We’re well into the phase where the game starts to feel pretty cohesive. Here’s our new “forest hallway” environment that I haven’t yet added to the Steam screenshots: [img]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2497884302569691828/EF323062127BD66F4B74CED396E22EAC4342E9F1/?imw=1024&imh=664&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true [/img] Some of the tasks that went into making our new environments included: [list] [*] A fully featured lighting and shadow system [*] New shaders for all vegetation and environment objects [*] Completing the climbing system [*] A bunch of new vegetation models made in Speedtree [/list] The challenge is getting these environments to work well on lower-end computers. I’m testing on my old Nvidia 1060 laptop and they’re stable at >30 FPS; I wonder if anyone with a lower end rig will be wanting to play? Luckily there is still some low-hanging fruit left for optimization. [h3]The quest system[/h3] The other major feature we’re working on polishing right now is a quest system. After some back and forth about how to code the quests, we settled on a pretty powerful system using a visual scripting system, via a 3rd party package. We've successfully put together a quest that involves grabbing a hat for the Queen Ant. Maybe you'll get to wear the hat afterward...? Finally, a grab bag of other things we’ve been working on: [list] [*] Set up permanently flying creatures (like bees) [*] Implemented a wrapper scene and sub-scene switcher that should both ease our workflow and make the game more stable [*] Investigated and fixed various weird results from unexpected part combos [*] Added a “treasure chest” feature tied to completing enemy encounters [/list] Is a demo ever coming? Well, the game is nearly ready for it! … but, we kept putting off final polish on the movement system. Early playtesting surfaced a few bugs in that area, so we’re spending time stomping those out before doing a fully public demo. I think we’ll be ready in a couple months (probably after Steam Next Fest, because releasing a demo in that time frame without being in the Fest is a bad idea). That said, if you want in on pre-public playtesting, DM me or join the Discord. That’s all for today, thank you for reading and following Strange Seed!