IT’S BYTE TIME BABY!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome back to Detroit, Oregon, home of my childhood summer memories. On my way to Sisters, Oregon, we would stop here at the High Mountain Grocery and I would inevitably get some chips, a Mountain Dew, and, of course, a pepperoni stick.

Oh, yeah, also Dracula lives here.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any updates to BYTE, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on the game.

Look at this water! I made this water!

This delightful GIF highlights our sweet, forlorn Jonathan appreciating the PNW nature that Dracula built his castle around, but it also highlights several other key changes that have happened to the game since last May. Firstly, I have new camera angles. After lengthy consideration, I watched this Tim Rogers review of summer vibes game Boku No Natsuyasumi and was so inspired by the static camera angles of the game that I wanted to implement them into BYTE. (We can call them “Resident Evil camera angles” but we know that I got them from Boku No Natsuyasumi). These more carefully placed cinematic cameras make the space much more dynamic and they do move around to track Jonathan as he moves, which results in some pretty moody shots.

I also made a lot of changes to the space. In addition to adding a Solarium, hallway, and entryway, I also completely remade the three rooms from the original BYTE demo, changing them from long rectangular rooms to a circular tower. I had always imagined the opening space as a tower but never had time to design it, so I’m glad I was able to make it work, especially with the new camera.

Finally, I made a lot of new assets. These are most notable in the entry hall, where I made the staircase, chandeliers, banisters, main door, and more. I wanted to start making more assets on my own so I could find a more consistent process and style, and I think it sort of did. It still doesn’t look great, but I’m getting there.

Another key piece that maybe shouldn’t be included in the others, though, is that I’m getting more comfortable with the texturing/coloring of objects. When making the stream, I needed to make a running water shader that could look visually consistent with the rest of my objects. I managed to make a shader (coded! from scratch!) that has vertex and fragment parts to create a pretty basic-looking running stream using a crunchy, noisy texture. I won’t be able to do this for many objects because I can’t create custom-lit shaders in URP but it did get me more confident in my textural style. I need to add this style to a lot of the models but I have a much better idea of what this game will look like now.

So what’s next for BYTE?

In a broad sense, I want to finish off the first full month of BYTE, going through the first week of June. This will involve adding all the necessary narrative elements, art, and additional gameplay pieces to make it all work. I’ve started a lot of this work already (I planned the narrative fully and created most of the new spaces), but hopefully the level of detail will be higher than it was last semester (we’ll see though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

For the first few weeks of this project, though, this is what I hope to accomplish:

• Finish the garden and chapel areas
• Begin scripting first week or two of narrative events
• Update all changed features to make sure that the game is still playable from start to finish (ensure cutscenes work with the new camera, make sure the player can’t access new areas until after the first week, etc.)

These items will hopefully take roughly three weeks (maybe less) and will get the game set up to start adding a lot of content. All of the new areas will be made and all existing gameplay will be fully functional. From there I can start adding the juicy new stuff.