Pulcra Vermis:Re
Hey everyone! I’m working on “Pulcra Vermis:Re”, a remake of "Pulcra Vermis".
Pulcra Vermis:Re is a first-person puzzle exploration game with elements of psychological horror. In the game, the main character finds himself trapped in a strange dimension with the only thing in sight being a colossal castle. After lifting a mysterious book from the ground, he starts hearing an impassive female voice.
This will be a long journey but I really hold this game dear to my heart so this time, I want to achieve something I wasn't able to in the previous iteration, I want to tell a story, a story between two souls separated and reunited by death.
This is the progress I've made so far:
- Added volumetric fog.
- Improved the lighting and post-processing settings.
- Expanded the labyrinth and blocked out a new area.
- Reprogrammed the object interaction and pickup systems.
- Enhanced a bit the look of the hall.
- Replaced objects with high vertices counts with lower ones without affecting the overall look.
- Created an improved version of the chest, chests now have a higher purpose than just being decorations.
- Blocked out an exit from the labyrinth back to the castle.
- Fixed a bug in which the female voice would spawn endlessly when repeatedly dropping and picking the book.
- Multiple assets were replaced with improved versions.
- Added some balusters here an there.
- Different footsteps sounds for different surfaces.
- Ambient volume lowers when inside the castle or enclosed spaces.
- Better looking and optimized bookshelves in the library.
- Randomly stacked books (still looks unnatural because of the spacing between each but I will improve it).
- Turning pages ( still need to fix that shadow bias artifact).
- Added doors that open in the direction the character's facing.
- The library has a starry ceiling now.
- Started working on a new room.
- The second tower is now open.
- Replaced the previous body with an improved one, now it looks more like a statue( this one will have animations so prepare yourself to be spooked).
- Started sculpting an improved main character and monster meshes.
- Added a new character to the game( still in early progress).
- Programmed a dialogue system with multiple choices.
- Started blocking out the upper levels of the castle.
- Officially changed the executable name from "MyHouse" to "Pulcra Vermis" ( I'm really ashamed of myself, really).
- Composed a soundtrack for the game.
- And other minor additions.
Comments
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I played the original release and I'm eager to see the new changes! It's really cool that you're so dedicated to this project, keep up the great work.
Thank you very much! I will!
rip "myhouse.exe" :'( lol but these improvements sound great and are very welcome.
if you're taking suggestions: i'd like to see the labyrinth be more integral to the story, rather than just a death sentence. it has great atmosphere and is one of my favorite areas in the game. also, improved jumping would be cool. i like the platforming parts of PV, but the jump is very finicky in the old versions.
very hype for the re:release. good luck with development. if you ever need a tester, just let me know :)
It's funny because I unironically named the "Recesses Of Dilemma" project as "MyHouse2" thinking "now it's my trademark" xD
Sure, suggestions are always welcome, I will try writing more devlogs from now on so feel free to leave any.
The dungeon will be relevant to the story, very much so, also I'm adding an exit to it so it will be possible to return back to the surface.
I'm also planning to add a save/load system so hopefully that'll help as well, there won't be the need to restart the game in order to explore different endings.
Could you elaborate on the jump part? Do you mean those times it's supposed to jump but doesn't quite, I know there are some issues but this is one of those things I'm not entirely sure where to start from.
Thank you, it will probably still take a long time until it's ready for testing but if everything goes well and I finish before the deadline I'll accept your offer, thank you!
very glad to hear about the dungeon! as for jumping, what makes it dodgey for me is two things:
- when you jump, the camera moves forward and backward (even when you jump while standing still). it feels more realistic and cinematic, but it sometimes leads me to over or undershoot a jump while trying to land, like im compensating for the position of the camera when it doesnt necessarily reflect where my feet are. i would try locking the camera to just up/down movement when jumping, only moving forward or back when the player presses W/S
- you take off walking as soon as your feet touch the ground. given how small a lot of the platforms are, this usually means walking right off the platform you just landed on. what might help: adding a small recovery time (maybe .5 to 1 sec) after landing where walking is disabled or its speed is greatly reduced
just some of my observations. sorry they're worded weirdly. hope they make sense lol
Everything makes sense. I agree with you, I wonder why I never thought of it though, it's likely I'm so used to that jump that I developed tunnel vision. I'll improve it following your suggestions, rest assured. I just need to switch the main character's mesh with the newer one first, hopefully it won't cause other problems.