v0.9 Build Wrap Up! Small v0.10 sneak peek.

Heyo everyone! This one will be quite long, as there was quite a bit of last minute stuff, and bug fixes this week! Let's get into it!

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DAY 1

First thing that was done was a new transmission portrait for Pom. (As she is on your team now, we will have a more friendly face)

You may have noticed I also moved this into the "Hscene Room". This just made more sense to me, as Pom is a source of information, and a way to get to Hscenes you want. I felt it only made sense to combine all of that into one place.

Note that this menu IS accessible before you get Pom. The only difference will be that the transmission portrait will not be there and the "Sex" option will be gone.

In relation to the Hscene Room. Aether has received a bit of a glow-up, and Female options are now accessible again

Unfortunately there are still no new actual animations.

Something else that needed to be addressed was Rooster's new outfit. I forgot about one of the cardinal rules of 2D sprites... involving writing... oops.

The issue is that Rooster's conversation art will switch sides in event conversations, like with Tanya. This means the text is mirrored too... making it backwards.

Because of this AmHidden drew a separate texture. A script detects whether her sprite is swapped or not, and will automatically replace the sprite with the newly drawn one.

A bit of a silly thing, but I thought it would be cool to talk about a bit.

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DAY 2

The next thing I did was address some remaining Input System issues. (Things that I forgot, or hadn't switched to the new input system).

After that, I fixed up, and finished the remaining parts of the Pearlus2 Boss. Resizing things, reworking timings, etc.

And of course the ending transmissions

A QoL issue that was around, and made gamepad almost unusable was the way Unity handles "Selecting" buttons. I created a script to search, and select any button if there is none currently selected. (Previously if a menu, or button became unselected via mouse click, the gamepad navigation would essentially lose all function.) This should no longer happen. This was actually more annoying to implement than it seems ahah.

After that I made some fixes, and changes to previous Hscenes.

 Now Male Aether will be Idle by default (Instead of female). I may actually set the default state depending on whether you are Male/Female Aether outside of the Hscene.

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DAY 3

Next was fixing up some final things in Pearlus2. (Slightly mistimed things, adding Pom's power cell, etc.)

I had to make some changes to the giant clam, as the scaling was breaking the colliders on it. Some re-parenting fixed it up though.

After that I created a "perimeter" of visible objects around the player to make the underwater segment see more isolated.

This essentially creates a rendered face for the fog to apply to.

Don't mind Siren's squished face. In previous previews, you could see the surface, and open areas in the skybox. Now you will see the red haze in all directions properly.

After that I went back to the hub, I rigged up, and implemented Siren's alternate hairstyle.

While working in the hub, I added the new Pin Ups to the shop.

For the final part of this day, I had to do a bit of fixing on Pom's Hscene. At certain angles her breasts would clip with her face. Actually, even after the fix, they still kind of do, but it is much better than it was before.

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DAY 4

This was where I dove into the meat of some fixes and changes posted in the Discord. First I fixed some UI issues in the hub (Like affinity layering over itself, and names not appearing during dialogue options.)

I fixed an issue where Aether's gloves and jacket options wouldn't work.

I made it so Rooster's active ability can no longer kill the player. Instead it just does not let you use the ability.

Also, some abilities would persist during the outro cutscene. This "Could" kill you in rare cases. Upon finishing a level, all abilities cancels upon transition.

Next was something I really wanted to address since v0.8.

There is a fairly important change to Pix's Satchels.

Pix's satchels can no longer be detonated via shooting them. They will instead be detonated via remote detonation. (Pressing Pix's ability again). This allows the player to more accurately explode the satchel where they want.

This was changed mostly because you would essentially be unable to throw the satchels while shooting, as they would just blow up in your face.

One other change is that the satchels will not blow eachother up from their own explosions.

In the case above, previously ALL satchels would have exploded upon the bottom one's impact.

The final thing I did this day was fix a bug with "Enemy Scanners". Sometimes things like Siren's passive, or Lana would continue to shoot something even though it has long since passed. These targets should properly clear now. Do note that this does technically mean the auto target abilities have been slightly nerfed because of this, as it actually worked in the players favor in many cases. (Just in rare cases it would completely break) Fret not though, as they have been buffed in other ways which I will cover later in the post.

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DAY 5

I decided to remove the "Delete Data" button from the main menu. Considering there is only 1 file, starting a New Game essentially resets the data anyways. The Delete Data button was basically just a pointless landmine that you could press to kill all your data...

Next was fixing a bug with Highscores. Previously, it actually didn't save your Highscore... it just saved whatever your previous play-through score was... oopsies. It should now actually only show high score.

There was a bug where you could not choose 2 "Empty" slots for party members, and it would lock you with 1 party member.

Another nice thing, is I got rid of that annoying "flicker" when choosing an ally, and with switching back to overview.

I fixed a bug where Rooster's "Help" segment in Zol'gan wasn't showing their actual H-portrait.

I set up Pearlus 2's medal thresholds, and fixed some still persisting bugs in the hub (Mostly stuff involving the new Pom window).

I added "cm" variants to the character heights in the bios.

Finally, I went back to some Hscenes, and added mouth variations. (I also added these variations to the new Siren scenes)

Expressions on these Hscenes should be less static now.

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DAY 6 (Today)

I actually made some last minute changes today.

Proximity weapons are a bit weird because they really depend on the scale of the level. If the enemy needs to be close, it's really great for close up levels, like Catiya and Raptura, but stuff like Zol'gan, they would rarely actually come into range. This is a bit of a level design issue more than anything, but for now I felt the easiest remedy would be to extend some of the ranges. MITES range has been greatly increase, along with Lana's range (from 40 to 100).

Something that really annoyed me was how some abilities/weapons would be rendered completely useless in some boss fights. Like the aforementioned proximity abilities. This is fine for stuff like Siren's passive which is realllly just supposed to be a defensive/proximity guard. I found it bad in the case of MITES and Lana though.

I have created a function within some weapons to register when a boss fight has started. (Sort of like how Flame shot worked with Pom previously). When certain boss fights start, Lana's range, MITE range, and Flameshot's range will be increased by a massive amount, essentially making it so almost nothing can fall out of their range.

This means Lana, and MITES should now work against Pom as well.

Something that I didn't address that I still want to is Nika's active. In any stationary boss fight (and Pom), it is completely unusable. Not only that, but it just sits there in your face. I may not have gotten around to it this build, but it is something I want to address in the future as well.

Alright everyone! That should sum up this final week of development! I'll catch you all on the 1st for the launch of v0.9. There may not be a progress report on the Friday, as I'm going to be away most of this week, but I will if I feel there is enough to report about (in the few days I will be working).

Something else I want to mention ahead of time is that in next week's Poll, as usual, we will be determining the next level. (for v0.11) This time another option will likely be available, however, as I may be adding Nova's first level to the poll.

With that I will leave you all with a the first sneak peek of v0.10. The base art for v0.10's "extra" Hscene.

Alright everyone! Catch you all on the 1st!

-Regulus