Dev Update #2: Progress update news - Glicea: The Vessel mod for Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Welcome (back) to Glicea!

It's been a while. About half a year in fact, since my last update.

I meant to get this written in June, but then June flew by, so I decided to have this done by the end of July, and now it's almost August, so it's now or never. I'm back today to prove that the mod is not dead, and to give an update on progress, yap about the future, and show off a few things I've been working on.

How it's going

For the past several months since January, I've been heads-down focused on improving and polishing the mod from nearly every angle. Most of the photos from the images tab are now grossly out of date as I've touched up on nearly everything.

One thing I realized early this year was that I wanted to make sure to better establish Glicea: The Vessel's setting. To this end, I've been hard at work doing what I can to introduce new assets, particularly in the way of 3D models, sounds, and of course through the environs and story-telling... within the confines of my talent. Basically, I've been doing my best to try and make this mod feel more innovative and unique.

"These old walls can't withstand much more, no less from our activity here. Such a risk for all this great work to be buried. Surely, the Mawcroths know, and perhaps that's what they want."

Models, art, and environments are a work-in-progress.

I'm bringing plenty more surprises and ideas to the mod that I'm not showing off today. Glicea and Earth are two different places. Though, humanity should remain roughly the same, with differences in history and culture of course.

"It was Wiccarus and Wilkheed whom we have to thank for their reign. Though, they are now centuries dead. It is best those dogs and their ideals stay asleep."

Models, art, and environments are a work-in-progress.

Stats for nerds

So far the mod is comprised of twenty levels. I took a tally of the number of lines in each of the 20 corresponding script files which totaled roughly 18600 lines which feels insane to me, and would make any programmer shudder. Unfortunately, I don't have Amnesia v1.4's fancy "#include" feature to programmatically merge script files together, so I have to manually copy/paste common functionality together. In terms of uncompressed file size, thus far I'm sitting at about 10 gigabytes, and this will probably grow (and be optimized, of course). For reference, Bunker is roughly 17 GBs.

Models, art, and environments are a work-in-progress.

Looking ahead

As stated in my last article, I made it clear that there was plenty of work left to be done for almost every aspect of the mod, and this is still true. Lately, I have given a week's worth of dedication to each of my twenty levels in the mod - and I'm not done yet. Furthermore I intend to go through each level again to tie up what loose ends I deprioritized (or felt too lazy to do). I have a long list of additions, improvements, and nitpicky things.

Models, art, and environments are a work-in-progress.

My ambitions for the mod keep growing. So much that here we are in the second-half of 2024 (already, goddamn) and I see no end to the mod's development soon. I wanted to have the mod ready for testing towards the end of this year, but that may or may not happen. My previous goal was to have the mod play-throughable and in the hands of testers, and that's still very much the goal, but I've shifted towards really fleshing out details and gameplay as new ideas keep flooding in. I won't be releasing Glicea: The Vessel until I am personally happy with how it looks, and I still won't be setting deadlines. With all that, I need to say that the mod will probably be delayed to 2025, for now.

Apologies for the long read, but that's all I have to give for this update. I'll still give very irregular updates about mod progress, but my focus right now is to make this mod good, more-so than popular. Thanks for reading.