Devlog 40
Continuing development… I integrated and set up all the art I made — scenes, merchants, camps, animations, dialogues, and so on. A ton of work. I also tested it myself and fixed the bugs I found, adjusted balance, made onboarding simpler and clearer.
I was also preparing builds for the playtest and putting together a questionnaire for testers. More details below.
New camps:
Placed everything, added collisions, added sprites to spritesheets.
New characters:
Added and set up everything related to the new characters. Added dialogues, scenes, animations, expanded the gallery.
Merchants:
Assembled and placed all the merchants, set up their phrases, additional objects, animations, prices, etc.
Extra:
Added the possibility of an ending if both characters are +5. No art yet, just code.
Found a way to do localization. I initially laid down the wrong system — or rather, I didn't think about it at all, since I didn't know how to do it, but now at least with glue and heavy work I can add another language, theoretically.
Fixed annoying bugs caused not by code logic, but by how the code is executed by the processor. Turns out delays in UniTask can sometimes just be skipped, or hang the code execution, and you need to specify in a special way how exactly it counts the delay time. Maybe some of you have encountered a bug where relationships wouldn't stop and wouldn't progress — that's it. I spent 3 days digging through the logic checking every method, playing out different gameplay scenarios, recording video so I wouldn't miss anything — sometimes the bug would appear, sometimes not, but now it seems to be fixed.
Fixed the shop. Because of the new balance I had to expand the code, and a bunch of bugs popped up, but they're purely logical — now everything works as it should.
Polished the game experience for a player entering the game for the first time. Removed situations where you could accidentally do something wrong, removed confusing things that stop progress, and there were bugs there too (also fixed). Now it should be significantly better in that regard.
I fixed a lot of other things too, just by playing and fixing on the spot — I can't even remember it all, but they were small changes.
Steam release:
My unequal battle with bureaucracy and sanctions continues. Steam's identity verification partner said my passport and driver's license don't count. Two weeks of waiting for nothing. Well, that's not a problem for expierenced adventurers like me, haha. Everything needed is done, money is paid, now I just have to wait… What other obstacles await me, only time will tell.
Playtests:
I think I've fixed everything I could find myself, now it's time for general testing. I don't want to immediately do a mega test on everyone I can get my hands on, since I haven't done playtests yet, and I might mess up my expectations from testers, or how to collect feedback. I think we'll do a small trial test now, about 5-10 people, just to see what comes out of it, we'll do a trial iteration.
I've already put together the questionnaire, I still need to prepare the builds and write a description of what needs to be tested. I don't need many people right now, so most likely I'll personally give the role and add people to a private channel on Discord, where we'll try to figure things out. So write to me on Discord, I'll add you.