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Thanks! :D Still goin' 5 years later!

That's a really interesting point, actually! I've not tried it without the re-positioning of the sounds. Perhaps just applying suitable FX (volume damping, LPF, Reverb) could be enough to just make it all work! Without positioning it in a doorway, or opening through which the sound came. I guess I just felt like the sound, in real life, would come via an opening, and you'd hear it there, even if it had bounced around to get to that opening. I really need to test it with a better level generation algorithm, so I have more extreme cases of the layout of rooms and hallways, and see how that feels. I could always try making them play from their actual source position. :D

Of course! I probably need to look into how to use different threads, and do that with a few things actually. Thanks!

Good questions! It's good to hear your questions, as I get a bit blinded by some aspects of the game, and hearing what stands out to you as weird looking, or whatever is helpful! :D Does your gut tell you the lands are too lumpy and bumpy? Not enough flat land? (Makes sense!) I do have a bunch of plans around flattening out areas to build on, such as putting a village area over a broader flattened area, or a walled town being built onto a flattened out area. I really haven't even started doing proper "level design generation" except for putting a castle on a random position on the map. Not the best level design! Haha. The building are currently built in a very placeholder way... it's a basic "fill the tower with random rooms" algorithm. But yes, it really should be built using an algorithm that plans things out more, with ideas I've had such as having more public rooms as you enter, then going into more private rooms, and even secure rooms beyond. And it could also have corridors, halls, etc. All the algorithms and methods for doing level design need a whole lotta work! Happy to hear any other suggestions or thoughts! :D

Actually, getting a proper working AI in, is kinda the first step towards doing more work on level design algorithms. Because they go hand in hand, along with having mission objectives. I really need them all in there and working, before I can make more meaningful steps to improving each one. I'm excited about having a better foundation for the AI now. It's one of the things I wanted to work on the most, as I love games like Thief because of their rich fun AI characters!

I can absolutely relate! I'm still playing Thief on a regular basis and I just can't get over the fact that, to this day, it is such an atmospheric, immersive (obviously^^) and fun gameplay! Big inspiration! Thanks for sharing your ideas and plans on Secret Keep :) A village or a walled town sounds really exciting! Lots of possibilities to sneak&explore there. I bet doing an interesting and intricate level design by procedural generation is hard to figure out and very time consuming. I do like the bumpiness of the current islands! Especially when I'm thinking about adding cliffs and a lot of rock assets to it as soon as the set dressing begins :) I think it depends on your world building if you wanna have flat islands as well. Maybe your world has different climate zones (more flat = caribbean-esque zones?) or maybe it only has big, rough cliffs (thinking about scottish themes here).

@Cutting2Night Thief is so good. Oh my goodness. I made a level for Thief in about 2001, and revisted it and polished it up a bit more in 2014 or so ("Lady Lomat's Flute"). It was such a delight to just be working on that world, surrounded by the great guards, the wonderful ambiences and objects in that world. I've wanted to make a Thiefy game since I first played the game. Finally kinda cobbling together all the skills now to make it happen! (Also trying to put my own spin on it, with ideas yet to come). Yeah, it'll be interesting and challenging really trying to make levels that feel satisfying, varied, exploratory, and focussed on a mission goal... but all generated with different rules and algorithms. I don't really like games that are purely "randomised" repetitive gameplay. So I'm definitely trying to come up with system designs that will (hopefully) produce an experience that feels story-driven, atmospheric, and pulls you through to "see what happens next!"... but using systems and algorithms to do it. Fingers crossed it comes together kinda how I'm seeing it in my head! (But also, it's fun kind of exploring and discovering ideas as I go along, figuring out the design at the same time as how to make it a reality!) I do have different biomes, including flatter "beach like" islands, and things... more thick foresty ones... but yeah, I need to solidify the ideas of what are the different places the player can go, different regions of this archipelago, what races live where, and how the story and conflicts ultimately weave through that. Hopefully more on all that in the not-too-distance-future! I'm also still trying to figure out what release for this game would look like. Do I try to completely finish a v1.0 version, and put it out, complete and whole? Or would an Early Access sort of thing work, where there's a full playable experience, but it gets more depth and breadth added over time? I don't want to keep working on it forever, trying to make some ultimate perfect thing, with the risk of maybe never putting it out. I really want to lean the other way, and try to get something compelling out sooner, even if it's a bit more streamlined (with room to grow and blossom more fully). Just thinking out loud now! :D

Oh really? Lady Lomat's Flute? I gotta check that one out :D I guess I can find it on TTLG? Very interesting! Thanks again for the insight. I really admire the persistence and passion you put into this project! Early access seems like the best way for indie devs to release their projects I think. You'll have immediate feedback on all sorts of things. One thing I haven't really figured out yet is how I would go in presenting the story of the game in early access. Would it just be gameplay and the story would be unlocked upon v1.0 release? Or would you go on and just show a little part of the story? Not so sure about this one.... Anyway I guess EA release is optimal for low budget productions because we can develop the game with the community or rather like-minded people to be precise. They sometimes can show us the right direction for our games :)

Getting somewhere! :)

It saves the audio in a silly proprietary format, that needs to be converted if you want to drop the tracks into a DAW or something. Quite annoying!

@@muzboz that's too bad, this one have internal effects and drum machine that the Tascam don't have, I have to look for Tascam instead if it was not WAV. Thank you for your info!

Thanks Pabst! I've still got my Krasnogorsk sitting around in a little case somewhere too, but I never put any film through it! :D All the best.

Yeah, it came together well! I'm really happy with it. Having all the little custom data chunks has made it really easy to work with, when showing the Objectives UI in-game, and checking off objectives during gameplay, etc!

Thanks Echmier! I'm excited to have gotten these systems together. I'm looking forward to getting back into some of the more hands-on creative activities like making different biomes, and tinkering with moment-to-moment gameplay.

That's an interesting idea, of having sailing in first person. I should try that out some time to see how it feels. Could be quite cool, right down at water level. :D I should watch/play some Sea of Thieves to see how they do it. (Would be nice to have their sweet sweet ocean tech as well!) :)