So I wanted to start this post off be apologizing for both the late post and the lack of a post last time. It's been a crazy month for me. A lot of stuff is going on for me. Some good, some infuriating but things are beginning to mellow out for me.

So when I comes to project honey things are going very well. So I just wanted to talk about a recent development with the game and how I managed to salvage and old cut Idea.

Early Days

So, when I first started project honey, as I've said multiple times, I really didn't know exactly how the game would be structured. It all boils down to progression, The game that I wanted to most closely model project honey after in the beginning was Yoshi's Story.

Yoshi's Story (N64, 1997)

Yoshi's Story had a very unique way of progressing through levels. There were no flag poles or level exits in the game. How you completed a level was by simply eating 30 Fruits, To %100 the game you need to eat all 30 melons in each stage. Project Honey has a similar idea for progression in that it's not about completing goals but "Defeating" Enemies. But Yoshi's Story does have a few problems.

For one, nothing stops the player from barreling through each level just eating any fruit they encounter meaning it's very possible for a player to not fully engage with the levels and it's likely what new players will do. It doesn't help that a single play through of the game is 6 Levels. All that can leave the game feeling too easy, short and lacking in content for a person who doesn't look for any secrets in the game.

I didn't want this. So I decided what if each level has multiple completion goals. Like "Defeat" 12 Enemies or "Defeat" These specific enemies. That meant that I needed to come up with a way to easily program these Missions. So I came up with a Mission/Objective System. A mission is made up of a number of objectives. Objectives could be completed or Failed and even be optional.

With this system It got me thinking about how I could structure progression and I knew I didn't want the game to be a level by level affair. So thought about something like X-COM.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC, 2012)

I decided I wanted it so the player had a choice to go to certain number levels at a time but they could only go to one of them on a given Day and after the level avalible would change. But this idea eventually gave way to something simpler.

I decided making a whole bunch large levels was too much work, So I decided to make just one BIG LEVEL! That however meant doing away with the mission system as it was built entirely around the idea of the level ending after completing a mission.

The design for Project Honey became more Metroid and eventually a bit more Souls-like. Untill I reach where the game is now and I feel it is the right direction for the project and I am pressing full steam ahead with it.

Current Day

So currently as I work on flushing out the game world I realized I want there to be events in the game, mini games, small puzzles to solve. The game at first wasn't going to have anything like that as It was originally something played in short bursts being far more arcadey in design.So I didn't have a system to flush these things out easily. Say I wanted it such that if the player presses a button a "Golden Banana" to appears but the player can't collect it until all the enemies are "Defeated" in time. When pondering how I could solve this issue I remembered I have already in the Objectives in the game.

So I came up with a system of Goals and Objectives. Goals have objectives, When a Goals is actives it can be met. When a Goal is met It sends a message to game entities including other goals. Allowing me to play cut scenes, spawn items or Activate, Reset or Deactivate other Goals

Using this system I was quickly able to prototype the beginning tutorial section of the game as well as couple fun little puzzles I had in mind.

Honestly things are going really smooth for project honey. I just had more time to work on it, than I currently do... OH well.

That's all I have for today.

See ya soon.