Announcing Heroine! Also; Cutscenes and Input Queues

Hello again everyone! As promised on our previous devlog, today the Demon Head team is excited to reveal the title for our upcoming game:

Heroine

This time, Joanne is not descending into a dungeon but ascending onto a mountain! Well, now that you know that we are ascending a mountain, can you guess what type of locations our heroine will visit on her journey? Below we have some concept art which depicts some ideas for settings...

Art Log - Cutscenes:

Mountains are associated with many different fantastical creatures and concepts of the sublime. To that end, in this upcoming game, we hope to deliver a slightly more philosophical and transcendental themed story to complement Joanne's journey up a mountain. In our game jam version of the game, enemies had dialogue to add a little bit of character to them. This worked great in the sense that it didn't interrupt gameplay too much while adding some personality. However, this method of storytelling does fall little bit short when it comes to trying to tell a story about such an epic journey.

In this upcoming title, we decided it would be best if we made cutscenes. We will likely have them before important event's to communicate the narrative. With any luck, these brief montages will allow us to communicate to you an epic story that moves your heart.

In the meanwhile take a look at some of these concepts from our wonderful artist choosing some colour themes and formatting for our cutscenes:

Technical Log - Input Queue:

A feature which we wanted to include during the game jam but never got a chance to implement was an input queue. For those who don't know, an input queue is a system which essentially allows players to be slightly inaccurate about the timing of their input but still get their input read and responded to by the game. This is a minor programming feature which often goes unnoticed by players when done well! Below is a summary of how a basic input queue can be programmed into any game! Everytime the player makes an input we enqueue the input as well as the timestamp for the input. When we want to read input, we call GetInput() and check how old the input is and whether or not to accept it.

The build here on the Heroine game page has actually been updated to include an input queue! Give it a try and purposefully be a little bit inaccurate about your input. Notice how the game will still respond appropriately!

That's all for this week! Join us next time when we talk about colours and creating a tool to make creating levels easier! Let us know if there's anything you want to see talked about or even if there's something you enjoyed/didn't enjoy about this weeks devlog.

ganthefan

LoFi Boi

NOX

Until Next Time!

- Demon Head Team