Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the week from 26-09-07

Friedrich:
I couldn't work on the main story these days, as small stuff piled up - for example, when switching from decoration mode back to normal exploration, sounds potentially would get cut off. So I finally fixed that, while also implementing several WAV files our sound artist Florian sent us. For muffled step sounds on carpets I had to add logic for recognising different surfaces and not just floor tiles. Moreover I now try to preload more assets that get instantiated during the game, hopefully there will be less unwanted stutter in the future, e.g. when using the inspection mode.
Other than that I fixed a few bugs that became obvious while doing some work on the UI for the card combat. The big portion of card fights is still missing, and that will mean a lot of balancing. Which is why I added a new stats screen that will appear after a "normal fight" (a persistent card fight where destroyed cards don't respawn on a retry). The stats screen shows which cards got removed, and which ones the player earned. This way it is clearer now that you can/should return after replenishing your health cards ... Of course, the UI design is still a work-in-progress.

Jana:
Hello and welcome to Mops & Mobs. Be my guest. Another week, another try. But remember, work or die!! This week we did lots of planning (again!), trying to make decisions regarding the release of the game and potential partners. The closer we get to the finish line, the harder it is to bring people we collaborate with aboard. Therefore we make lists with pros and cons – its mind-numbing and feels like you can only do wrong.
Or we just re-design the interface! The card game didn’t get to look like the rest of the game yet, so I work on a new card and battle screen design.

Patrick:
I built a cool little handcar this week! In German it's called a “Draisine,” but that sounds kinda like a French cooking technique. Besides of that I started to decorate the swamps a bit more with trees, mushrooms and swamp grass.

Don't forget, if you're interested in talking to us directly - about Mops & Mobs our something else - visit our Discord!

Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the week from 26-08-24

Friedrich:
I did some more work on our internal scripting language, which is now mila.gd - hopefully it's the final name. It even has a cute mascot now: Mila, created by Tom 'voxel' Purnell. For Mops & Mobs itself I did some more story/quest writing, mostly end content for chapter VII. And Jana and I replayed the demo once again and wrote down a lot of small and big things that annoyed us. Which means I did several improvements like small fixes for the dialogs, small changes to the UI, small additions to the first quests. Best of all, it's now possible to rotate objects via mouse in the inspection mode! And dirtheaps get automatically focused when you clean them up! It would also be great to have a character sheet in the diary, but this will have to wait a bit.
Oh yeah, and there was the gamescom. We showcased Mops & Mobs for a few hours at the SAXONY! booth in the hall for trade visitors, and had several meetings - it was a positive experience overall. I didn't get sick either!

Jana:
Did another week already end? I feel like I’m still at gamescom, mentally.
That’s where we were last week, exhibiting at the really welcoming Saxony booth (with an “!” because you can’t spell Saxony without sax!). It was only the third time the federal state had a booth there, and we made some promising business contacts regarding the release of Mops & Mobs, as well as met some really nice people along the way.
And this week? Well, I couldn’t concentrate much on development. There’s an election in our own federal state, Saxony-Anhalt, this Sunday, and there’s a real possibility that the far-right party could win and even appoint the next prime minister. So for the past month I’ve been politically engaged — partly to do something useful in the face of all the madness.
There was also a bit of 3D modelling for me to do (a rare case of Blender-ing), some planning for the overhaul of our card battles, and a lot of pulling general story threads together.

Patrick:
Last time, I was working on the swamp grass — well, it's done now. The swamp inhabitants use it for farming. In my mind there are seeds in the tips of the grass that you could eat raw but they’re easier to digest if you let them ferment in some swamp water and then make dough out of them to bake. And then you have tasty swamp bread.
Another thing I made this week was mushrooms. Maybe not all of them are edible, and some you shouldn’t even touch (but you can, and they wiggle). They serve a purpose for the inhabitants too, but you can figure that out for yourselves later in the game. :)
That’s it and now I have to eat something ... I’ve somehow gotten hungry.

Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the week from 26-08-17

Friedrich:
Apart from more improvements to the game's scripting language (which was renamed from gompl to slang.gd) I primarily worked on the "skeleton" main story by writing and scripting the most important quests. Which means the fifth chapter can now be completed, but it's missing a lot of dialogues, player tasks and puzzles on the side. Of course all this will be added later on, but at least Johannes proviced new graphics for the swamp characters and I already implemented them. On to the chapter VI and VII! Oh, and last week I forgot to mention that I also a new trailer for the Trailer Tuesday Show; so a few days ago I extended it a bit for another showcase. Everyone wants "exclusive" stuff, hmmph. The upcoming week is gamescom week, so the next devlog will probably be a bit late again.

Jana:
Next week is gamescom, and I finished up some meetup schedules and pitches for the event. But I also managed to work on the temple level a bit more, where I replaced all the old textures to look similar to the dwarf fortress (Ha!) design Patrick already did - just some clicks with Friedrichs tool (yes to self-programmed tools!). The setting is not finished yet, the colour palette needs some retouches and the lighting is not right, but I’m happy of how the architecture turned out.
In said temple you meet a group of exravagant people whose dialogues I wrote. For that I found a page that assists me with rhymes (rhymezone.com) – expect crap – and also a huge fun for localization later. But right now I enjoy writing them – heavily infused with watching „Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead“ (recommendation if you like Shakeperean nonsense).

Patrick:
This week I worked on the cave where the big fortress is located and on the swamp grass, but that's not finished yet.

Don't forget, if you're interested in talking to us directly - about Mops & Mobs our something else - visit our Discord!

Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the weeks from 26-07-20

Friedrich:
It's quite some time since our last "weekly" devlog, mostly because we were on vacation. Still, I continued writing characters for the main quest (chapter 5) a bit, but everything has a loose end for now. I also played through the last parts of the current plot line again, in order to do some recordings, and of course I noticed several script bugs and level imperfections that I tried to fix along the way. And the forge level finally has map descriptions!
Moreover, during some free time I got the itch to add support for arrays to the scripting language (gompl) that we use in Mops & Mobs. They are never really needed for our level and dialog scripts, but during some more complex scripts I sometimes thought it would make sense to execute several dialog nodes in a dialog graph at once. Arrays would make this a bit easier.

Jana:
We're in the home stretch for the story! We pushed through the final story points to get everything into place. There's still a wagonload of quests and lines to write, but we want to be able to play through the entire main story soon-ish. For now, it's mostly a rough skeleton to give us an idea of where we're heading by the end of the game.
Then there's everything else that keeps me from actually working on the game: I put together a super-rough trailer for a really cool showcase — if they use it, that is, because I was already quite a bit past the deadline. And gamescom is coming up next week, so I also prepared some more meetings and materials for that.

Patrick:
After over a week long vacation time I came back to the project and did some plumbing, which basically means I filled the open parts in the swamp level with walls and ceilings, finished the columns and ceilings of the swamp inhabitants' architecture and lighted the dark areas with flickering torches. I also started to put a new path into the level that connects the fortress and the huts so that we have now a way to enter the upper part of the swamp. The whole swamp level comes more and more together now. That's cool! The next phase would be polishing and shaping things here and there so that the quests in this level can shine.

Don't forget, if you're interested in talking to us directly - about Mops & Mobs our something else - visit our Discord!

Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the weeks from 26-07-06

Friedrich:
After a re-evaluation of the next story chapter's quest line, I'm finally back on track, mostly. I'm writing new characters and quests, and while they're still pretty rough, I think I found the right direction going forward - especially with Jana's ideas for the last chapter it should all fit together. I plan to add some puzzle elements to the game that are a bit more than the usual button combination riddle, and already prepared some functionality for them. The final form is still TBD though. And there's now a debug menu that lets the tester teleport to each NPC in the current level - an addition that became important in the new level due to its verticality.
Jana and I also recorded a new dev diary, where we talk about the dither effect, additional localisations for the demo, and atmospheric soundscapes (which is why our voices are not always perfectly audible, oops).


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Jana:
I think we love trees, they play a role – at least a very visual one – in nearly all of our games. Why shouldn't a game set in a dungeon not have trees, too? Patrick already made some nice trees for the game and in my level (end content time!) there is an important one as well; it doesn't quite look like it yet. The long and short of it: I'm working on the final level, its new color code, a tree – oh, and on the Dark Dwarves living close to the area. Now excuse me for the boring screenshot that doesn't show anything interesting from the level nor its new color.

Patrick:
I continued to work on the huts a bit more. They are now all a little bit different from the outside and inside and I could really imagine to live there for some time.
The next big thing on my list is the giant fortress of the inhabitants of level 4. I made a lot of concepts and kinda all go a little bit in the direction of Mayan architecture or have some elements of it. Friedrich wanted a bit more brutalistic style so I still try to find a way between those two architecture styles. At the moment the walls are more like giant chalk stones that are crafted of one singe piece. The columns and balustrades will be similar to it, more big pieces instead of smaller pieces like in the previous levels, but I still want to incorporate some Mayan elements. That's next what I have to figure out with the texture and the 3D geometry.

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