Hempuli's blog

I drew a boat. Not happy with the feet or the perspective but it’s good to draw every now and then.

Today’s stream was really nice and productive! I made some levels, started working on the game’s actual map (and encountered a lot of need for polish, haha), made some groundwork for custom objects, fixed some bugs and in general got stuff Done! I definitely feel that I’m starting to move towards the endgame in terms of actual game content, even if there’s a lot to do besides getting there. Fixing bugs in today’s stream was wonderfully simple, and it was nice to have a feeling of there not being anything that’d be really tough to fix (there 100% is, probably).

I’d like to post a gif but I think I’ll try to wait until I have some less spoilery content to post. Thanks a lot to the chat, it was very active today and made working on the game a lot more fun! :)

I made this for ArtCode on twitter. It explains a bit how the Xlua extension works. Huge thanks to Looki for teaching me how to use lua, and to Justin Aquadro for making the extension!

Get the tutorial here! Windows only.

Alright! Obviously the announcement of Baba was the BIG THING today, but as it turns out I also had the opportunity to stream a bit. Working out how I want the map system to work & accounting for various oddities the users might end up doing with the level editor is fairly tedious but I think I got a good chunk of that handled today. Getting this whole part of Baba’s development behind me is going to be great, although I’m already feeling that the current system is too hacky/rigid so some refactoring might need to take place between now and the game’s eventual release. Eugh. Still, progress!!

People were wondering when I’d return to ESA 2, and while I’m pretty happy to be able to say that it’s officially on a hiatus (mainly in order to avoid extra stress from having to worry about keeping it worked on while concentrating so heavily on Baba) I want not to disappoint those who originally got interested in my works via ESA. So I think I’ll stream some ESA2 dev sometime soon, even if the actual hiatus won’t end until next March or so. Sorry. At least people have seemed understanding, which is very kind & nice.

Woop! It’s here! I’ve now decided that Baba Is You will be released in Summer, 2018, and the game also has an official website and Steam page now; go wishlist it, you!!

Website: http://www.hempuli.com/Baba/
Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/
Press kit: http://www.hempuli.com/press/sheet.php?p=Baba_Is_You

Today’s stream was slightly aimless & quiet, but I feel that I still got a whole lot done.

I started work on custom object sprites; the idea is that in the finished game the player can make levels with custom objects, and part of this system is the ability to change their spriting. This feature makes also my own work easier, because with it I can make themed levels without having to hard-code every object.

The other big thing tonight was the implementation of “paths”, i.e. routes that connect levels together, seen in the gif above. I’ve always really liked Super Mario World/3 maps and hopefully these new paths allow making more appealing and compositionally sound maps. The idea is that I’ll divide the current large map into several sub-maps, so there is well enough space for a little aesthetical polish like this.

I think I’m only 2 updates behind now?