Updates for this month:
- Paths (path creation tool)
- Eastern Forest quests, characters, and story
- New quest types: Talk to quest, Go to quest, Collect quest
- More dialogue intractability functionality
- Misu’s book overhaul (different sections, sunspots, opening to where there is new info, debugging panel, settings, custom font)
- File resetting on mobile
- Small bugs fixes
I built a path making tool that takes in a series of vector 3 points that the user clicks and builds a mesh that contours to the terrain mesh below the points. Given path width size, it is then generated with triangles and basic UV unwrapping, saved and rendered in the view. There are probably better ways of making paths, but given my limited knowledge, and desire to not 3d model, this is the route I took. I used a tutorial for Generating a Mesh using compute shaders by Ned Makes Games.
At this point there is, what one might call, a completely playable (albeit short) story. Akin to maybe a tech demo. There is an intro tutorial in the desert, which leads to the main town which the player will use to travers to other parts of the world. From there, the Eastern Forest is unlocked with 3 potential Sun Spots to find and a mini storyline to fix a river bridge. There is also a fishing spot, a chase mini game (red laser dot), and multiple characters to talk to. It is the beginning of the story that will bring the player across the fictional world, which I have yet to name. It is my hope to finally get this prototype in the hands of some friends and family for some proper play testing in the following month.
To that end, new quest types have also been added, so there are a total of 5 different types of quests so far. Quests that have the player going to a specific location, talking to a specific character, collecting a specific number of an item, collecting and dropping an item to a specific location, as well as the basic, find a sun spot quest. And to accommodate some of these new quests (ie talk to quests) new dialogue interactivity was also implemented, as well as dialogue paths that react to the current progress of certain quests. Make dialogue feel more alive, reactive to the players actions.
Misu’s book, for recording sun spots and used as a general menu, also go a upgrade. It was always the plan to use a 3D modeled book, rather then a 2D static image, to which I finally got around to prototyping. I hope to add page flipping animations eventually as well. I also quickly made my own hand written font, both for the fun of it as well as to give the impression that Misu herself is the one filling the book out. Misu also now starts the game with a simple book cosmetic on her back (which can be changed at a wardrobe) but at least in the beginning, helps tie in the use of the book in the first place (the icon in the upper left). Though the way the quests are displayed will most likely change, though as to what, I am not yet certain (objective, show only the top most recent…). There are also now different sections in the book dedicated to the different regions the player will be going through finding Sun Spots in.
There was an issue in which, even though the game had been uninstalled off a phone and all files should have been deleted, when reinstalled, the game would resume at a previous save (not even the most recent prev save). That has been resolved. It was due to automatic backups being made by the phone, and therefore have been disabled.
Lastly, as with every month, lots of small bugs were worked on, such as incorrectly displayed quests, incorrect quest order, navigational mesh for NPCattos not working/ having incorrectly set up parameters, as well as fixing when the player goes into AFK animations, among other things.
Note: At the moment, I am using the same cat model for all the NPCattos, simply because it is easy to use one model, however, I do have others.
**Models, animations, and images are not final**
