The Prying Eye - Development Thread

PasseGaming

Active member
Wow, you are making some fantastic strides with your game. I definitely feel this title is a shoo-in for ByteOff 2020.
 

Jonny

Well-known member
Have you written the story and dialogue or are you doing that as you go?

I was wondering how long the adventure could be with the memory constraints.

Or is it more of a tech demo?

It looks like something I'd really enjoy playing so I hope it becomes a full game.
 

CutterCross

Active member
Have you written the story and dialogue or are you doing that as you go?

I was wondering how long the adventure could be with the memory constraints.

Or is it more of a tech demo?

It looks like something I'd really enjoy playing so I hope it becomes a full game.
I have a dedicated notebook for pre-production stuff like the story, gameplay scenarios, and other ideas. (I prefer pen-and-paper notes to text files or Word docs for things like this.) So yes, I'm planning this to be a full game, though it'll probably take much longer to finish development than anything I made in the past. I have plans for what I'll be able to pull off given the limitations, but time will tell if I can fully realize them. (Also given its more "horror" direction, probably won't be revealing much of the actual content as I'm developing it. Fear of the unknown, right?)

The Byte-Off entry was more of a tech demo / proof-of-concept because of time restraints, but I'll be working hard to get this to be a full game. Quite a few entries last year went on to become full-fledged homebrews, now I guess it's my turn to try and make that happen.
 

Jonny

Well-known member
Great news. Something to look forward to in 2021 and with a physical release hopefully.

Nothing like pen and paper. I recently bought a bunch of those 3"x5" index cards to plan out screens on the floor. It helped me to visualise warps / gameflow and jot down ideas.
 

CutterCross

Active member
Great news. Something to look forward to in 2021 and with a physical release hopefully.

Nothing like pen and paper. I recently bought a bunch of those 3"x5" index cards to plan out screens on the floor. It helped me to visualise warps / gameflow and jot down ideas.
I need to get something like a corkboard and whiteboard set up for stuff like that haha.
 

CutterCross

Active member
Working on a Pause menu. After a ton of unsuccessful trial and error trying to get SNES mouse sensitivity cycling properly working in the Options menu, I decided it would be a LOT easier (and more convenient) if you could just change it during runtime. So, Pause menu. Also gives me a good opportunity to use this for "other stuff".

PauseScreenWIP1.png
 

Jonny

Well-known member
Looks tidy.

Curious how it all works in theory.
Does pausing save what screen and progress player has made on that screen, then 'continue' warps back to that screen and 'save and quit' uses that same data?
 

CutterCross

Active member
Looks tidy.

Curious how it all works in theory.
Does pausing save what screen and progress player has made on that screen, then 'continue' warps back to that screen and 'save and quit' uses that same data?
It's just a mock-up right now, but yes in practice I'd have a variable to save the last screen the player was on, and "continue" would return to that saved screen (with some caveats). "Save and quit" is more of a future thing if I look more into implementing flash saving, but at bare minimum it would just return to the title screen. Really the main reason I'm even going in this direction is for real-time mouse sensitivity changing, which would seriously make that whole implementation a lot easier on my end than what I was trying previously, believe me.

Next time I post anything substantial here it'll probably be showing it all actually implemented in-game.
 

Jonny

Well-known member
It does seem to make more sense to be able to change the sensitivity in game. I know normally something like that would be in the start options but it doesn't feel like a compromise the way you're doing it.

I like the placeholder text. Just leave it like that for the comedy value :D
 

CutterCross

Active member
It does seem to make more sense to be able to change the sensitivity in game. I know normally something like that would be in the start options but it doesn't feel like a compromise the way you're doing it.

I like the placeholder text. Just leave it like that for the comedy value :D
The big issue with trying to implement this in the Options menu (which is what I was trying before) is how the SNES mouse sensitivity works. The mouse has 3 levels of sensitivity, but you can't just choose its level all willy-nilly. You increment the sensitivity level by sending a clock pulse to the mouse while the input latch is on, then after level 2 it cycles back to level 0. You cannot decrement the value, only increment it.

The other problem is that the mouse will only hold its sensitivity level as long as it's getting current flow from the NES. Once its disconnected / reconnected its sensitivity is back to level 0. So that makes simply setting the sensitivity level from the start super impractical, because it won't line up with the sensitivity level you chose in the Options menu. Also doing this to account for both controller ports and every possible way they could be reconfigured is a nightmare I don't want to deal with.

So this pause menu solution will make it a lot more straightforward on my end. It'll just display the current sensitivity level from the mouse, and the option will just increment the sensitivity value. Easy peasy. (Or at least it better be haha.) Of course the Hyperkin mouse won't really work with this, but it's manual sensitivity switch means I don't really have to worry about implementing sensitivity for it.
 

CutterCross

Active member
Pause menu is finished. The layout isn't quite what I had in mind from the start, but I think using the space for extra information will work out better in the long run. Also, mouse sensitivity cycling finally works how it should. Sometimes the best solution is the easiest one.

PE_PauseMenu_MouseSens1.gif

Gonna still have to implement actually entering / exiting the pause menu, but I'm just glad I don't really have to mess with mouse sensitivity ever again haha.
 

Jonny

Well-known member
I see you delivered in style with the cool graphic! Awesome.

The extra info places will be good for showing player 1 and/or 2's controller or mouse selection in the small boxes. I dare say you've probably already thought of that.

It kinda looks like shes walking through an open doorway. A minor observation is that my eyes are drawn to the lack of black space at the top of the ladys head.
 

CutterCross

Active member
I see you delivered in style with the cool graphic! Awesome.

The extra info places will be good for showing player 1 and/or 2's controller or mouse selection in the small boxes. I dare say you've probably already thought of that.

It kinda looks like shes walking through an open doorway. A minor observation is that my eyes are drawn to the lack of black space at the top of the ladys head.
Oh I already got plans for what each menu space is going to be for. For everyone else it'll remain a mystery...

Haha yeah, it looks just a little clunky trying to work around attribute clash and lining up graphics to minimize tile usage. But I think it works well (and I REALLY don't want to redo that graphic haha). Originally I didn't even have those spots for other information and was just going to make a full background, but I didn't have many ideas for it and I think the information menu approach is better in the long run.

PauseScreenWIP3.png

One of my earlier WIPs, just the background layer.
 

CutterCross

Active member
Also just got the Continue function working, was pretty straightforward thankfully. I also got rid of the old broken mouse sensitivity system in the Options menu since I won't be needing to mess with mouse sensitivity there ever.

PE_PauseMenu_MouseSens2.gif
 

Jonny

Well-known member
It's worked out pretty well in the end getting more functionality out of the menu. The one you've chosen looks much better to me. More balanced.

What do you use for screen capture if you don't mind me asking. Your videos always look super crisp.
 

Jonny

Well-known member
Dowloaded it, cheers. I'll give it a try. GIFs will come in useful on Twitter because to post mp4 videos you have to use the advertising tools.
I'll be a seasoned point & click adventurer when The Prying Eye comes out. I'm replaying Lechucks Revenge at the moment.
 
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