Malevolent Planet 2D - The Dissassembly

Hello! I have a feeling this week will be a Quality of Life development week for the game, combined with new art and a new public release.

Here's my theoretical list for this week:

Bugs (many of them QoL):

• On some resolutions, the resolution drop-down list in the Options menu isn't wide enough for higher resolution and refresh rate entries, causing the refresh rate part to be cut.

• There isn't a Company Name set under the project settings for the game, making the game data of the game being stored in a folder called "DefaultCompany". I think I'll call the "company" SugarMint.

• The Load Game main menu item is visible only when you have local saves, so you can only load a save from a file if you already have local saves.

• When you go through the intro cutscene for the first time, something gets added to the inventory and causes Emma's portrait to disappear. This is slightly because of the dialogue system I'm using, but I'll try to make it more seamless.

• Thorough the entire intro, the minimap of the ISA Lobby/Entrance is being shown.

• ISA being a confusing abbreviation, due to it applying to both International Space Academy and International Space Administration, which can be a bit confusing. This is a bit difficult to deal with.

• The Quests list in the Quest Journal can be dragged around. This UI and some other may need a redesign.

• The "Hide", "Skip", "Auto" buttons can appear to be toggled on (green 🟩) even if they aren't, especially when the dialogue window reappears.

• During the initial dialogue, clicking at the bottom center of the screen (where the ISA entrance would be on the actual map) will skip most of the dialogue and sometimes result in an empty dialogue window.

• You can move your character when the Quest Journal window is opened by clicking outside of it.

• Moving using keyboard causes the minimap show/hide button to change appearance (between "X" and "-") and pressing space shows/hides it.

• Clicking Character and minimap buttons still trigger character movement.

• Bubbles and floor frames in the tubes in the top corners of the reception area are drawn above your character.

• Speech Bubbles are glitchy, some stay on the screen forever, some get skipped or replaced by displaying previous messages again, and it's possible to trigger multiple instances of the same dialogue which will play at the same time. When they work, they change too fast and reading them if you're not a native English speaker or you read slower is too difficult.

• The Dialogue Avatars don't fade "right". This is a bit more difficult and I've solved it many times for it to be "updated" to the old behaviour every time I was updating the asset.

• Morris and Nurse Dialogue is a bit glitchy. The narrator message gets drawn letter by letter  but before the text gets to be fully drawn it disappears. When the Nurse leaves after taking Morris' blood sample, her standing avatar picture is still visible under Emma's. Some deprecated dialogue nodes are still there and it can make it look like there's some kind of glitch going on.

• In the Medical Room, when you're near the doctor or near the exit and you're not hovering the mouse over either of the elements, the dialogue/exit action icon is displayed near the privacy screen in the upper right part of the map.

• It can look like the first few messages in the first dialogue in the ISA Gym are skipped.

• When returning from the showers on the first night, trying to enter Male Bedrooms shows the character wearing the academy outfit rather than the night dress.

• In the ISA Garden, the blonde girl (I assume Gloria) walks along the bottom of the walkway and clips through the flower pots. The pots are drawn in front of her, but the flowers are below. Same thing happens with Emma and the trees.

• During the first few messages in the pheromone bush dialogue of Suspicious Grass, it looks as if the auto button is enabled.

• The bush quest marker "?" is still visible even after finishing the quest.

• Desks/shelves/counters at the bottom right corner of the first Laboratory area are glitchy, some of them are drawn over Emma's sprite and you can walk through one of them, the 3rd from the right.

• Cannot enter the medical bay without being dressed up as a nurse. The flow here can be confusing, I'll update it to be more seamless.

Many of those are from a fellow unity dev who tried to help me figure out what was causing the game to enter an infinite loop at various parts of the game.

Mechanics:

• I want to work on a few mechanics within the dialogue system that would allow me to have more control over what happens during an animation.

• I want to be able to change an expression during a dialogue line without memorizing words.

Content:

• Add the rendered human camp map to the game as a playable area. A WiP will be posted tomorrow!

• Plan the dialogue/content flow for what happens in the human camp and immediately afterwards.

• Plan scene(s) for the February build. One is planned but it's not yet rendered, I'll try to think about more.

Release(s):

• I want to release a public build on Thursday-Friday. (8th-9th of February 2024)

Social Engagement:

• Schedule one more WiP for this week and maybe for next week as well.

Well it looks like I have a lot on my plate this week. I hope you'll have an easier week than me 😅