Devlog 3: Time to do more things...
I'm finally getting into a nice morning release rhythm with these, having them go live at 8:30 AM while I'm actually waking up and staring at my coffee. It's way better than my usual strategy of hitting "publish" at three in the morning when my brain is basically mush.
I've been thinking a lot about the actual "feel" of the world lately. I don't want it to just be another empty wasteland where characters walk through sand for twenty minutes. In FRAGMENT, the environment is actively trying to process itself. I'm calling it the Defragmentation Effect. Since the world is basically a crashing program, you'll have these areas where the ground just... stops. Like, the textures haven't loaded, so it's just a flat, matte grey void that's dangerous to step on because there's no "floor" logic there.
I also spent some time sketching out the visual difference between the factions' tech. ANCHOR is all about that clean, surveillance-state look. Their stuff is white and gold, very polished, almost like a high-end smartphone that's watching your every move. Compare that to the Null Hierarchy, where everything is jagged and erupting. I'm trying to make the Null feel like it's bursting out of the characters, not just sitting on them. When Minus uses his corrupted arm, I want the white shards to literally tear through the black goop and then retract, like a physical glitch.
One thing I'm really chewing on is how the ECO hackers actually interact with the world. If they're using the green Hyasynth vines, it's like they're trying to garden a computer. It's a weird mental image, right? They aren't just typing on keyboards; they're grafting glowing plants onto broken hardware to try and bypass the Null's corruption. It's messy and organic in a way that feels totally wrong for a digital world, which is exactly why I like it.
I'm still just scratching the surface of how all these groups clash, but the map is starting to fill up in my head. I've got a few ideas for a rogue spy character who might shake things up for Minus, but I'll save that for when I've actually figured out her design. For now, it's back to the drawing board to figure out how to make a "terminal error" look scary instead of just looking like a blue screen of death. Catch you guys tomorrow morning.
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