Weekly Roundup 5 - 03/04/20 - Dialogue Systems (Patreon)

Hi everybody!

A big thank you to all of you who continued to support me as we rolled into April. The level of support that crowdfunding has given me has been so encouraging!

And another thank you to all of our new supporters who joined over this week!

1: This Weeks Progress

There was two work focuses over this week. The first was updating the Description on the Main Patreon Page to better reflect the current work on Tessa the Mouse Boss. As well as some promotional work done to let people know of the playable demo available to $10+ Supporters.

The second focus of this week was getting started with the dialogue system. While it's not done yet the main back-end work of figuring out the logic has been completed. Resulting in a flexible system that allows dialogue screens to trigger when desired. 

To give an example of how much work goes into a system like this. Here's a visual state tree that shows how all dialogue is centralized at a singular triggering Hub, then branches out given the context of the trigger:

Each end point is a unique dialogue string and setting the size of the dialog box. The cool thing about this system is that more can added to it, including putting flourishes on the dialogue pop-ups themselves. Like putting graphics into a particular string.

2: Reminder on completion target date for Tessa

To be transparent, my target date for completing Tessa the Mouse Boss is somewhere at the end of April, running through to mid may. 

I call it a target because it won't be clear how much there is to polish until we get to that stage of development. 

Once Tessa is done, some time will be taken to write out a design pitch for the next title. Something bigger and involving multiple characters and a more long-term progression to gameplay, maybe like an RPG or exploratory genre.

3: What's Next: Fleshing out Dialogue System

The main goal for next week is to really flesh out and build upon the dialogue system. Work on adding more dialogue trigger points and to polish up current trigger points!

After the dialogue system is done, i'll then be moving onto trying an Arousal system to the various methods of tickling. Effectively giving the game a win-state!

Thanks for your support! :D

- Caroo