Devlog - Playing around (Patreon)

Huge thank you to all my patrons. We just passed the 200 mark which is pretty cool! I wasn't sure how this whole experiment was going to go but I'm actually thrilled with the game's progress.

There's a bunch of stuff I want to fix/make more stable and clean up but all things considered it's very stable.

Now that I'm working on a bunch of character functionality it's looking more like a game every day!

Now that I got an inventory working (mostly) I'm in the process of trying to link it to your character stats and outfits. As you can see I'm also in the process of putting in character "stats"

This will probably reflect a similar mechanic to the final game (although will need lots of tweaking). I want to use your "brain" as a sort of health bar/energy bar. You deplete your brain power by using abilities and actions.

You can eat food and drink at any time to re-power your brain but as you do both the food and drink meter fill up (Draw the obvious conclusion here).

I did a prototype for a shop system. But immediately threw it out the moment I completed it. I decided I want something a little more adaptable. Just having a "money" slot feels a little boring.

I'm going to experiment with a system that will actually let you "trade" any amount of one object for any amount of another. Then I can just turn "Money" into a single item type that stacks. The advantage of this system is that it allows for simple "quest" systems where a character will only give you an item as a trade for another item, it could even add a collection element where you can trade up with different characters to get better stuff.

Playing

Okay so the thing I wanted to talk about here was the idea of playing with objects.
So I want you to interact with your environment in a way where I don't have to code every interaction.

I have a couple ideas,

I could allow the player to pick up and throw objects around the environment using a little bit of physics, they could make different sounds when you throw them.

I could possibly give you more direct control of your right arm so you could swing it around and poke things in the environment. It would be a little quarpy unless I could think of a simple way to control it.

Alternatively I could try something where you as a player are more rag-dolling on the ground and you lie around and squirm on the floor bumping into things ext.

Finally I could give the player a generic Use world item animation and put a cool little something on any item you can use, more just to encourage you to run around the world poking and prodding things. Sorta like Luigi's mansion.

One of these might work. I'm not 100 percent sure just yet what the best way to go.

Honestly the Luigi's mansion idea might be best where you are encouraged to play around with the environment poking and prodding maybe finding secrets. However, that does mean every damned object and item in the world suddenly takes like 5 times longer to set up. I need something that won't slow down environmental construction.

I'll have to see if I have any time to experiment with something interesting. I'm still gonna give it some thought, I don't want to waste any time until I have a good idea on what might be worth experimenting with.

If you know any games that let you play with the environment in an interesting/intuitive way I'd be keen to hear about it (although remember whatever it is it still needs to be pretty simple I have a whole game to make as well :D)

Just some food for thought,

I'll post another update later this week with how everything is going. In the meantime I'll be putting together more user interface controls and start trying to add some stats.

Have a great week everyone!