September was mainly about lighting, audio, and other work to enhance immersion.
In Hotch Potch House (HPH), atmosphere is one of the most important elements, so I gave it extra attention this month.
Also, since the deadline for the Epic MegaGrants application was approaching, a lot of fine-tuning went into the project.
●Lighting
The highlight of this month was lighting.
I had left it untouched for a while, but with the MegaGrants application coming up, I revisited and refined it.
Here’s what it currently looks like ↓ The god rays are looking great. The image quality is bad only because of WordPress compression.
By tweaking the parameters in Ultra Dynamic Sky, I’ve gotten much closer to my ideal look.
One major issue remains: the day–night transition still isn’t smooth.
Since settings like Exposure differ greatly between day and night, switching abruptly causes the screen to suddenly become blindingly bright or pitch-dark.
In the video below, you can see a custom widget I made that lets me switch between the two setups while changing the time of day, but when it switches, the screen briefly turns completely white.
The same thing happens during gameplay, so I’ll need to fix that. Hopefully sometime in October.
●Sound Design
It often doesn’t get much attention, but I personally believe sound is extremely important in films and games.
There’s an animated film by Mamoru Oshii called The Sky Crawlers, and the sound design in it is really good. Almost like ASMR.
My favorite part is the coffee-making scene: they skip the animation entirely and express everything through sound alone.
Coffee aside, I plan to put a lot of effort into the audio for HPH as well.
High-quality sound assets are expensive, so for now I’m using placeholders that can easily be swapped later.
This month I worked on the garden’s ambient sound: birds chirping, trees rustling, that sort of thing.
It might seem easy to just loop a long ambient track, but players quickly notice the repetition, which breaks immersion.
To avoid that, I started using Soundscape, an official Epic plugin that randomly plays ambient sounds around the player’s position.
It’s a fantastic system. Easy to set up and usable within a couple of hours if you follow a good tutorial.
Also on the sound front, a friend of mine in the game industry has agreed to compose the music for HPH✨
It’ll likely make its debut in the trailer planned for January next year.
Stay tuned!
●Other Updates
①UI Assets
I made a bunch of new UI elements this month:
Ability icons..
PC button prompts…
Quest UI checkboxes… and more.
②Level Design Reboot
As seen in the image in the Lighting section, I’ve deleted most of the existing assets and started reworking the layout to match new features and quests.
As a side note, I really love this screenshot. It feels like a room before moving out, which fits the nostalgic, transient atmosphere that HPH strives to capture.
③Cicada Shell
Since this month was mostly adjustments and bug fixes, I don’t have much new to show—so here’s Cicada Shell (Memory) instead.
Why are cicada shells so beautiful, though?
●What’s Next
Next month, I’ll be working on the main menu and settings screen.
NPC production will also begin in earnest, and I’m planning to make a time-lapse sculpting video for one of them—hopefully I can include it in the October update.
As for the Epic MegaGrants results, they’ll be announced in early December.
Regardless of the outcome, I’ll share the results on social media and in the January devlog.
If you’d like, please click the beautiful button below to visit the game’s Steam page and add it to your wishlist. It really keeps me motivated:)
See you next month!