Developer Diary 21 (Patreon)

The last few weeks have been incredibly slow in terms of progress on the game. It has been a lot of thinking and scribbling in my notebook to try and figure something out and then spending a brief amount of time implementing it, just so I can go back to my sketchbook and start thinking again.

I spent a lot of time rethinking how the energy system works, and quite frankly, I am still not happy and also still not convinced I actually need an energy system. Right now it exists to time moves forward at a continuous pace. Before, you could choose when it becomes night, but I felt like it would be more interesting if time moved a more steady pace and the player had to plan their days, rather than exhaust everything they wanted to do.

To do this, I needed your ‘moves’ to be restricted, which I did using energy. Doing activities, such as shopping or earning money, would take energy away and move time forward. However it still doesn't feel right and it’s something I will need to keep working at. The next build will probably include an energy system in some way, but we will see how it works out.

Next up I sat down to streamline UI for NPC's. Right now when you go to a shop you see an NPC and you have only one button. I realized having context related buttons would be more useful, as I could re-use that system for every interaction with NPC’s. That is something I am currently working on. Soon the working system will be in place using this new UI and you will finally be able to earn some money!

After that comes the monumental task of the buying experience. Each different ‘type’ of store will need their own unique approach, so it will be a slow process to figure out how I want everything to work out.

It has been slow and for that I apologize. I wish I had more to show, but sadly I cannot demonstrate to you the hours of designing I’ve done in my head. The coming week I have a lot of IRL responsibilities, so I expect little progress towards next week, but we can stay optimistic. To leave you, here is a screenshot of the current context based UI system for an NPC.

Thank you for your continued support, and I will see you next week!

~Albatross