Progress Report 2-17-2025 (Rainbow bridge improvements, cutscene work and preview)

Hey everyone! As you already know, January was a slow start to the year for me; lots of personal stuff was going on, I've had a lot of new/returning aches and pains, and I was really struggling to get my momentum going. So, how has February been going so far?

The personal side of things continues unabated, there was a lot of stress happening these past few weeks that I don't really want to get into here. My pain issues have been back and forth; the knee problem is still there, but continuing to steadily get better, and I've thankfully been able to regularly sit at my desk again. My jaw pain got a LOT worse on the other hand; I saw a dentist about it, but they really didn't have any useful advice for dealing with it. I'm pretty sure I have TMJ, and there are VERY few doctors that specialize in TMJ problems. Most of the ones that do are alternative medicine peddlers I would never trust to begin with, and the remaining ones certainly don't live in Alaska, so it's a difficult problem to try and solve. Last weekend it got really bad and I was laid up in bed for 3-4 days straight with my head wrapped up in a heating pad all day, so I didn't really get to do anything productive OR fun during that period. I've been doing some at-home stretching and such to try and alleviate it, and I've been able to live pretty normally the past few days, although it still feels very stiff and uncomfortable a lot of the time.

With all that being said, though.. the GOOD news is that, despite everything life has been throwing at me lately, I'm finally starting to get my productivity back! I had a really good therapy session around the start of the month that helped me reframe some things, and I've been sticking to a stricter schedule, which has been helping out a lot. You'll see it when I post the daily updates in a bit, but I had a 6-day long work streak in there, which is more consistent than I've been in a loooong time. The only reason I broke the streak at all is because of the aforementioned jaw problems, which threw me off pretty hard this past week, but hopefully it continues to settle down as I do my best to treat it. Even though this past week wasn't great because of my jaw pain, I'm feeling REALLY optimistic. Things in my life certainly aren't getting any less stressful, but there's been a noticeable shift in my stress response, and I've been able to pull myself back from some pretty bad mental places before they spiraled out of control.

Anyway, enough rambling about my personal life, let's see some of that productivity!

The main two things I worked on these past two weeks were finishing up the Rainbow Bridge obstacles I started working on last update, and continuing work on the Worm Attacks Camp cutscene near the beginning of the game.

First, I haven't been able to show any of the cutscene work we've been doing because most of it is still hella WIP and/or spoilery, but if you'll turn your attention to the video embedded at the start of the post, you'll know it's finally time to break that trend! The scene still isn't complete, so some polish details will be added and some of the voicelines are being rerecorded, but I think it's still a great showcase of how much more effort we're putting into this scene.

For those of you who haven't seen or don't remember the old version, all of the action used to happen completely offscreen, while Alicia stood there awkwardly not doing anything to help. That version of the scene was never complete, and I was originally going to have Alicia mess with the teleporter but be unable to figure it out before Rodriguez tells her everything is taken care of - but when we were revisiting the plans for it, I decided to scrap that version too and actually create a cutscene action sequence for the first time! I'm really happy with how it's turning out, and it's been a lot of fun. The work I did to add more camera controls and such during cutscenes is really paying off, it made putting this together a LOT easier.

Next up, the rainbow bridges. They're pretty much finished at this point, I did a bunch of polish work on their visuals and audio so they feel really satisfying now. I also added compatibility for ramps, so I can do a lot more with the level design using them, which you can see a bit of in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Luerp0k_7qg

I can only embed one video in a patreon post, sorry about that, so you'll have to click the link to check this one out. I wanted to show it as a video because the sound effect came out really satisfying and I wanted to show that off, plus the visuals show up better here than in a gif too.

Alright, that's it for me today! I'm feeling good, despite everything trying to slow me down, which is a new feeling. I'm looking forward to seeing where this attitude takes me throughout the year. Thanks for reading, everyone, we'll see you in another 1-2 weeks with our next progress report!