Phewf! For the second time in a row, I started DDJ6 way too late. June started rough for me, but I rebounded and managed to put together a new version of Unduhagge which I am way happier with. It's not a huge content update, but it's chock full of aesthetic and structural improvements which were overdue.

Demo 1.1 saw huge growth in Mina's dreamscape, but I really felt that even by jam standards a lot of features felt rushed, and a lot of ideas I had were cut and or poorly executed. When I started DDJ6, I wanted to fix those disasters, but also, I wanted to address something that's been bothering me for a while:

Some of my old art really, really sucked. I'm no professional pixel artist, but in the past few years my competence has developed significantly, and I think it shows in some of the revised locations and new set pieces. There were definitely tilesets which, at their core, predated Unduhagge and showed their age, and it was nice to scrap them. I had a lot more fun with the pixel art and spent a lot of time studying references and resources, which went a long way to improving the quality of my work.

Another item I'm a lot happier about is the opening cinematic. My original intention was always to have a bit of a chase sequence, but I could not find the time to animate, and didn't know how I wanted that chase to look like, or sound like. I was glad to tackle this early in the jam and am pretty excited for people to experience it. I didn't get to do much in the way of music or sound design for v1.2 bud I'm glad I had the chance to get it in during the chase, where I think it mattered most. Especially the original draft of the gameshow theme. That was just gross.

Finally, it seems like each time I post these logs I wind up threatening to build a custom engine. I'm pleased to announce that I've finally actually started to work on that! So far I've gotten some rendering and minimal input, but it's a start. Will it be ready for use by next year's jam? Probably not. After I wrap up here I've got a few more projects I want to get to, and coding the engine is lower on the priority list in the near future. Plus, I kinda like prototyping Unduhagge in RM2K3.

Usual props to the DDJ6 gang for letting me drop this game late again. ;)

Anyway, enjoy the update!

- Christopher Risewick