Malevolent Planet 2D - Anxiety Overcame
Hey! Finally, I feel like I'm making some actual progress since the new year began.
I've not been able to sleep much in the past few nights so I'll try to not talk too much in here, because even though the message I'm trying to convey may be clear in my mind it's very likely you won't feel the same if I don't keep myself in check 😅
So, this week, while writing the dialogue(s) for the new flow, I've gotten an idea that I've actually not seen in any other NSFW game so far that has 2D animations and it really appealed to me. It mostly comes down to making an animation follow the dialogue from the very beginning to the very end, accounting for the chances you make in the dialogue.
As you may know, our current animations go like this: The scene starts directly NSFW-ish, usually with slow animation clips then with each animation clip it becomes faster until we reach the "finish line" for the animation. This time however, the animation you're going to see is very different in structure in an appeal to immersion.
Okay, it looks like I'm starting to talk too much, so that's all I have to say regarding this. I'm going to list what I did this week, or at least what I remember I did this week.
Bugs:
I'm only aware right now of a bug that happens when you start a mission in the new mission panel system and the quest starts, but it doesn't teleport the player character to the map where the mission begins. Should be fixed in the next builds... hopefully ✅ Thanks to (Fake Name, a very anonymous Patron), I have discovered a potential flaw in my teleportation, loading scenes, and unloading scenes logic. The act of loading/unloading relies on a timeout rather than on events, so it's possible that when you teleport in some places and the game behaves differently on your PC (different CPU architectures may play a role 🤔), you teleport in the correct place but the scene related to that correct place has not actually been loaded, so it looks like you got teleported in a gray space. So, I created a script that relies on events rather than timeouts and it's generally better structured than what I did in the past. I'll have to make some time next week to change all occurrences of teleportation to use the new script. This may be a pretty important issue, since it impacts some people but it never impacts other people, like me.
It's not possible to save/load saves in WebGL. ⏳ Postponed for a while, I'm focused on content rather than dealing with Unity's quirks right now.
Content:
Animate last week's rendered scene. ⏳ Although I have begun (began?) animating the new scene, this one is probably going to be the longest animation we've ever had due to my ambitious idea from above (which I really hope you'll enjoy, because it sounds fun to me) so even though there's some progress on it, I'm probably around halfway through animating it.
Write the dialogues and implement the flow for the new content. ⌛ The dialogues have mostly been written, all except for the NSFW dialogue branches that lead the animation. I usually write them after the animation is done, since they control the advancement of the animation and it's better for the text to follow the animation due to the fact that it's much easier to write something than to animate it.
Rework the intro cutscene, giving more visuals rather than just text on a space background. ✅ This is actually done, I recommend checking the intro cutscene even if you already have a save, it doesn't take long and you only need to press "Restart" to see it.
I've also been working on the new map where the content will happen, on Likurieris Alien Sprites, on the upcoming Melissa sprite, but it'd be too much in one post to describe.
All in all I had some anxiety because it's been a bit of time since the latest animation, I was afraid I lost my way around the animation editor in Unity, but luckily it seems that not only I've restored my "abilities", I've also restored my confidence due to the idea that kept me going today in developing the animation.
That's all for now, I hope you'll have a nice weekend!