Fruition

Been awhile since I made one of these devlogs and even longer since I've published one. I've had a slightly rough go of it these past few months, so I didn't update that much. Once I finished the plants (finally) everything started moving quicker. I added the final plants and produce in a week and started fixing problems.

Several crashing bugs were fixed. One was due to the NPCs using the wrong variable value after day zero. The NPCs give advice on day zero, but stop on day one. Afterward, they give random dialog when you interact with them.

After adding content and fixing bugs, I started working on the critters. They were already modeled and textured, they just needed animations. Making the animations wasn't that hard, I have several tricks to improve the process. Importing the animated characters was... an "experience". 

First, the usual animation saving and file fiddling was had before I noticed the critters needed to be rotated. Rotated and applied transforms; re-import. Then Pollnyo (cat-birb) gets turned into a borb as the animations scrunch it into a ball. Took about thirty minutes to fix and I'm still not sure how I did it.  The HoneyWalker (bug) was a bit off-center, so another fix and re-import. Run through the same steps and that works. Moofy (cow-thing) was actually easy and didn't give me much trouble.

After making sure the critters work, I made eggs for each (to hatch and eat). The critters don't eat the eggs (missing group) which is fine, but I may change that. Farm areas have a working watering upgrade (at least I hope it's working). The destructible walls (gates) were nerfed, I'm planning to add more destructive items and buff the gates again. You can sleep to pass time since I added beds. 

There seems to be some lag at the start of the game. It's mostly from item spawning and rigid body physics. I have a few ideas to fix that, but it may change the gameplay a bit. You should be able to craft any item needed, and upgrades. Signs were added to identify some buildings. I've turned mipmaps off for the sky to make it look better, but I should re-do the textures.

Future plans:

Opening and ending stories, probably through static images.

rotten eggs and other destructive items

Physics tweaks and optimizations

alien totems and translation device

Difficulty settings for less/more resources and challenges

Beasts to hunt for items or fight

Finishing all the upgrade buildings

Slight upgrades to the sky

General tweaks

That seems to be about it, I'm almost done (but I said that a few months ago)

The past few months have seen many changes to Little One. Even the past two weeks have seen significant updates.