Determinant
Devlog 19: Swimming and Diving
Added swimming and diving mechanics and splashy sounds. Fade to gray then black from hypoxia with drowning sounds.
Implementing swimming took two weeks as there was a lot of situations to handle. The character controller now has to float and swim according to head direction. New animations for hands and legs according to swim and head direction. Surface swimming needed to be handled as a special case and the hands need to be limited to the surface. Completely new set of sounds for surface swimming. Transitioning in and out of water needs to be seamless together with sounds for that. Climbing out of water requires special code to detect surfaces to climb on. Blood washes off in water and you will bleed again a while after getting out. I still need to add water splash effects and waves.
Also added air supply which right now is just holding your breath. You should be able to free dive and catch fish and other stuff. Space to swim up, X to swim down. Hold shift for fast swim, but this will increase your air usage and drain stamina. Air will replenish when you are near or above the surface.
Devlog 18: Caves
Added caves and flashlight. It took quite a while to tune the darkness because ambient light kept leaking in plus exposure issues. The game's dynamic range can't quite match the human eye. There are still some issues, but at least you can seamlessly walk from outdoors into a cave with no transition screens.
I had wanted to make it ultra realistic where it would be pitch black and you can't see your hand in front of your face, and without a light you would get lost and starve to death. But this is still a game, so there is a backup dim light on the player so at least you could see your body and about 1 m around you. Plus the volumetric fog allows seeing cave passages a bit.
Also the cave has realistic reverb, background sounds, and volumetric lighting which further adds to the experience. No nasty creatures yet though, that will be in the future.
Devlog 17: Character improvements
Blood effects
Blood effects now appear when the player is injured. It's not just static, there's actually blood drops dripping onto the floor. The more injured you are, the more blood spills out.
Hand poser
Also rewrote the hand posing system for more smoothness and accuracy. Notice that your hand now grips the object only when it has reached your hand. A custom pose for each object has been added for more realistic grips.
Footwork
Foot blending has been improved, now with less jerky jittery animations. You can mash your direction controls and the character responds with smooth fancy footwork.
Footsteps sounds
Accurate footsteps sounds for each type of surface. In addition, the left and right foot sounds are now separate and have pinpoint accuracy. So now the visual will exactly match up with the sounds.
Landing and falling sounds
Jumping, falling and landing sounds have been added. Jumping and landing will generate a louder surface sound. Falling and taking damage has an impact sound, which can be heavy or light depending on the distance fallen.