Kandria
How do you feel about escort missions?
Kandria will include some forms of escort missions, an important part of which we've worked on this week.
If you haven't read it yet, be sure to have a look at last week's monthly roundup. There's a lot to see there!
Nick
I was supposed to work on the first underground segment this week, but I just couldn't get myself to do it. I think I burnt myself out a bit on the tilesetting the last two weeks – I really couldn't feel it. Hopefully I can get to that next week, though. It's quite important that we start blocking that out, since that'll cover the largest area for the vertical slice.
Anyway, instead of that I worked on fixing a bunch of bugs and improving existing systems.
Particularly, we now have a 'walk n talk' system that lets us deliver dialogue while the player is in control. This combines really well with when a character leads you somewhere, or follows you along:
This should help a lot to make longer trecks be more interesting, especially if you have to go somewhere you've already been. It also just natural to be chatting with a pal while on the go, so it helps a lot in making this kind of thing feel less gamey and more immersive.
I've also implemented a system that should help us a lot to figure out the pacing and difficulty of the game. Along with everything else, save-states now keep a record of your movement throughout the entire playthrough. When you submit a feedback report, a save-state is sent along, so we'll be able to look at your movement data and see which paths you took, what areas you explored, and most importantly, where you got stuck or had trouble navigating.
Later we might also integrate that data into the in-game map as a little bonus. I've always really liked seeing my progression through the map in Breath of the Wild, for instance. For now though that's a feature for the future, as I have much more important fires to start and put out.
Tim
The framework for the first quest is now done, with a ton of dialogue written for Jack and Catherine, and a nice sprinkling of dialogue choices for the player. (The entire quest logic is being run in and around the settlement at the moment - but once we have the caves level area, it should just be a case of moving the trigger points to the new locations.) I’ve also had fun writing interesting lore interacts for different parts of the camp, encouraging the player to explore and learn about the world. There’s still a bit more to do to round out this quest, but it feels good to have broken its back. I now feel confident about tackling the next couple of quests, which should proceed much quicker - not least because they’re not as complex either!
Fred
Worked some more on building tiles and some new animations for Catherine and the Stranger, which I hope you'll get to see soon!
Alright, that's it for this week. I'll be sure to start throwing some concept art together first thing on Monday! See you for that next week!
In the meantime, here's a question for you: How do you feel about escort missions in games? In my experience they can be quite annoying sometimes. What do you think?