Weather Factory

“Mark well this foreboding of roses.”

Some exciting news today: we’re working towards a pre-alpha build of Travelling At Night later this year, and we’d love your help testing it. It’s going to be a tiny first group – around twenty people or so – but if you’d like to be added to the pool from which we’ll randomly draw:

This super early build will be ‘Neville’s Build’ levels of jank, and you’ll just be exploring the Sanitarium Aujourd’hui (well, you can come in from the drive, but that’s it). It will contain early versions of all of the game’s major systems (opportunities, footnotes, outfits, oh my) and serve as a good microcosm of the larger game. Within its shaky walls exist your first possible companion, a room you’re not allowed to enter, and an extended bit about Spencer’s tongue. You all have that to look forward to. To celebrate – and to clear your mental imagery – here’s a first look at the ground floor:

The Sanitarium is run by Dr Aubière and funded by the Incorporates (Travelling‘s alt-history variant of the United States). As such, the villa ranges from art deco interior design that Poirot would be proud of to the most hottest and spankin’ new modern amenities 1948 can offer. Then there’s the dark room at the top of the stairs, guarded by a be-goggled orderly at all times. That changes up the decor a little. The scene above is missing its inhabitants – Strathcoyne will most likely be found in the library, muttering to Annabelle; ex-zazou songstress Bessy Bloom will be humming to herself in the kitchen; Aubière will be writing mildly negative things about you in his intimidating off-cream study. But it gives you a sense of the vibe and layout of the Sanitarium’s inside, which you’ll return to several times over the course of the game.

Unlike Hush House in BOOK OF HOURS, you won’t be able to click on everything in a room – but we’re trying to make Travelling feel as rich as possible. You’ll have as much interactivity as we can manage. In the kitchen above, for example, there’ll be Bessy in the corner, a fridge full of the best transcontinental goods the Sanitarium’s patrons can provide, some rations you’ll probably be able to scrounge from the well-stocked Incorporate-sponsored larder, and perhaps an observation on Antibes out the window. Also, you will get to enjoy our meticulously-researched 1940s colour schemes. Here’s one of the main inspirations for the kitchen, for example. I did mock it up with the original colours, but I just… it… it had to go.

We’re also hard at work turning Spencer into a real boy. He’s in the process of being animated in a variety of different outfits, which means he has to be able to masculine-ly pirouette like so:

The above, as ever, are WIP and I reserve the right to redraw, tweak and go so far as to change the colour of Spencer’s vest. The most important thing to take away is that every outfit (apart from your ‘déshabillé’ dressing gown outfit) has its own unique hat. 95% ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’, please.

I leave you with news that while lots of things are going well, layering is turning out to be a particularly painful part of setting up a 2D isometric scene. Most isometric games are, I think, some combination of 2D and 3D: Baldur’s Gate 2 was constructed in 3D before being rendered as a 2D image, for example. Travelling is entirely 2D because neither I nor AK have a scooby about 3D development, and we’ve chosen an illustrative 2D-specific art style. This makes a lot of things easier (art is quicker and cheaper, code doesn’t have to worry about physics), but we’re still ‘faking’ it by having Spencer navigate a faux-3D isometric world which asks difficult questions like ‘are you in front of or behind this winningly whimsical objet d’art‘ and ‘how do doors work’. All of which is to say that we are still ironing out bugs which turn Spencer into a chest of drawers. Top drawer.