The Hub World is coming along very nicely. I've been adding in a ton of assets, both purely environmental, interactive and essentially for customisation, starting new games and accessing the minigames.

It's been an absolute blast working on this so far and I've been gaining a lot of understanding about Godot's occlusion culling system, alongside techniques such as Triplanar texturing (for seamless blending between rocks or assets). The goal is to really bring the Hive to life and make it feel lived in. There's a certain level of activity, wear and tear and general layout of things that I feel makes something feel "lived in". People put things in weird spots because it was done temporarily and then became a permanent location (such as car keys or a backpack). Because these guys are not robots and everything is a product of a highly organic environment, all placement of items and objects should have this sort of temporary "good enough" placement that sort of just became a permanent fixture.

This isn't fully inclusive of what the Hive will look like when it's done, but it's definitely taking shape. Still have to finish the environment assets, then programming all of the interactive items (sitting at chairs, the FAQ/tutorial system, the NPCs, interactions, "job system" for moving around the Hive and then retrofitting the "Enter the Hive" scene logic over to the Hub World. It is a lot, but I'm also getting more proficient with game design and understanding how to structure things properly, rather than the tech debt that has amassed over the course of the normal game's development (lots and lots of singletons for scene-specific actions).

I'm not announcing a release date but I think I'm just going to release the game in a month or so. I have endless ideas but The Lucky Hive is more a personal project to say I've made a game rather than some endless indie game that never comes out. I'd rather release it and then potentially update it with expansions as time goes on instead of not having ever "completed" it.

I have been working relentlessly all week to sculpt, texture and model the Hive. This is the new hub world for the game and will be the last major feature before release. This is essentially a huge hub area for you to explore and start poker matches inside of, alongside customise your character, decks, FAQs with the Dealer, select your lobby and map and a whole host of functionality inside. There's tons of new things that are going in and I've had an absolute RUSH of ideas for new things to add in post-launch.

The reason why I am doing it post launch is because I want to have this game released and then continue to add to it. It's a huge milestone for me personally, but I don't think it's really that important to anyone else (other than the 151 people who have wishlisted the game so far, thank you so much for doing so!).

I've been getting into the habit of releasing devlogs on my YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@ggusbuster, which I am going to release a video about the Hub World once it's done and all the things I want to do have gone into it.

Thank you for reading, I am nearing completion!

I put this video out a few weeks ago, but here's my first devlog video on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/8YQj3RNZXtE

I've finished the most recent minigame, Motoracing. It took almost a month to get done, with everything that's happened over the past month or so, things have definitely slowed down, but that's not to say I gave up. The Lucky Hive is nearing completion, the game is feeling better than ever and I am really excited to finish this game.

The motoracing minigame is a ton of fun and honestly, I'm probably going to use its code for a future game. It feels absolutely incredible on controller, and I can't think of an arcade racer that uses motorcycles outside of bikes being used in a normal racing game (like Midnight Club 3).

The last minigame is currently called "Pokerology". It's like a wizard-esque style slot machine but with poker hands that you have to click and answer as fast as you can, attempting to rack up more points than your opponent before the time expires. It's a mental game to see how fast you can read a hand.

Once Pokerology is done, I'm going to overhaul the character behaviour and interactions to massively refine their AI in decision making, minigame play, gesturing & interactions with human players (and each other) when making decisions. Currently they sit stiff like automatons and suddenly get really emotive once they win a hand or get eliminated, but they should feel super emotive all the time. I've been playing Poker Night at the Inventory and it's given me a ton of feedback on what makes that game great and character interaction is number 1 on that list.

As for marketing, I haven't done anything serious yet. I'm going to start writing a script and recording more footage of the dev process for this minigame. I find it super daunting to want to record and put a video out there, but I know it needs to be done.

Anyway, I've pushed the game's release date back a bit. I was hoping to have it done by July 10th, but that's almost a month ago and work has been pretty full on lately too, so hoping to get the game done by EOY.

My beloved cat, Kubrick, passed away at 9:16am this morning. I flew home to my parent's place yesterday after being told he was diagnosed with large cell lymphoma and was not responding well. He was given opioids and steroids, but it didn't change anything.

He was so cold this morning. I carried him around the backyard, showing him the places he used to love rolling in, lying in and sitting in. He was ready to go. I'm just glad I could be there with him.

I was there the day we got him, I was there the day he left us. He was only 12 years old. God have mercy on his soul, I can't bare the thought of him being gone. I've had many down days in my life and even just the thought of him has brought me back. I don't know what how I can live with this.

Rest in Peace Kubrick, I'll never forget you.

First Minigame Going In

I've decided to improve the gameplay of The Lucky Hive by adding in fun minigames with challenge modes to increase the PvP aspect of the game. I'm thinking of adding in 5-8 minigames on release, maybe 2-3 for the demo. These games are designed so that you can verse someone to gain chips, steal their hand, force them to fold or to get back into the game once eliminated (there's a waiting period for eliminated players, then perma-eliminated if you get ousted twice (I'm also thinking of making you get about 25% of the starting amount back once you get eliminated)).

All Demo Maps Done

Got 4 maps coming on the release of the demo. I rewrote the codebase so that everything wasn't bundled into one map, but instead is self-contained, so the environment and cutscene cameras can be scene specific. This enables for better containment of code, but also re-use in different maps. Working on an old school PS2-style game map selector with a little video preview to show you what the map is like. I'm pretty happy with 2 of them, one feels a little bland but I think that's just because of the fact there's little geometry outside of the skybox and planet in the distance.

These added maps also let me learn and experiment with new mechanics (namely day/night cycles, lighting, Godot's limit for large scenes (such as drawing shadows at extremely long distances) and more optimisation stuff.

Polish & Rush For June 4th

Just trying to cram in as much content as I can for the demo. Steam gave me some feedback about the build and the demo store page, which definitely needs a full overhaul, particularly once one or two of these minigames are completed. There's so many little things that I need to capture for the store page that games do, like UI-less shots of gameplay etc.

Anyway, here's some screenshots of those maps and a little WIP demo I had tonight learning IK stuff within Godot (also learned how badly I've handled animation libraries and animation mixing in the game so far, practically have to rewrite the whole thing before demo launch).

I haven't posted an update in almost a month, but the gameplay trailer has been released and I've submitted the demo for review for Steam's NextFest!

Super keen to keep making updates to The Lucky Hive, expanding the gameplay in particular. I am placing a ton of focus on getting emotes, more AI character dialogue, events, multiple maps and character customisation options in before the demo is released in about a month's time. If I can hit all of these targets, the game will be almost fully complete, which would be unbelievably amazing.

Wishlists have stagnated, which is kind of sad, but I'm not super fussed over it since I'm mainly focused on just making a game that I am proud of. It doesn't really matter if people buy it or not, just that the people who play it like it and I am proud of it.

Here's the link to the trailer as well, hope you like it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-akp9v4lIAg

So we have a new game intro, new features in The Lucky Hive (like game chat, some new animations and cutscenes) and a slew of bug fixes. Alongside this comes more and more playtesting from our close friends, which is all gearing up for a demo release, trailer and participation in NextFest this June.

Here's a teaser of our new game intro cutscene

It's been a while since my last post, so here are some updates regarding The Lucky Hive's developments. These include:

1. Lots of new multiplayer features and quality-of-life improvements for latency and animations

2. A whole new Showdown system (v4)

3. New UI components, generic functionality for notifications and other system-level information players might need to know about

4. New animations and sound effects for different events, mainly relating to the Showdown and gameplay

5. A new winner's podium cutscene with facts about the gameplay, best hands of the game and other cool stuff

6. Mid-joining of games and leaving

The game is in a really good spot now. It's nice and stable, performing really well on my Steam Deck, the game feels smooth, which means I can now focus on more gameplay ideas at improving the aspect of Poker and adding in more mechanics.

New winner's podium is going into the game. This is the room where, when players have won, they will be taken here with a cutscene or two playing before their stats, podium finishes and other fun facts are handed out by the dealer. This is supposed to be a really joyous occasion, considering I would imagine the average game going for at least 15-20 minutes, if not longer in some cases (especially with really large starting chip amounts).

Overall the game has been going really well, I've finished the new Showdown V4 system that I rewrote from scratch again, so that was fun. The game is in a really healthy spot now and I'm super happy with how things have been progressing. Very keen to get a demo out on Steam in the next month and get onto marketing the game!