Malevolent Planet 2D - Alien Content + Worldbuilding

Hello! I've been doing some planning over the weekend and I think that the best step forward right now is to try to build up the setting/background of the current chapter of the story, focusing more on the infection that's taken over the Alien planet through the showcase of alien scenes and alien content in general.

I'm also doing further experimentation that would allow me to write dialogues and apply expressions faster than before using a different technique from render textures for now, as changes to the way we show dialogue avatars can impact the game in unexpected ways right now, although that has to be done.

Bugs:

• In the Gallery Viewer, if the scene you're trying to preview doesn't have its own camera, it leads to the main camera of the game remaining inactive. This happens during the rendering snapshots process, where instead of assigning preview sprites for every animation/scene, I try to render a snapshot by loading the animation in the game for a brief moment and capture a still image of it that's used as the preview sprite for the animation.

• The Choices you can make in the latest content don't store variables/values in the memory depending on the choice you made, which lessens my ability to make the choices matter. I have to figure out the best approach to storing the results of the choices, without making save files too big, then go through the dialogues in the game and store a value for every choice. In some places the choice does store something in the database, but it's not done in a consistent way yet.

Content:

• Add 2 New Mini Scenes that have 3 stages of progression each. This will definitely be done this week.

• Write the remaining dialogues up to and including the encounter with Anna before going back to sleep. I have to write two dialogues for this, and maybe provide some choices for the post-Anna encounter which can change your relationship with some characters.

• Start drawing & rendering & animating the first Alien-on-Alien scene

• Start drawing & rendering & animating the first Shower Scene.

• Think about some extra illustrations we can add to the game, or animation(s) with Melissa depending on the pacing.

Release(s):

• Make a Public Release this Friday. This is very important.

So I'd like to focus more on content this week rather than on mechanics, but when I get back to mechanics I'll also bugfix and polish the current implementations of what we have, such as the gallery system, the quest UI and so on.

I'll also try to post some WiPs this week with some sketches.

Thank you for reading this and have a nice week!