Building the Feature I've Always Wanted in my Dream RPG!

Welcome to another devlog for Dauphin! In this episode I start building out a brand new, core part of Dauphin's gameplay - underwater exploration! This feature has been a long time coming, and in this past week I made a good start on the foundations for architecting this complex system. Hope you enjoy!
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[@DevDuck]

Drop a like if you're stoked for underwater exploration! PS - who can name the dish I prepped in the video?

[@oscarlundin3842]

gumbo?

[@theearthburner6159]

Amogus soup? Just kidding xd

[@theearthburner6159]

@Orb Mage yeah

[@mondobe]

Looks like gumbo, as opposed to jambalaya or etouffee. Yeah, I know my Southern foods

[@Pink-fv3pq]

Delicious

[@alicewade7254]

As part of the unlockable equipment for diving, you could have cave diving equipment that would allow the player to dive into caves they find out in the ocean. If they find a pool of water in a cave, they could also dive through it to find a special luminescent biome or something like that. As far as progression goes, it could start with just free diving, then move on to something like snorkeling, and then diving with scuba gear. Absolutely love this series and I'm definitely buying Dauphin when it comes out!

[@Fwiptail]

An addition to this fantastic idea from Alice could be for deciding on how deep the player is when they choose a diving point would be to make a topographic map layer on the overworld with data points and ranges of depth. So when the player throws their diving flag out of the boat, the game programmatically chooses the diving depth & scene width based on overworld location. This would also help if you plan on adding quest like mechanics (and add a layer of community to the game with people helping each other with the quests) Loving the devlogs, I get excited every time a new video pops up!

[@DevDuck]

Your suggested progression is pretty much exactly what i have in mind to be honest!

[@sharksuperiority9736]

There are plenty of species that live in cave ponds, so there’s plenty of potential there

[@thomasi.4981]

Underwater caves would definitely be amazing!

[@diogocoutinho9190]

This sounds great wow

[@BugBench]

ive been watching these devlogs for more than a year now and i happily say that this is my comfort series. seeing how this game is coming to together really inspires me and one of the reasons why i took up a software design and development class at school! this series has also gotten me to start and really try to complete my first proper game!

[@iDannyXII]

Looks awesome! My suggestion would be to use perlin noise for the ocean floor generation and ocean background generations. Generating some wavy lines with the noise and then filling in between them with colors picked from a predefined palette seems like a good way of doing this. It would look more natural compared hand-drawn patterns. The backdraw of this aproach is that it would introduce the need to use seeds and/or save chunks in order to preserve the generation of the dive soot once the player exits the scene.

[@Akkaren79]

It's hard to tell if you did it or not but: I think the easiest and best way to implement a side scroller is to have one static layer for the player (the character never realy moves in the scene) and then 1 foreground layer and 2 background layers (or so) that move to the side if you press a or d on you keyboard. If you handle the speed of the not-player-layers correctly (tones of examples online) it gives you an awesome impression of movement and camera depth. If you are already planning to do it this way, nervermid; otherwise, look it up, as you are using different layers anyway!

[@parthabhyankar4433]

Awesome update. Just an idea I would like to share -> there could be day & night cycles under the ocean e.g. Some creatures only come up at night so the player might need to upgrade gear to have a big underwater flashlight to explore at night for exotic creatures to save. It could also mean a high risk high reward kind of thing. A nice addition to have but this would also add to some scope creep ;)

[@Dacamster101]

Love watching this stuff. I know it will probably be years but keep it up and good luck

[@tr3vorx]

Hey man I’ve been watching your videos for at least six months now and I’ve enjoyed almost all of them. This was by far my favorite one. I’m so excited that you are making this diving feature. I definitely cannot wait to play and your purchase this game when you release it.

[@rms8396]

I love these devlogs! Maybe you could make the player sprite, when swimming, tilt a bit up and down when swimming those directions. Just a suggestion!

[@GamesBySaul]

Fantastic work as always Ben, diving is looking super nice, I can't wait to see how it develops from here, I bet you feel happy being able to finally work on it! Also, that cooking B-roll was great! :D We need even more of that in future devlogs!

[@delugedrop1558]

Wow, I've been watching these devlogs since the beginning when you started off in Unity. I see that Dauphin is really starting to look more and more complete! You've inspired me to make my own gamedev channel and my own devlog series. Thanks man :)

[@bendux]

No matter how many times I see your setup, I keep falling in love with it.

[@shoespeak]

this is so incredibly relaxing. thank you so much for making this video

[@madebyPure]

FYI: this video is not in the playlist Loving the series btw, just binged all of it

[@GetUpGetUpGetUp]

Came here to comment this as well.

[@internationalticket]

You should still be able to use YSort nodes in your underwater scene. Your Node2Ds at 5:05 can each be YSort nodes, but layers you want to always be in the background just need to have their child scene's Z-index set to be a lower value than scenes within the foreground layers. Godot will still always draw them behind scenes initialized at higher z-index values, regardless of their Y position. You might even be able to set the z-index of the YSort nodes themselves, but I haven't tested that. So this shouldn't eliminate anything about your scene structure but it would let you continue to use YSort logic within each of the layers you have defined already.

[@GingerNingerish]

Fantastic update, really looking forward to seeing what you do with the feature when its done.

[@drew5088]

“My dream rpg about saving the ocean. “ (Shows a guy smacking crabs with a stick). For real though, game looks great!

[@jd4300]

Shout out to that beautiful forhand toss buddy. Love playing disc golf as well

[@diogocoutinho9190]

Dude this game looks really amazing, i wish i could play it. Congratulations the concept and the design are wonderful, keep up the good work!

[@tauheedgamedev2388]

Fantastic update, Love the swimming animation

[@SpotCam]

your workspace is so fricking nice bro holy shit

[@hoanglinhphamminh1122]

I'm following your devlogs to make my own game. Can't wait for your next video.

[@digis_monkey_king]

This series inspired me so much that it made me want to make my own devlog series...

[@PixelirPlus]

I would love to see a corrupted sky box effect to help show how many corrupted organisms are left corrupted on the island, it will be darker or lighter depending on how much corruption is left, this could also be a great way to help indicate islands you probably shouldn’t explore yet, if it’s really dark, that’ll indicate a lot of trouble.

[@lumberapple8820]

You have really inspired to start learning gamedev and coding. I hope to see more updates on your game! Keep up with the good work :)

[@runrajrun]

I'd love to see a shorts video on how you organise your game dev tasks via Trello. It looks so neat and organised!

[@nicochecko]

Absolutely love this channel! It's by far my favourite KZbin sub, and I'm always delighted when a new video is posted. I'm a divemaster with conservation training, and I'm excited to see how you strike the balance between a realistic representation of diving and something that just feels good to play. It would be great if equipable items had somewhat realistic effects: e.g. if fins changed movement speed, if goggles improved visibility, if your BCD impacted your ability to stay neutrally buoyant. It would also be great if there was a relationship between how much time you could spend underwater and your current nitrogen absorption level. Haha, sounds like a fun mechanic, right? Anyway, very excited to see how this progresses! Keep it up!

[@prdolaapindula7792]

You can add plastic bottles or trash underwater that player can pick Up or maybe recycle. Also greate video! 😃

[@powerclan1910]

have you tried using noise functions for the generation of the ocean's floor? For the different color lvl's i would suggest to have 1 base function and then a second to apply smaller variations so not every layer is the same, but they still follow each other. I think this might give a good oceans floor without needing to draw different sprites for each width type (allowing you to be even more flexible with the width)

[@fabriciotakaki5357]

maybe on the diving animations, when you dive straight up, draw the character faced to us or back to us.

[@dav1301]

Would consider a top down perspective for the under water rooms, much like the cave system you have! Maybe there can be entrances on the floor within the rooms to let you go to deeper procedurally generated rooms with rarer things kinda like pokemon mystery dungeon or somethin but anyway great job so far, will definitely be buying a copy of dauphin! edit: could even have under water creatures to fight off with that type of gameplay

[@TheBookDoctor]

Wow, that diving concept art is giving me _strong_ Commander Keen flashbacks. :)

[@HybridLizard_com]

Nice progress! And this is something different comparing to more regular incremental changes and additions. Also a nice breakdown of how you approach this new underwater system with a different camera perspective etc. 👍

[@itzblobby4078]

I just recently found your channel. I can't wait for this to come out. It looks awesome. I will be one of the first to purchase/download.

[@fosterturtle]

What a huge step! Awesome job on this as always, diving is such a big feature, and you’re off to a great start on it! - Foster

[@thatsaladprophet7051]

I think a nice explanation for why Crab shells and other organic parts of animals is that the corruption is making tumors with the qualities of the corrupted creature.

[@niccolo_paganini]

An idea for an eastern egg: You could recreate Super Mario Bros' secret underwater level (add underwater creatures from Mario, cute underwater music theme and of course some coins to collect). The entrance could be a tube (like in the game)

[@mhogar]

You should experiment with using parallax background layers. Godot has a node for managing this or you could do it manually (since I have found the node to be a little finicky in the past).

[@GamerMickey87]

You know it's starting to be chill outside when Ben puts on the socks

[@mangoalias608]

oh this really adds something nice to dauphin, it has a much bigger feel and aesthetic. love it!

[@Skeffles]

Really interesting to see the early stages of this mechanic. It reminds me of the underwater sections of Kellogg's mission nutrition. Can't wait to see when you've got the whole underwater aesthetic in place!

[@DJSlimeball]

There should be an idle animation and a starting to swim animation, but you can still moving during the starting to swim one, and when you do you get a little boost of speed then slow down again.

[@zhaolabs]

again, love the combination of showing healthily living life and dev

[@esspeetwentytwo]

you could add realistic free-diving? like if you go too low, or go up too high, you take damage or something?

[@Mobilnator]

Always enjoy these videos just love your devlogs

[@gurkiratsingh9895]

this a pretty used idea in other games but add types of divibg gear like cave diving armour that has alot of oxygen but low depth or like peal aroumer whch allows u to go very deep but doesnt have alot of oxygen, u could also upgrades, sea monster, and add a base building aspect later in the game!

[@gravity_mxk5663]

Every couple of months, you should do a recap of All of the progress you made since the last recap, with footage of you cooking and really chilled out music. And end with a short tidbit about the future and personal stuff. IDK just a thought :p

[@madpancake9891]

Hello! Nice game, and in my opinion, the collected items notification should disappear 0.5-1 second sooner to make it seem more dynamic :)

[@MauroBaptista10]

Just an idea: Instead of the flag pole, you could use a scuba glass item (for short duration diving) or a scuba tank (for long durantion diving), and then if the player needs to use the scuba tank again it needs to be refilled, adding another mechanic to the game

[@kippeonfly4789]

I think the ground shouldn’t be that flat. Maybe you could use some kind of noise to make it a bit more wavy. And also somekind of a cliff underwater would an interesting feature which you want to explore. You would also need better diving gear to dive deeper beyond those cliffs. And for later some sand floating in the water would probably look really good and add to the feeling.

[@Selrisitai]

The swimming animation looks pretty juicy. I'm going to once again advocate for "game feel," and suggest a nice smooth transition animation between the idle animation and the swimming.

[@falxie_]

I always get envious of your lifestyle as a developer

[@thomaselliott5704]

IDEA: When you are on the island you can dive around the islands shore area and base the area you can swim round on the size of the island

[@StaredownGames]

Wow! Haven't seen this in a while. Looks great!

[@TheDrover15]

I love the perspective change between land and dive

[@squidxtv]

YEA, I love this series!

[@bigdog7632]

Duck: alright I have work in an hour... So let’s make dinner

[@AntonioEligius]

I was interested in playing this game someday, and after watching you cooking I thought of an idea for your game; you could add a cooking mechanic, with bonuses for cooking healthy things as food and even penalties for cooking your corrupted/putrefied creatures as foods.

[@Forcemaster2000]

Maybe early in the game, you don't have dive fins and it limits your speed and depth you can dive to...Finding fins later gives you better diving abilities.

[@blakeryczak4948]

I had idea what if you find pieces of a submarine on island or in the ocean then when you get get all the pieces you can go your max depth

[@__invictus__8517]

You're using Godot right? You should be able to add a black outline to text through font settings i believe. Once you've added your font/dynamic font, click on its box, then click the settings box that appears, change outline size and colour.

[@zakquak]

A cool feature would be to add fossils that you can scan and use (Which would be found on the sea floor)

[@arcticheroh]

Another great video. Can't wait until the next one!

[@sharksuperiority9736]

Are you planning on adding different depths of diving? So you could dive in tropical shallower water, which would be like reefs, or deeper water with deep water creatures. I could imagine a Whalefall Zone, or a Black Smoker Zone, ect

[@georgeaggelopoulos7791]

Excellent idea. Mask and flippers maybe?

[@bentschuetz4087]

Will the procedural generation be random? Because it would be cool if it would be one big interlocked map. For example if you are diving in abyss and then go on to dive a few meters further it would be weird that you are suddendly in shallow waters. This would also allow for the introduction of a diving map so that the player knows where to find a certain type of terrain

[@broganking9830]

Really cool. Reminds me of Alex The Kidd's underwater levels

[@ObsidianContraption]

Interesting concept for a game, could inspire kids to become marine biologists. Good stuff!

[@18wtfomg18]

The leveling up of the diving should give small percentage increase for breath aswell

[@panashe_0080]

I found a very bizarre old devlog series from 2007 by misspelling Devduck. As the key for "u" is right next to the key for "i" I accidentally spelled dev"dick" instead of dev"duck" in the youtube search bar and I ended up finding a KZbin playlist with the name "Adventures in DevCock" and the actual video series in the playlist is called "Adventures in Game Development" it is about making a homebrew RPG with a group of friends. It's not amazing, but I think a commentary KZbinr should at least make a video on it. The KZbin Channel behind it (Elysian Shadows) only stopped making videos 2 years ago which is long as the channel was created in 2006 but all the videos outside of the series are hour-long live streams. Here are the links: -The full "Adventures in Game Development" (The "DevCock" playlist is incomplete): kzbin.info/aero/PLR_PJH88vEgfjlY9QsWaeMiXz62Qws7Pb -The channel behind it (Elysian Shadows): kzbin.infoabout -The "DevCock" Playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLDj4paQ60sVhMtEb4M7hQ5aUTtThx5rP3

[@naturecodevoid]

Cant wait for next episode!

[@S1ick865]

I wish my morning where this chill and productive, w two kids In elementary school and me working full time sleep is more important

[@eboatwright_]

This is really cool! :D

[@trevorrentfro1825]

Yet another good devlog 10/10

[@webhead139]

A feature should be that while sailing, your ship can turn over and force you to swim to land.

[@anonymouseicecube91]

Bro if you make it so you go down slower than going up underwater it'll make it feel so much more realistic

[@PreslavKolev]

It will be a good idea to make the swimming top-down so that it can feel like it is a part of the whole style and game.

[@anonymouseicecube91]

I disagree because then how would you convey depth?

[@ebbmo6441]

awesome DevDuck. cool video :) Do you plan to have a "swim around the isle" kind of approach? Meaning once the underwater is generated, you can actually circle the isle and return to the spot where you "jumped" in the water? Which would actually mean you need to remember how the underwater looked after you left it... What's your take on this?

[@andreafarina385]

I'm loving how this new feature is shaping up! I've had a question for a while: do you plan on working on a plot for the game (to expand the whole corruption thing)?

[@blubirby]

I just had an idea, how about you make some of the animals special? Think of it like how in Pokemon some of them are shiny. Maybe you could have a small chance of, for example, finding a different color lobster (if you add them).

[@miles611]

This game keeps looking cooler and cooler!

[@aleks3449]

Subnautica vibes ~ Love where the game is going my man! Keep it up!

[@TheCRibe]

Great series and work on this game. One question what is that screen you are using ?! Sweet !

[@SampelMSM]

omfg This actually seems fun Its like a mix of Stardew and Terraria (my 2 fav games) Keep up the good work man!

[@devent7098]

what was that, gumbo? it looked really good!

[@kenet7877]

I just noticed that I haven't heard that song you used to always use, "Consideration", in your past videos. Are there any particular reason why its gone? I love that song so much.

[@LivingToPay]

Yeah, I loved that song and it was a very defining song

[@JeloOW]

it wasnt bad but it was kinda overused i just hope he will change the song every few videos

[@ArcaneWorlds]

Save the ocean!! Seriously though i like this game. Good luck!

[@dylancaldwell8337]

I think it would be cool to have a deep sea boss, you have to dive down deep and you fight a corrupt angler fish or something.

[@anthonyrochet6858]

A Sting Ray, as a tribute to Steve Irwyn

[@reelo7931]

Rly cool swiming animation!

[@joaooliveira185]

Great vid!

[@unblockedlinks]

Hey, DevDuck. Quick question to ask, what keeps you motivated?

[@DejaimeNeto]

yes

[@caseofthis3014]

All in all im so excited Abt what you're doing 😍🌹🌺🌟

[@xSephironx]

how this man gonna casually make gumbo like that

[@ArareGamingID]

Iam glad i found this channel

[@fantasyworlddrawing5219]

Very very cool cant wait to play the game

[@hackjobgames9754]

How do you stay motivated to balance you life, and your personal projects. I always feel like I'm exhausted by the time I get done with work, and the last thing I want to do is work more, but I love making games. Any tips? Also, love the videos, and good luck with the game

[@Tazerboy_10]

This is an interesting RPG concept...

[@durrium]

I dont think you need a swimming up animation, left and right could work only :)

[@tenserebel]

It would be cool if you add pirates into it..