July marks the first full month of the Holomento Alpha! Thank you so much to all of our Alpha participants! Your feedback and bug reports have been so, so, SO helpful! Over 100 bug reports have been reported in just the first month which is amazing!
Development-wise, this month I focused on developing a proper book-based menu featuring player stats, achievements, a WIP map, milestones, an interactive inventory display, a collections page and more. Two all-new areas have also been worked on this month: the desert and the national forest. Among all of these new additions, many smaller quality of life improvements and bug fixes have been implemented as well.
The Desert
The Desert is a brand new location spanning the entire northern third of the map. It features a large tropical forest, a massive plateau and an upgrade-able desert trading outpost.
Trading Outpost Progress 1
Trading Outpost Progress 2
Trading Outpost Showcase Video
Eventide National Forest
This is a very, very early concept of an area I have been wanting to develop for quite some time. This area will feature enemies based primarily on real-life wildlife and will have several campsites that can be restored as world upgrades. I love U.S. national parks and forests so I am very excited to add an area inspired by some of the most naturally beautiful places in the world.
Book Based Menu System
The new book-based menu system has been the primary focus of July and has taken a tremendous amount of work to get to a working state. I am so excited about this feature as it really gives Holomento a unique flair!
Inventory
The first section of the book I added was an inventory to track what items you currently have. When hovering over an item it shows its stats, name, description, rarity and more! The short video above also features some of the earliest elements of the book before bookmarks and proper page turning were added.
Stats (Passport?)
The next section of the book I added was the stats page (I might name this the passport section). In this section you have general player stats and a “Traveler’s Log” that keeps track of stats for individual runs and all runs as a whole. This section also tracks some achievement progress. The most time went into this section as I had to develop the entire achievement and data tracking system as I went. I’m really happy with how it has turned out so far though! It is satisfying to see your progress on a run-by-run basis and across many runs.
Map
The third section I added was a map. This currently is a simple world map that shows various locations you have discovered. This section has proven to be the most difficult to develop so far and has a number of bugs. Issues include duplicate locations (as seen in the video above), improper player direction, zoom issues and more. I plan to fix a number of these issues in the future and add smaller sub-maps that you can view when you select different locations.
Tasks
The fourth section I added was the tasks section. This section is mostly unused at the moment and serves as a placeholder for future quests and repeatable tasks. I will be adding to this section in the coming months.
Collections
The final section I added was the collections section. For now, this section tracks all of the items the player has discovered. In the future I plan to expand this section to track other collections of things the player has discovered (enemies, collectibles, relics etc.). For the time being, this section allows you to view all of the items you have found. You can view their description, name and ID. I plan to add a way to view their stats too.
Other Features and QOL Improvements
In addition to all of the changes with the book and new areas, I found some time to add a minecart system and other quality of life (QOL) features including ranged weapon improvements with spread reduction, proper bullet travel, bullet element types and more. I have also spent a number of days experimenting with optimization. I managed to double the framerate in a number of areas of the game with some simple optimization tricks. There is still a long ways to go to fully optimize but progress is certainly being made.
Wrap-Up
Alright, that’s all for this month. Don’t forget the Holomento Alpha is live so updates will be frequently posted to the Steam Community page. This Dev Log will continue but does not guarantee the latest information. If you would like to keep up with the latest updates on the project I invite you to follow progress via the links below:
- Steam – https://store.steampowered.com/app/721700/Holomento/
- Twitter – https://twitter.com/HolomentoGame
- Discord – http://discord.gg/FbaQ8zJ
- Subreddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/Holomento/
- Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS7TjrKTM42sWjoVxuSRBeg
- Twitch – https://www.twitch.tv/sheenweedy
- Website – https://holomento.com/
See you all next month!
Sean