Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Video Update

Hey finally have a neat, err boring video to show off the game's progress so far. Well it should be nice to gather my thoughts/ self-critique on where to improve.

Some things right off the bat:
- Spelling, grammar errors and in general bad dialogue.
- Tutorial message popups would be nice.
- Have unique asset backgrounds when using unique systems (phone, newspaper, computer, etc)
- effects code is actually a big mess that I need to reorganize
- player/location management is also a mess that needs to be thought out and reorganized
- Awkward victory/end screen, needs something better
- Items are usable from outside the intended perspective (only when zoomed in should they be usable - I could try encapsulating them in a collider that zooms in when clicked, that might work.)
- Interactable objects need some sort of highlighting when mouse over them in the world.
- Clicking on buttons sometimes activates the button and the item underneath it, this shouldn't happen
- I have a event system complete with it's own mission and objective system for parallel mission progress, instead of the singular linear mission system currently used. Would be nice to switch it up.
- Work on more generic and reusable triggers and locking behaviors.
- Test/ Integrate have a plan for eventual localization of all in game text.
- Build a Esc/ pause menu
- Build an options menu
- Ensure that the game's menus work on different resolutions.
- Saving and loading level progress and achievement.
- World is bland and dull. 
- The fact that the current environment still needs more polish, but there are still 3 other environments to be done.
- Lighting is fullblown in places and needs to be redone and optimized.
- No sound effects or any audio stimulus aside from repetitive background music.

I'm very sure the list of shit suxs - improve it, can and does go on. At the moment I can't think of any more to elaborate on, but if anyone is actually reading this I'd love to hear anything about what you hate or don't like about this.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

New Year

Well it's been pretty quiet the last few months, but progress has picked up in the last few weeks. We have a functional demo, although there are numerous graphical bugs that I am currently working on.

I've been writing my own systems documentation - something I should have done months ago. It serves as a good way to communicate how my systems are intended to be used, and forces me to sit down and think hard about my design and execution choices.

With the all the gameplay systems set and the necessary code and functionality ready, designing additional levels for the complete game shouldn't take that long. However there are still three additional 3D environments incomplete, so those will be big time sinks. Oh well, I've always found making art to be more enjoyable than programming.

As for right today, I made a high quality phone asset that will likely be used often:
Creating it's own drawing coordinates and GUI system may be troublesome, but I don't actually know if it'll be a requirement. We could probably get away with leaving it as a static background item while just using the regular GUI commands to make the illusion of icons on the phone's screen.