Hello! It is I, CrownedHaley. I made the mmc26 world, Critter Capture! It was super fun creating it for [REDACTED] like you. Did you go behind the waterfall?
Sadly, I didn't get enough time to finish everything I wanted. But that is the case for being solo on this project and wanting to make everything from scratch.
I always try to learn so many things especially when doing mmc. This year I had to learn how to make an environment, vertex paint blending, rig creatures, create creatures, paint textures to fit a theme, and more but brain is not cooperating rn.
The first day I made the camera. I kinda overdid it. Like it is so high textured compared to everything else. I try to make things as immersive as possible so you can take out the photo cannisters to develop the film or when you put it back it, it spreads across the sensor.
Feburary 1st - 2nd, 2026
Ah, the island. So many revisions. It had to do some tricks to make it look like a segment of an actual island.
Feburary 3rd, 2026
The first critter! It was interesting trying to learn how to animate
Feburary 11th, 2026
Wow! You can actually see the data on your cannister now! It also reminds me I am not trusted with paint.
Feburary 12th, 2026
This is the early highscore screen. I had to rewrite how most of the photos are processed. Each time you take a photo, it compares it to your save file. If it is a better score then save that photo. Easy? Uh I had to completely seperate the scoring logic so it applies to each creature instead of total then sum it at the end. 🙃
Feburary 12th, 2026
My favorite critter. I don't know why. They are so cool. And now with wireless earbuds!!!
Feburary 16th, 2026
Uploading pics from resonite to the api. So uhhhh I had to read and write each pixel. That is why you lag a bit when you upload images. I tried it cut it down by only sending every even row of pixels. [For Froox] Hi froox!! When is img to base64. Pweasssseeeeee.
Feburary 16th, 2026
We love truenas in this house.
Feburary 16th, 2026
This is how the api returns the info for the user's images. Also the first ever image that was retrieved from the api. Luckily i can just throw the image url.
Feburary 17th, 2026
bird 🫵
Feburary 17th, 2026
I try to make things work if you don't speak my language. So I try to put signs and visuals telling you how to play the game.
Feburary 17th, 2026
I am glad to say I am 99.9% done
Feburary 27th, 2026
I am done! A lot of feelings. I am proud of what I have accomplished. But I am also sad that I could've done much more if I was more focused.
Feburary 28th, 2026
Here are some cool things that I had planned.
- Motion captured [REDACTED] guide that would stay in the hut.
- Like a neck strap for your camera. It would be a bezier curve behind your neck. I had this working on a prototype but I didn't have time to test it on different creatures
- Foliage, more creatures. Just stuff to fill out the world more.
- The world [REDACTED] would have it [REDACTED] between normal [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] instead of just [REDACTED]. But now that I think about that it might've made people more sick.
- The beach was actually just the hub. I was planning on making the caves, beach side, and mountains be their own maps.
- I was going to hint at some lore stuff in the game I am currently developing. But I couldn't figure out the tie ins
- Oh yea. The orginal way to [REDACTED] the game was to find a floppy disk and insert it into the computer in the main menu screen
- Camera zoom? Idk how i feel about that. We have limited controls for desktop users. Especially people with different keyboard layouts
Here are some vods of me working on some things for the project:
I am now going to yap.
Game Design! (loose definition)
I love game design. I love planting little seeds in people's mind. Leading people by their intuition. There are sound effects and visuals in the game that lead the player where I want them. But everyone is different, so if you have enough clues they will eventually learn hopefully. Also I tried to make the world feel more "realistic" by including as many actions -> sounds as I had the time for. Opening and closing your camera is so satisfying just by adding sounds! I missed a bunch but maybe in a future update. I try to make things work between the language barrier. Since I can't really speak all languages I have to rely on diagrams! The posters and signage are there mostly to teach people without words. I don't want to leave anyone out. Speaking of leaving people out, I feel like desktop users have less cool things since they only have a mouse. I try to make them onto the same playing field by doing a bunch of custom stuff for them. Instead of physically putting the headset on at the beginning, they can equip it. The camera when equipped and right click will bring the viewport up to their view. There are context menu options for them to actually play! Did you know that the posters in the house changes based if you are on desktop?
Since this was a big programming project, I tried to make everything clean. Everything is nicely wrapped in little functions. I can easily find where I need to go and edit some code. I "came up" with this slot name scheme, it is so nice seeing what dyn trigger you need to send.
Fun fact! My motherboard actually died during this event. I lost so many days. I had to buy a temporary motherboard. And uhhhh I wasn't thinking straight because it was ddr5 ram instead of ddr4 that I had. I am not going to buy ram right now. So I had to buy another motherboard and wait again.
Thank you for reading! It feels weird talking like this. If you want to keep up to date with my projects and/or streams you can bluesky me @crownedhaley or join the discord server