General Update #19

So this month ended up being all about systems and design, so lets try and get through it all.

The Dungeon: All shadow boundaries have been set including an elevator system that includes gates you can open to call it to whatever floor you're on. The elevator is a little weird as it slows you down while riding it, but that's just something inherent to Unity I'm told. Still, you may be able to jump off of it at some point in its journey to access hidden areas, who knows. Every room besides the boss room is done now for the Dungeon.

Save/Load System: It was finally time that I tackled this. I've got it working and so far the save system will record your position, health, memories (new item), keys (new item), coins (new item) and unlocked teleport locations. It'll record the date and time of the save and number them starting from 1. Saving can only take place in specific save rooms. Also to note; if you plan to edit save files as .jsons are notoriously easy to mess with, I'll warn that there's an encryption system in place that'll detect modified saves. I've no doubt it'll be quite easy to bypass but if you don't know what you're doing, don't chance it, as the game won't load save files that have been tampered with.

Teleport System: The Teleport rooms are now also functioning. People might've seen that one portal gate next to the hub area. These are the teleport rooms and once you visit one you'll unlock it, allowing you to travel quickly between any other teleport rooms you've found. Currently there are only two in the game. One is in the hub and the other is in the Dungeon.

Memories: An entire new collectible system that represent various coloured orbs scattered around the castle. These orbs may sometimes be in easy to find locations, but many of them are behind hidden areas too. The purpose of collecting Memories will come in the form of eventually unlocking special doors that correlate to a type of memory. For example, there could be a door that requires you to have collected at least five Cold Memories, and one that needs five Stoic Memories. This is just to add something else to do over the course of the game.

Item Drops: Item drops are also in the game now. This comes in the form of both coins and health items. When you destroy a torch (they're destructible now) they'll always drop one coin and have a very low chance of dropping one of three health item types, those being small medium and large. Enemies will always drop multiple coins in a range (depending on the enemy) and also have a low chance of dropping health items. Your collected coins are recorded under your health bar and they'll be used in the future to purchase from the merchant.

Inventory System: This is only partially done so far. I was working on including a Key and Door system in the game, so I needed a place to store unused keys and any future key items, but also stuff you'll buy from the merchant. The inventory page has three tabs so far, those being Key Items, Consumables, and Notes. The keys are mostly working right now, I was playing with the UI all day to get it looking right. More of that will no doubt be done tomorrow, and hopefully finished by then.

UI: The UI in general has been getting a lot of work done on it. There's a main Pause Menu now that'll branch off into several other pages, one of course being the Inventory page, and also the Memories page that'll keep track of which ones you've unlocked and which you're still missing, this'll make it easier for people to look for specific Memories they don't yet have. Also the UI for the save/load and teleport systems was getting worked on, and a Main Menu in general too. There's an options menu but I haven't really done anything with it yet.

Miscellaneous: I made the first attack of the Player faster so that it feels less impeding to destroy torches as you move around the castle. I also added a slight vignette to the screen for better ambience. Some physics were introduced to destroyed torches and coins, they explode all over the place now. I did some UI-scaling resolution testing, if I've done it right there should hopefully be no issues with the use of standard resolutions. (Ultra-wides, you're on your own for now.) Lots of sprite work for UI and items has also been done.

So, what's next?

I need to finish off the Inventory/key/door system, and then I promise I'll get back to enemies and animations, which I'm sure is what people care about most. But all these foundational systems I've created this month? It had to be done eventually. We could only go so long without essential features like saving, loading, teleporting, inventory, and functioning keys, doors, elevators, so on. It's all water under the bridge, for now.

Once the new enemies are done I'll start work on pumping out as many new H-scenes for them as I can within the month, after that I'll possibly start work on the next zone. I've three in mind but unsure which I want to do yet. I'll at some point start working on NPCs, the merchant, and story stuff too, but I want to give people more to play with before anything else right now.

As usual a massive thank you to the supporters. I'm sorry for the lack of builds lately, but unless people wanted to test the save system for me I can't really offer anything new at the moment. This month, hopefully.