Hey everyone,

It's time for another NIRAVASI Weekly Devlog. The main hot topic to talk about though is that life's been fairly interesting in the UK these past days. For those of you that aren't aware, the UK's currently suffering a pretty bad heatwave right now and here I am, sweating my pants off with every window in the office open. Thankfully it hasn't affected my workflow, but it has been a bit of a bugger to deal with. Now last week, I spoke a little bit about the work I had done for Lotulanda so far, and that my focus now would be ensuring the exterior is good enough to begin work on the next stage. Without further ado, let's talk about that in more detail!





Preparations Complete

So after a while of tinkering around with sprites and visual assets, I'm happy to say that I've finally nailed a design for the vista moment for Lotulanda, the Grand Library. To start, I went back and forth a few times trying to figure out a design for the surrounding architecture and how it would appear for the player work best with a structure like Lotulanda's. Initially, I wanted to go for a very simple skybox asset for the building, but it sadly didn't work out as any assets within a Skybox are static and will not move, no matter how close/far the player is. Thankfully, I managed to find a workaround in the form of making the building a giant sprite that's angled well enough to make it seem realistic to the players.

The next problem I found was having the structure slowly come into vision for the players the closer they got to it. As RPG Maker MV is a fairly basic game engine with strong limitations, there's a certain distance that the engine can render before it just cuts it off. To remedy this, I've added certain events in the vista area to better keep the illusion, so that players don't see Lotulanda magically pop out of existence. It was incredibly important to make this change as I want NIRAVASI to be a technical achievement in the RPG Maker Horror genre, as well as be a game that stands out as a testament to show just what's possible with the excellent MV3D plugin.

Finally, there was some discussion about the colour I should go for with the Lotulanda building itself. Initially, I wanted to keep it purely white to better fit the theme of a white lotus flower, but this was quickly scrapped as I felt that as you drew closer to the building, the structure didn't really invoke a sense of amazement like the other vista moments had done. Thankfully, a close friend of mine made the genius suggestion to include the colours that I used for the SARA unit and put it into the building's exterior. So yeah, Lotulanda now has a lovely rainbow colour that better symbolises the look and feel I want for the themes covered in this level. Speaking of that, let's talk about what exactly you'll find in Lotulanda.



Humanities

So I mentioned before in earlier Devlogs that I want Lotulanda to be a smaller level than Ishani Bazaar, but still focusing on the core themes of exploration that the game highlights (people seem to really love that, so I ain't gonna be stopping anytime soon). While I still need to figure out the way that the player gets from the Lobby to the Management Wing (it's sealed and will require special access to get into it), I've got a rough idea on what I want players to see and interact with within Lotulanda. Here's a list of what I've got planned so far:

Main Lobby: This is where the player can find access to all of the different parts of Lotulanda and the SARA unit itself. The player will be safe here for as long as they choose to remain here.

Anthropology Wing: Here you'll find diagrams and exhibits that cover the subject of what it means to be human.

Archaeology Wing: You'll find things such as old fossils, ancient artefacts and maybe even something dark or two.

Geography Wing: You'll learn everything there is to know about the planet of Aetherius and maybe even a bit about the mysterious sediment known as Vigarium.

History Wing: You'll learn the (glamourized) history of the humans that lived within Aetherius, and maybe find out a bit more about their home world.

Psychology Wing: You'll absorb and understand the human mindset and make the conclusion that maybe perhaps Humans and Antherians are not so different from a biological perspective.

Sociology Wing: You'll better understand the culture and feel of the humans that lived in Niravasi and maybe find out things weren't as they seem.

Management Wing: This will be the final part to explore within Lotulanda and will be key to finding your way out of the Grand Library alive.

So yeah, there's definitely a lot of work that needs to be done and I can't really envision Lotulanda being complete until maybe around the end of August or so. But I will do my best to keep everyone updated as development goes on, and my hope is that with this level being complete, it'll be a haven for those that love learning more about the world of Niravasi.



That's it for this Week's Devlog for Niravasi. This one was a bit sparse as most of the work done the previous week was to do with the look and feel of Lotulanda's entrance. Now that it's complete, I'll be focusing on developing the Anthropology Wing that I talked about earlier. I have a few rough notes here and there, but I'm sure it'll be perfectly fine when the time to work on it comes. With that said, I hope you all have a lovely day and I'll talk to you all again next week.

Kind regards,
Angus (Sangos)