Voice Work, New Save system, and Pom's Data Chips

Hello everyone! As mentioned, this week was focused on implementing the VA work for Starbreed up until Zol'gan2. There's a good amount more I managed to get done. I put in a lot of extra time to knock off a few more things on the list. This includes a new save system using json, and Pom's Data Chips feature. I'll elaborate on what all this means in a few here!

Starting from the top! Let's talk about the new voice work. The casting is as follows:'

Returning:

>Lana ---------------------- KumBomb
>Pigman ------------------- McNorsk
>Pix ------------------------ Gina Galore
>Siren ---------------------- JellyfishJubilee
>Weeble -------------------- McNorsk

New:

>Female Aether ----------- Mimi Hung
>Male Aether -------------- LuckyLucas
>Brisk ---------------------- PhosphorusVA
>Coyote -------------------- PhosphorusVA
>Freya ---------------------- InvaderNoodles
>Nika ----------------------- PixieWillow
>Nova ---------------------- EndymionVA
>Other --------------------- JellyfishJubilee
>Pom ----------------------- InvaderNoodles
>Rooster ------------------- Sorry
>Tanya --------------------- BordeauxBlack
>Tiger ---------------------- BordeauxBlack

Levels that have had VA added are:

>Titas
>Neos
>Zol'gan
>Catiya2
>Raptura2
>Molbon2
>Pearlus2
>Zol'gan2

Along with most of the new Hscenes, and various conversation intros.

Due to a few reasons I did cut a few lines in the text dialogue, but the impact should still be a massive improvement!

Considering I don't have too much to show, I won't go into too much more details about the specifics of the process of it, but I crunched a bit hard to get this all implemented in a timely manner to open up time for what I wanted to do next:

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Pom's Data Chip system.

I touched upon this before as a plan, but now I managed to get the assets together, and write up the core scripts for it all. In case you missed the explanation: In every level there will be a hidden "Data Chip". This chip will contribute to various perks related to Pom depending on your total gained chips. The collected data, and hints can be viewed in the Hscene room.

(The grey squares are just placeholders atm, but they will display a highlighted data chip icon, or greyed out depending on if you've received the chip or not.)

To start, the hints are very vague, but once you hit 5, and unlock "Expanded Hints" they be come much more detailed.

The rest of the rewards will likely be filled out at a later build, but I implemented what I could.

"Gold Power Cells" are what you are familiar with. This essentially means Pom will no longer drop these right away, and will instead only drop them once enough data chips are acquired.

Likewise, the "VR Hscene" is the Hscene you have had access to right away previously, but now it will be a later stage of Pom's development.

As for the Low, Med, and High Res animations, they will be available when going to the pod.

Each animation will have a few different speeds

Along with a climax animation

As for the Data chips themselves, they are achieved by essentially doing what the hints point at.

Upon revealing, it will home into the player, just to ensure the player doesn't miss picking it up or something (The only exception to this is when the data chip is preexisting in the world like in Titas2.

Anyways! If you read the hints you'd likely see that the objectives vary quite a bit, from killing "x" enemies, to killing hidden enemies, to not getting hit by things, to just finding where it is placed, and even destroying props.

You will be able to collect all these data chips in the next build, but there will only be the rewards that show. I do have rewards planned for the blank slots, but I haven't started requesting the assets for them. The ones in there now are likely the most important ones anyways.

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Next up was.... actually something totally random I felt like trying while eating some lunch. There's not much reason for me to add this to the post because you cannot actually do this in the coming build, but whatever.. it's fun enough to show.

I wanted to see how easy it would be to just swap out Aether for a flying model of Nova, with her own weapon set that was super OP.

As I said.. this won't actually be available in-game, but may be a fun easter egg or reward for beating the game in the future.

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This leads to our final point. A new save system. I am HOPING this new save system will be the new permanent one. PlayerPrefs was temporary, as the original binary save system caused issues for a small margin of people. The save system will be similar to the binary one, except it will just use json instead. I am hoping this was the source of the issue, and it won't come up anymore, but we will see as new versions come.

As with last time, if you currently have a save, it should transfer over to the new save system (hopefully) seamlessly.

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With that, the week comes to a close! It was definitely a bit of a grind, but this knocks off a lot I was concerned about finding the time for. Next week is going to be all about Build Wrap Up. There is quite a bit to actually wrap up here, so it will likely be another busy week. Thanks again everyone! I'll catch you all next week for the breakdown!

-Regulus