Devlog 07

This week in Gnome Mans Land, we continued stitching the world together; solving bugs, building mechanics, and polishing the environments and sounds to bring the mushroom forest to life.

Programming
One programmer spent time tackling a persistent, frustrating bug that had been plaguing us for weeks, finally squashing it for good. They also fixed the second player’s input (which had stubbornly refused to cooperate) and solved an issue where the animal weren’t spawning properly. On top of that, they implemented a camera blueprint, allowing the camera to rotate dynamically at specific locations, making for a much more cinematic experience.

Meanwhile, the second programmer worked on the new bounce mushroom mechanic, giving players a fun, reactive way to interact with the world. They also implemented the HUD that displays the stretcher’s balance, giving players clear, crucial feedback. Collaborating with our sound designer, they also got the win/lose screens up and running, so now the end of each run properly shows the outcome!

Sound
Our sound designer was busy layering in a whole set of new sound effects. These included fresh footstep sounds and interactions with various obstacles like mushrooms, mines, fire hazards, as well as sounds for reaching the win destination and losing a run. All these additions are helping the world feel even more lively and responsive.

Art
One artist continued expanding the environment, adding lush grass foliage and setting up the win destination area. They recolored the grass textures & tweaked the material for a better visual feel, created a trim texture/gradient map for our modular meshes, made a river mesh and accompanying river shader, and improved the plane clipping shader (so the camera doesn't clip into objects) to integrate everything more cleanly.

Our second artist focused on lighting, setting up a new light pass to create a stronger mood across the forest. They also created the bounce mushroom obstacle mesh + an emissive mushroom mesh, and added crystal meshes from an asset pack. On top of that, they tweaked VFX assets to match our stylized aesthetic, bringing even more magical energy into the world.

With all these pieces coming together, from a smarter camera to a richer soundscape to bouncy mushrooms, the world of Gnome Mans Land is feeling more lively than ever.

See you next week!