Progress on the development of Malevolent Planet - 21st July 2020 (Patreon)
Content
Today I worked on:
- Ted's Quest. I expected to finish it today, but I spent more time writing a scene to make it more pleasing to read and I built up the introduction to the latest environment of this quest. Even though the quest would be done only once in every single run, there are still paths you can take that affect the way your character's characteristics develop, and the events that immediately unfold after the choice. As seen in the second screenshot, so far as the quest lacks an ending, I'd place it at around 80% with around 6.7k words of content. The ending will include a few possible scenes that need to have a different ending. Also, I started incrementing the Corruption property in one of the branches that lead to the scene that makes sense for it.
- I used the mechanic I've talked about yesterday in a scene that is time-sensitive, it's probably a gimmick for now, but since it is essentially a full JavaScript game that uses SugarCube as a template, I thought I can start developing a few intuitive mechanics that can make the distinction between this game and a visual novel in terms of gameplay that can affect what scene(s) you get.
- Developed a stylistic choice surrounding thoughts. For repetitive encounters and events, the thoughts that come into your character's mind depend on the Lust level at that moment. As you can see in the screenshot, there are different colors for each percentage the bar is filled. As the game gets bigger, I can put in more unique interactions for each of those. Before that though, I'll need to finish the fight system in to fit what was voted in this poll. It can "naturally" fill up the lust bar depending on what happens during the fight and until the character's needs are filled, intrusive thoughts will come in that may or may not lead down some roads.
For tomorrow, what is left is to finish the scenes for the ending, to add some finishing touches such as making sure that the clothes change properly, the player attributes as well, a few stylistic choices here and there (text padding and paragraph indenting), and some proofreading to make sure there are no glaring mistakes. After that is done, I will proofread once again a few interactions you can have in the beginning of this chapter with your crew mates. To not limit everything to them, I want to write a few short interactions that depend on the time of the day in the human corner of the Likurieris village. Once all this is done and tested, I will release the version as it is so that you can see what quests will look like in terms of content. This most likely won't be done in one day, but if everything goes well, it should be ready by the weekend so that you would have more time to try it out.
It may be a little too early to say, but once the new version is released I will focus more on getting the fight system finished so that the next quests can use it. With this additions to the inventory system will come, because the gun assets need to start getting used.