Devlog #28- Chests and Chats

I’ve had a very productive week, and although my game is still not quite ready to release the update I’m super happy with how it’s going and have no doubt it’ll be ready very soon.

I’ve finished everything on my need-to-do list and I'm in playtesting mode but I’ve deviated from the list many times this week to add stuff that has been planned and put off for a long while (much like big cob last week).

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Attack Upgrades

I've revamped the character skills trees while adding Wesley's, and added some HIT upgrades that will mix up battle strategy a bit-

Ayumu's HIT upgrade will heal the same amount as the DMG he does to an enemy if he defeats them perfectly to 0 without overdamaging them. His attack does anywhere from 1-5 damage at the start of the game, so with some strategy you'll be able to pull it off pretty often for some bonus healing. 

Rina has a long overdue upgrade that adds a some control over the bubbles in her HIT. With the upgrade you can partially control the direction the bubbles drift, left or right. The spawn is still random, and you can only control all of them at once, but I think it'll help mitigate bad spawn luck a bit and I'll keep iterating it until it feels right. 

(Holding left and then right^)

Wesley also got an upgrade, now his attack will do a guaranteed CRIT if you repeat the prompt before the bar is half-full. The bar is red instead of orange while in range of a CRIT.

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Menu and UI

I also upgraded the visuals when unlocking star paths, so now the related part of the menu affected will shine as you upgrade-

I've tweaked a lot of menu stuff, including the main menu. I've been trying to think of a way to improve the end day screen for ages and finally gave it a go this week. It's still not perfect, but an improvement. You’ll see the screen pretty often so I want it to look cool and feel rewarding.

(ignore the glitchy alignment, no point fixing it when I plan to iterate)

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Chat bips and bups

I finally got around to making a proper sound engine with volume levels and a dedicated system for swapping background music. And while I was doing sound stuff I had a great idea for the character voices and revamped the monotone bips and boops I had playing while characters spoke-

I’ve always liked the Animal Crossing/ Banjo Kazooie/ Celeste way of doing dialogue- playing random sounds as the typewrite effect plays out. I tried it in the past but could never get it to sound good. But the new thing I tried this week was a variation of japanese-sounding single and double syllable nonsense that strings together to sound like chatter.

It turned out great for a prototype, unintentionally similar to how Olimar sounds in the Pikmin series. It’s just pitch variations of my own voice for the moment but I plan to get some of my Japanese friends to record the same prompts I said for a uniform sounding ‘language’ with dedicated character voices. I'll keep tweaking it and adding syllables until it sounds perfect.

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Destructibles

Finally, I added a couple more overworld destructible objects that break into materials. The first is similar to the weeds you’ll find around the place- crystal puddles.

Using Rina’s gourd you can now water the puddles you find and they’ll turn into crystals that you can cut down. With these you can build glass or water related objects at base-camp.

The next is a bit different- Chests. These are one time only and usually hidden off the main path, used as a reward for exploration.

Destroying a chest will reward you with 5 random materials and the tool you use to open it will change the probability of what you receive (this isn’t spelt out though, more of a secret).

You can use any tool on the chests and each one will have a different animation. So far the only tools you can use are the scythe and the gourd, with a higher chance of leaves and crystals, respectively.

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Goals for next week

No formal goals this week because I’m content just chipping away adding stuff I feel like. My need-to-do list is finished but I still have a handful of random things on the regular to-do list that’ll keep me busy in between playtesting and releasing the update.

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I can guarantee that the update will be out sometime in the next week, so I hope there’s even a single person out there reading this that will give it a go when it’s done and give me some feedback on it. Regardless, I’m looking forward to releasing it.

Thanks for reading!