A Tree, New Textures, and a Week of Progress

Weekly Development Update (A Day Early)

Sometimes game development means spending almost an entire day working on something that sounds incredibly simple.

This week, that something was a tree.

I spent most of today working in Blender on a new tree asset for Harborage Street. It might not sound like the most exciting thing to spend a whole day on, but seeing it actually placed into the game made a massive difference to the environment.

It immediately made the area feel more complete and helped break up some of the emptiness that was still present in the outdoor sections. And the funny part is, the tree isn't even finished yet.

I'm still working on the model and details, but even in its current state it's already making the environment feel much more like its own place rather than a collection of game assets.

Starting to Replace the Horror Engine Assets

I've also started working on something I've been wanting to do for a while: creating custom textures to replace some of the textures that originally came with the Horror Engine framework.

Horror Engine has been extremely useful for getting the project to where it is now, but one of the biggest goals as development continues is to make Harborage Street feel more and more like its own game.

That means gradually replacing the placeholder and provided assets with things I've created specifically for this project.

It's going to take some time, but I think those small changes are going to have a huge impact on the final look and atmosphere of the game.

Looking Back at the Week

This has been another one of those weeks where a lot of the work might not be immediately obvious when looking at the game, but a lot has changed underneath the surface.

I've spent the week:

• Adding more environmental details around the house and basement

• Tweaking and improving various triggers

• Reworking the layout of the basement

• Adding a new small puzzle to the basement

• Continuing work on the enemy and its behavior

• Working on environmental details and atmosphere

• Starting new custom assets

• Beginning the process of creating custom textures to replace Horror Engine assets

• And, apparently, spending an unreasonable amount of time making a tree

  
  

There's still plenty left to do, but the game is slowly becoming more and more its own thing.

This Week's Build

I'm also going to be uploading this week's build today instead of tomorrow.

Normally, the new build goes up on Friday, but I have plans to spend the day with my son tomorrow, so I'm moving the update forward a little bit.

I'm looking forward to taking the day off from development and spending some time with him. The game will still be here when I get back.

As always, the current alpha build is available for free, and every new build is another step toward the finished version of Harborage Street.

Thanks for following along and watching the game come together.