Hi and Happy New Year!

This log contains info about the stuff I did in order to finish the last update that includes a new level.

I wanted to release it before Christmas and after that I got the flu and couldn't do anything. So I'm writing this log now.

In the period before the release and after the last dev log I've decided to rewrite the cut scene control system and some other systems, things I in fact thought of redoing after the release.

So it was a lot of work and testing in a relatively short time before the scheduled release.

 Here are some of the main elements I was working on.

Graphics

I couldn't resolve issues with lines showing on tilesets inside Unity. Tried all the suggestions and I finally ended up adding padding to all tilesets used for terrain, sky, sea... I think there were 8 tilesets in total.

So I will do tileset padding by default in the future.

I've changed saturation of background/foreground elements on level two so they are more distinguishable

Game Dialogues, Monologues (Comments) and Cut Scenes

All have been written (English and Croatian versions) and implemented using an improved and fully modular cut scene control system.

Now cut scenes can be skipped.

Cut scenes and comments from level 1 needed to be rearranged in order to work using new logic.

Comments and dialogues should make the game more involving, fun and enjoyable and it was very important for me to make this system fully functional.

Cut Scenes Control Logic

Core of the logic is still the same, but now I've been able to extrapolate all the necessary data out of the main code so everything can be controlled via the inspector and Cut Scene tables containing the data.

There was a lot of thinking, testing, organizing hierarchy from inside and outside. Took a lot of effort but I managed to make it work as designed and hopefully it will be easily upgradable.

More cut scene relative data is now stored directly into Cs_CSVReader class.

Those data are accessed by  CutscenesController class and handled as needed.

Both classes now have more options but that means many things are now easier to change during testing.

Cut scene skip option gave me some trouble. I could make special tables for each cut scene, containing last states for each interactive object used. And this can be made easily using this system, but I wanted something more automatic.

So I ended up with a system that parse each cutscene state table (this table has info on all objects and their states) and finds the last state change. Upon activating Skip cut scene controller will use that information to put interactive objects used in a cut scene and place them in a last state with all its values.

Also I added some new functions for controlling the objects - like movement to position, sound play by index and stuff like that... once the system is solid everything else is much easier and rewarding!

Interaction and UI navigation

Game menus can now be navigated via keyboard and the entire game can be played without the use of a mouse. Also game can be played using gamepad - including UI navigation, but since I don't have a lot of gamepads to test, so default key binding could be somewhat weird for now.

Sounds

Made all new sounds for switches, attacks, doors... Electric trap sound is still too irritating to some. I will probably change it.

Plans

I will most likely start to work on another game very soon and at the same time I'll be finishing Saving princess of Mars.

Depending on job opportunities I'm not currently certain what dynamics of development for these two games will be.

We will see...

Pssst... Next SpoM chapter will be called: The Mine!

A biiig secret!

Thank you for reading and stay tuned!