuff for it (The Lunaraa Collectible Cards for example), which didn't quite hit the People in the right place as it seems.

But Drawbacks happen - it's important to take a Step back and readjust your Strategy, which i will be doing in the next Week or so!

So long

-Deli

17.11.2024

Half of the Month already gone, wow that was fast!

This Week especially, since i focused on redoing Assets, but i gotta say iam really proud of how they are turning out and the improvement to the Assets i made earlier are really visible - also they are way easier to actually use! I already tried out designing a Level with the new Assets and - after also adjusting my Scene Tree and how i built the Scene - the Process is waaaaaayyy easier and more straight forward, before it was really frustrating to rearrange the Nodes in Godot all the Time.

Creating Assets takes a lot of time, thats why that actually was pretty much it in terms of Gamedevelopment for this Week!

But do you remember how i was excited to go into the next Stage of Development for the Cardgame? 

Haha..haha, oh well, after another Playtest we found out there was a big systemic Problem with the Questcards - one of my USP's in the Cardgame! 

So i took the Time to take in a lot of Feedback about it, some describing it as "Unpleasent thing you have to do while playing", which obviously is NOT what it is supposed to be!

So oopsie there!

But i think i figured out what was the Problem with most of the Quests, since most of them are currently "the slightest evil", i think i found a way how they will be seen as opportunities which can be used. To be more clear, they are more forgiving now and give you more possibilitys to actual complete them while not punishing you if you weren't able to finish them the first Time.

Good thing i didn't order the Cards for a physical Prototype already, dodged a bullet and saved a lot of Money right there!

So yeah, be absolute sure about something before you take the next Step!

-Deli

10.11.2024

After already doing the scary Optimization Part, i had to wrap my Head around a few Bugs which spawned because of it, but nothing a good Coding-Flamethrower can't get rid off, haha!

Since iam already doing stuff which i'm kinda scared about - or which i'm procrastinating, i actually finally swallowed the big Frog of the Environment, deleted all Assets i had so far (They weren't even the right Resolution Size!) and started from Scratch. 

Not as big as a deal as it may sounds, since there weren't that many Assets to begin with, but still a few Weeks of Work gone is always a bummer.

I digged back into other Games, and figured out, i was wrong. Hollowknight actually uses Tilesets. But only a few of them, and only in specific Places - for example for the Floor. I didn't catch that because they are really really good at making a Secret out of it, still placing Sprites in the Scene and in Front of the Tileset.

So it's not one or the other, but both!

Since the Look is quite important for my Game, i think it's completely fine to take lots of Time to tune it and find the right way to implement it. You gotta make Mistakes to get better at something!

Next to the Gamedevelopment, the Cardgame is also evolving! After a few minor Balancing Patches, the last Playtest went suuuuper well, so i will start going into the next Stage! Ordering Prototypes and writing a Pitch Document for it!

Since i have over 240 Cards right now, and you can use most of them up to 3 Times in your Deck iam not going to order 920 Cards, instead i will just order the Decks the current Players already built! Thanks for that!

November will be quite busy, since there are 2 Conventions coming up, one of them being Comic Con Stuttgart, which will be HUGE!

Hope i can get enough done in spite of it!

Until then!

-Deli

3.11.2024

Hope everyone had a nice Halloween!

For me, the Halloween week was really scary, because i had to dive into Optimization, the first time in a while.

I had huge VRAM Problems in Godot, mostly because of my huge Assets (iam making everything with 4k Resolution in Mind), and well, the Player Character alone was super bloated.

Turns out, you can actually outsource lots and lots of Assets of the different Scenes, loading them if needed instead of having them available all the Time, this took some Time, since i had to restructure my Player-Node, but i managed to scrap off over 800 MB of VRAM alone through this Technique!

I also started to brainstorm Possibilitys to use big Backgrounds without bloating the VRAM once again - and i decided to split the Background Images individually into Chunks, loading them whenever needed!

This is actually not done yet, but im getting there!

Also taking another Look at Environment Art, since iam not that happy with how my current Style turns out - the frustrating Part of Development truly is redoing everything once you noticed it doesn't look or work the way you intended.

Since i already have some Ideas, iam confident to find a better Way in the next Week!

Until then!

-Deli

27.10.2024

This Time, for a change, on a Sunday Evening again, finally! Haha

This Week was absolutely awesome!

As i told you in the last Blogpost Update, the Big Ortomnia Card Game Rebalance and English Patch rolled out!

A few People already got into Playtesting - and i was allowed to join them and watch them play and we had an absolute Blast playing! There were some Corrections needed, some Clarifications for some Cards, but that were minor Details which i immediately changed in the Mod! Also, everything is now completely in English! Some of the Card Wording is still not the best, but overall it was a big improvement! Also the Mod is now visible in the Steam Workshop for everyone!

If you want to check it out, click here and subscribe for free to the Mod, so it will be shown in Tabletop Simulator!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3332374736

Next to this Big update, which took over most of my Week, next to my Dayjob, i also decided to finally ditch Twitter, there are just no Excuses left to stay on this Platform anymore, so i went back to Bluesky.

And it turns out...Bluesky is amazing now! I really had a lot of Fun interacting with People, the Algorythm seems to work really good, i get recommended lots of Good Stuff, there are GameDev and Art Feeds and i immediately felt seen, so looking forward to being more active on there, since it's actual Fun now!

Feel free to follow me there, by the way! https://bsky.app/profile/mysticshelter.bsky.social

Also i reevalued my Social Media Strategy, which is going great so far - except for the Instagram Reels, those don't really seem to interest anyone or get any Interaction, so i will stop them and switch to posting Storys exclusively and do a few Posts every now and then.

Iam also planning on finally doing another bigger Devlog to show everything i've done in the last Year in one Video!

So far so good, next Week will be even better!

-Deli

21.10.2024

Hello! I hope you are not sick! I got sick last Week and it sucks! Watch out for yourself, its sick-Season!

While being sick, Development slowed down - but did not halt!

Iam still working on that camera System, i thought it was finished, but ooooh boy, it got SO - MUCH - BETTER, i'll tell ya!

Sadly i had Bug i couldn't figure out - since my Scene Setup actually isn't quite how it was supposed to be like with Phantom Camera, but i commited Crimes and made it anyway!

That was actually part of the Problem - but the Creator of Phantomcamera offered me a really simple Solution! Ticking one Box! Well, what are 3 days worth of troubleshooting when you can tick a Box! Everything works fine now and it's super awesome the actual Creator of Phantom Camera answered - and will keep my Problem in mind for future Updates! Big yay!

Plus - iam currently working on a Rebalance and an English Patch for the Ortomnia Card Game in Tabletop Simulator, i don't know why i did the first Mod in German, well, hopefully this Week the Big Update will be done and next to big big Reworks and Rebalances and completely new Cards everything will be in English - but still without Illustrations, we are still prototyping!

Soo yeah! Stay tuned for next Blogpost, when i can officially announce the Update!

-Deli

07.10.2024

Hope ya'll had a great Start into the Week!

After taking a day off or two from Development, iam back in Action!

This Week i focused on thinking about scaling everything up - because how i built my Levels right now would take ages if i wanted to do every Level like this - so i had the Idea to build pre-built Assetpacks. What does this mean?

So instead of placing all of my Assets one by one at the Level i made a Scene and prebuilt different Variations of Floors and Ceilings, which look pleasing - and are way easier to implement in the Levels, because they are bigger and can be easily duplicated. So yeah, that makes everything a lot easier!

While doing that i noticed - how am i supposed to build the level, when i don't even know what will be visible by the camera yet?!

So it was about time for the Camera System!

At first i followed a Tutorial which mostly focused on implementing PhantomCamera, but early in this Tutorial i noticed, the way the person implemented it isn't really suitable for any Game larger than 1 Room, since he was just showing it with an Example Room and didn't think about scaling it up into a whole Game. 

So half way in i paused the Tutorial and implemented a Camerasystem which suits my needs - and is completely modular and scalable! Gotta say im super proud how i worked this out, iam actually thinking of making a Tutorial showcasing this Solution, since i can implement endless different Cameras without changing any Sort of Code or adding Calls or whatever.

So i ended the Week with a Banger and a big Self Confidence Boost!

Let's see how i can build on that this week.

Until then!

-Deli

30.09.2024

Welcome back!

Some of you may have noticed, that iam doing quite a lot besides Gamedev, and thats completely true!

But because of that, all of the Stuff iam doing is constantly on my mind and i can't really focus on Gamedev, because iam constantly thinking what i also need to do.

Thats why i used this Week to finally finish all of those little things i need to do for my Studio, sadly i didn't get to gamedev this week, but thats okay. 

After all, this is to focus!
This includes finally redoing my etsy shop, since the first attempt was merely a Try. I hired a professional to give me some tips and i rewrote Descriptions and Tags. Also i had lots of legal stuff to figure out. Did you know, that even though iam in the EU, i can't send to France without an extra permit? Well now i know! And now i have this cute little green Logo in my Impressum which means iam legally allowed to send stuff via Mail. Yeah, that was a rabbithole, i can tell you!

Since iam trying to sustain myself moneywise for Gamedev with my Artbusiness - and the next Comiccon is approaching - i also redid all of my Stickers, since i figured a way out how they can be printed in a way better quality than before, so lots of work, it did cost a lot - but the outcome is great, and i hope it will pay off at the next convention!

Playtesting the TCG was also a focus this week, since i dont want the Ortomnia TCG to steal most of the attention from the actual Videogame - its more of a Side thing, but i think most of the things are figured out by now! It was also pleasant to not think about how to code something for a change, so that was a nice pause i gave myself from actual Development. Which means i can start fresh into the next Week to get back to proper Gamedev! Yay!

I wasn't able to finish everything i wanted to - since iam also back in my Dayjob, but most of the stuff i had to Redo or some things i procrastinated a long time by now are done - i will finish the Rest of it this upcoming Week and dive back into Gamedevelopment, which by the way also means Characterdesign! I still have lots of Characters to do and iam really looking forward to it!

Since October is mostly used as Inktober - ill try to take some time for the missing Character Concepts and Designs!
So, let's start!

- Deli

Wow, the Week really went by fast! 

But that's just the way it is i guess, so let's get straight into it:

I continued working on the Levels on Ortomnia, and i realised what a big Task this is, to decorate a Level with the Sprites, lots of times i deleted what i already made and started all over again, because i was'nt satisfied with it.

Slowly but surely i think i'm starting to get a feeling for this, the last few "Level-Build-Sessions" were a lot better and everything was a little bit faster! Looking forward to get even more of a feeling how to place my sprites in the Levels so it gets even better!

I noticed some Constraints with Godot while doing this - even though the Word "Constrain" is probably a bit Word, i just don't like how the Node-List is working, since it's a little bit tedious to rearrange them all the Time when placing new Sprites. I guess i just need to get more into it to figure out a Workflow regarding this!

So, since building Levels is most of the Stuff i was doing regarding my Indiegame Ortomnia - Broken Trinity, let's look a little bit on the other Aspects of what iam doing, the biggest one is probably:

The Ortomnia Trading Card Game!

Yes you heard right, it's still going and it's going strong!

After designing all 205 Cards of the Set (mechanically wise, not with Illustrations) i launched a Tabletop Simulator Mod in which everything was implemented, and i even playtested this with some People and built Decks - and the Game and the Rules i figured out are actually quite engaging and fun! We had a good time! Of course there are Cards wich needs balancing and just by one Game i played i noticed a lot of missing pieces, thats why Playtesting Playtesting Playtesting is soooooo important! Having a good Time AND figuring out WAY more than you could ever think of yourself!

So with the updated Ruleset we will dive into Playtesting once again this week, and iam looking forward to having a good time once again!

If you want to check out the Mod for yourself (there are 3 pre-built decks right now!) just subscribe for free to this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3332374736  - it's right now on not listed, so you actually CAN'T find it without this Link right now!

Let me know what you think!

Also i started working on my Etsy-Shop once again, ordered some SEO and changed lots of Links and Names, which means iam officially embracing Mystic Shelter as my Studiobrand, since it was kinda misleading until now, since i used my Username just_deli for lot's of things business related, but that's taken care of now!

Marketing and Brand-Stuff really isn't my Strong Suite, and it drained me a lot doing it, so iam super happy about all the Help, Feedback, Impressions, Critique and Tips i got while doing this!

The next Week will probably be a little bit slower, since iam starting a new Day-Job, which is also exciting, but yeah, i guess Development will take a hit because of this, hopefully i can integrate fast and next Week will be more productive again!

That's it folks!

-Deli

Welcome back to the weekly development Blog of Ortomnia! (And everything else iam doing)

A lot has happened, so lets get into it:

I started building levels and actually finished the first small Level (which is inside a house so its really not that big), but that also includes taking a little detour to godotshaders.com and picking out some really nice effects for the environment - aswell as changing the shader up a bit so it fits my needs!

Im reeeaaaaally proud of being able to manipulate shaders, since shader code is something iam kinda afraid of and sounds like dark magic to me!

Also, everything in the level which needs to be interacted with was also very quickly implemented, thanks to the modular coding work i did before! I gotta say, it feels really good to actually being able to do what you want via Code!

So, there are quite some big steps taken to be able to go all in leveldesign without bigger complications, looking forward to that!

I also fixed a few minor (animation) bugs which were really annoying! Funnily enough, at first every time i changed something, something else in my animation code didnt work anymore, haha that was fun, can you tell? Haha..ha

But now its fixed!

Also, the Cardgame is really getting some traction!

I designed ALL of the cards, mechanic-wise! That took like, so much time of the week, but iam so proud!

I think i need to half all the values anyway because everything is probably overpowered, but for now i can implement all the card pngs in a tabletop simulator mod, aswell as print them out and let lots of people have fun building decks and actually dive into playtesting! 

Im exciteeeeeeed!

I hope you are, too!

So next week you will get a link to get to the tabletop simulator mod - so stay tuned! And follow me to not miss this one!!! 

-Deli

Iam officially back from the Hospital - and i slowly get back into more active Development, even though not as fast as i hoped for, but thats's part of coming out of an Hospital i guess.

Not getting as much done as i planned (as usual), and sadly i missed the Indie Outpost in my Area this Week, which had some really really interesting Talks (one about Kickstarter and one about a Card Game, like, exactly what iam doing right now, grr!) but i also had some Successes.

I got to work on that Intro Cinematic i already told you about and dived into Procreate Dreams, which is like a suuuper powerful Software for Animating, or doing those animated Illustrations you maybe know from League of Legends Splash Arts - thanks to that smaller Animations can be done really easily, not doing everything by Frame by Frame Animation.

After Finishing the Cinematic i asked Sonorode (https://www.sonorode.com/) with whom i was in touch with for Sounddesign when i applied for Funding if he would still be interested - and he is! So looking forward to collaborate!

Next to it iam still on those Assets i don't stop talking about! But this time it's because i actually made a Mistake. 

Godot actually misses some Options i used in Unity for that, so i was taken by Surprise when i figured out, putting everything into a SpriteAtlas was a big Mistake, since that would mean i'd need to work with Tiles in my Game - but that's exactly what i DIDN'T want to do, so i had to cut out every single Asset back from this Atlas and import it seperately in Godot.

But now it's done!

And i can finally use my Object-oriented Assets, which gives me soo much Power and Control over those Assets, for example Rotation, Scaling, Using Shaders onto them or coloring them!

I already got going and started to actually build the first Level, like for real real, the real Level thingy, the Thing you will be playing! And it actually looks quite decent, so who knows what i'll get done this Week! 

And remember to join the Mailing List for some really cool Screenshots!

-Deli

So i was gone for a few Weeks, sadly, but everything is back to normal now!

Just a quick heads up, i was in the Hospital for 3 Weeks, which was planned but i had some unpredictable complications, which is why i could'nt work as much in the Hospital as i wanted and had to focus mostly on healing.

But well, here is a Blogpost, so that's over! Also yeah, quick tip, just focus on healing if you are in the Hospital, whatever you are trying to force yourself to do comes out really poorly.

After the Worst was over i got back into keep working on the Assets for the first Level - and i gladly can say that most are done for now, just some Special unique Assets are missing right now - and with the Release of Godot 4.3 at the same Time, i will probably focus on actually designing the Levels with all the ready Assets! 

Whoever follows my Mailing List already got a little Sneak peak, by the way!

Since i got a little bit tired of doing Background Assets all the Time, i started to work on the Intro Cutscene, because i can't help myself and it's something fun to do. I decided to not hard-animate it Frame by Frame. Mostly because this is nearly impossible for me alone to do, but i made a little Storyboard on what Shots should be used, it'll be a little bit more static, but iam positive i can still get the Vibe iam going for across! 

Next to the Game, iam also working on the Card Game, which was basically lots and lots of Learning and Studying other TCG's, i figured i want to settle on about 200 Cards and split them between the different Cardtypes i need and the Raritys, i mostly focused on Lorcana for this, since my Card Game will also not really use something like Lands in Magic the Gathering.

So i brainstormed over 200 Cards! Which was kinda fun - now i need to actually make those brainstormed Cards into Prototypecards so i can finally playtest the Game - to see if the Ideas even work!

The BIG THING today tho is my Fashionbrand! IT IS LIVE NOW!

You can find them on the Website - aswell as on etsy and in my BigCartel Shop! The Photoshooting was lot's of fun and it really worked out well! I think some of those Shots turned out really really well - there are a few small Pieces i need to redo, which is why they are not in Stores yet, but that's not a big Problem for now, since it's only 2 Pieces.

So if you are curious how the Photoshooting turned out and what Pieces are only, feel free to check those out!

https://www.mysticshelter.com/fashion-collection
https://www.etsy.com/shop/MysticShelterMerch?ref=dashboard-header

https://justdeli.bigcartel.com/

And that's it for now! I think i can still be somewhat proud of what i have accomplished next to beeing hospitalized - iam eager to find out what i can do, now that iam back!

-Deli

So this Week will be a bit of a shorter Update, since i had a super busy Week! (I got a new dayjoby, which will help me focus more on Development, since its less hours than before!

Next to finding and getting a new Job i was mostly busy with some technical difficulties i faced within Godot and my Project.

Iam trying to aquire a Laptop for Development, but it turned out my Project uses waaaaaaayyyyy to much VRAM to function properly on any machine which is not a tower!

The problem was quickly found: my textures are way too big, since i drew them in 4k and my animations do have quite a lot of frames - so the Spritesheets are super huge and use lots of VRAM!

The solution wasnt that easy, sadly, since most of the Solution seem to be not recommended for 2D Projects.

I found out „2D Projects“ mean mostly small texture and pixel art games, and not 4k drawn Animations, so i used those „not recommended“ solutions anyway, by importing the files with VRAM compressed in High Quality.

Quite an easy solution, and an obvious one - but figuring out what i should exactly use took quite an amount of time im not proud of, since the technical aspects of gamedev are not my strong suits.

Since i was already in it tho, i decided to exterminate lots of small Bugs and Error Messages i was ignoring for a long Time!

I also started sketching the level scenes on top of the blocked out Levels, so atleast something else was going on!

Next week will be more busy development wise, hopefully!

Thanks for Reading!

-Deli

The Week started strong!

I visited a local Indie-Event, the Indie Outpost in Nuremberg, heard some awesome Talks (Big Shoutout to Leonie Wolf for making such a big difference in the Industry with her Work in Game:In and the FemdevMeetups) but most importantly for myself, i got to show of an early Proof of Concept and a few People playtested Ortomnia – Broken Trinity.

All of them had a great time playing and trying out the mechanics already, i got some really useful feedback, just by watching them Play and got in some awesome Talks about other Metroidvanias and what seperates Ortomnia from them. (Someone came to me asking if iam the Person with the Hollowknight-Clone Game and that was a huge Confidence Boost!)

The Animations also got alot of praise, which really gave me a Motivation Boost since they take a long time to produce!

Of course there had to be some Bugs i didn’t find myself, even one Gamebreaking Bug which had me to restart the Game over and over again for the People to keep playing, so the next few Days were dedicated to reproducing and fixing them. I found out if you really wanna playtest your game, just mash your Controller as hard und uncontrollable as you possibly can!

Also i started with the ~ Social Media Strategy ~ and i think only in this one Week i already learned a lot, i recorded over 10 Minutes of Footage which i needed to cut down to get back to the Short Videos of 1 Minute, so i need to talk faster or just be more concise!

The Second Half of the Week was dedicated to analyzing various Tilesets, which i downloaded or bought (for like five bucks) to see how they worked, how they would be implemented.

After a lot of Research and trying out to implement my own Tilesets i found out i don’t actually want to use Tilesets that much for my Game, since i can’t really produce the look iam trying to achieve.

I found out Hollowknight didn’t use Tilesets either! They used one small, pure black Tileset to block out the Collisions of the Level, everything else is painted on top with Objects via an Atlas!

So i went with a 64x64Pixels Black Tileset aswell, and thats a size which gives me a ton of Freedom in painting the Levels and to produce some really interesting Shapes!

And that was a week worth of Work!

Next Week is going to be crazy, tho! On Tuesday the Decision will be made if Ortomnia – Broken Trinity will get Funding for Developing a Prototype, so stay tuned!

Thanks for Reading!

- Deli (she/her)