Malevolent Planet 2D - Commencing Mission
Hello! While it may not be Friday yet, I'm going to post the conclusion of this development week today. Tomorrow I'll have to do some cleaning because next week I'll be leaving for a week as laid out in the Monday's post.
This week has been relatively successful in achieving my goals, I've made changes that will further help the stability and performance of the game, I've made it so NPCs and the player character will not be static during timelines, etc.
Bugs:
Ted, Morris, and Alberto in the post-ISA content aren't using the new animator controllers. ✅ Now they do and I can easily notice when I forget to equip Morris' glasses as an item due to him looking pretty tired without his glasses :D
Post-ISA content needs to have all light sources (Unity Light2D System components) disabled. ✅ I did this but I'm not 100% happy with the fake overlays I've had to make to simulate an alarm lighting effect. I'll most likely redo it if there's time.
When starting the game for the first time, the player chibi appears naked for a second or two. ✅ Fixed this by reworking the entire intro cutscene.
Content:
Plan the contents of the first mission you can go on. ✅ Everything is planned and I'm working on getting as much as I can of my plans into a December content build.
Plan some small freeroaming content, ✅ Done, small interactions after the crew gets treated which slowly leads you to interacting with the mission interface panel.
Design a forest map that leads into a cave and the inside of the cave, for the first mission. ❌ This wasn't fitting my near-immediate plans due to the map being too divergent from what was happening in the text game. So, it'll be included in another mission that'll be planned soon due to it being more like side content.
Extras:
I've developed an UI and a system that allows you to start missions from what will be in the future a Galaxy Map, but now only shows a planet. Here's how it works.
Did some coding changes that allow me to make chibis face a direction I want them to face, and more than that, some code that allows me to change this direction in timelines leading to simulated movement instead of static movement (the character appearing as if they're not moving at all, but their position changes). Not all timelines in the game are updated to use this yet, but at least new timelines will show the characters moving
Been working on a new map for the December content release. Won't go into too many details yet.
Releases:
I wanted to send the new WebGL build to some websites that host NSFW playable in the browser games. ❌ I ended up not doing it this week, because my previous public build still has lighting sources in all the scenes. Next week I should release a public build that has the lighting sources disabled and hopefully that leads to less bugs and performance issues.
I want to maybe make another public release this Friday, ❌ I'll end up doing it early next week most likely.
Marketing/Engagement:
Maybe make a poll for patrons to figure out if there's more excitement for more freeroaming content rather than the first mission. ✅ The results led me to decide that a few small interactions with a primary focus on the first mission is the way to go forward. This also led me to develop the mission information panel and set up its system allowing you to start missions from one place on the ship, bringing us closer to my plan for the 2D game to be more faithful to Mass Effect.
Post art WiP this week. ❌ I wanted to make a post with the design for the mission information panel, but I decided to work on implementing the design and the mechanic into the game so I'll mark it as a cross because the original plan was to put out a WiP of the upcoming map.
That's all from me for this week. Like I said, tomorrow I'll be doing some cleaning because I won't be able to after the surgery for a while. I'm happy I managed to do some actual cleaning into the game, to write dialogues for the new content, to plan the new content, and I hope that I'll be able to finish everything including the art by 21st December.
I wish you all a nice weekend!
