Mall Game Project - Notes, Environments, and Activities
Howdy! Update's here a lot sooner then I expected. Made a lot of progress in terms of activities, the West Concourse of the mall, and enhancements to the note system.
First off, large enhancements have been made to the note system. Previously, all notes looked exactly like this:
Ignore the placeholder joke text. Regardless, this is how I designed it at first. Basic scrapbook paper just to hold some important notes. This worked when most of my writing intentions was little scrap pieces to tell a story, but then I wanted to expand and start writing what should be 'official' notes left/sent in by corporations or offices. And I highly doubt a head office is going to send out hand-scrawled notes on scrapbook paper. So, I've started working on a system to allow different types of notes. Here's the placeholder for an 'office' paper.
Very unfinished, missing a proper font, proper background, etc. But it's just to give an idea that there's different types of notes to collect.
Of course, with this change, I also had to update the note journal system, because it was built to support just the one type of note. Here's how it used to look:
And, here's how it looks now:
The journal now has a default "no item selected" background, and I've moved the "click a note to read" text to the other side of the screen. It also supports the different types of notes you can find, but it still needs some tweaks. Cool! Nifty!
The next big item on the checklist is the activities system! Currently It's not very exciting to show off, but you just have to trust me.
There's now a basic system where you can enter a store for the first time, and you'll be prompted with a message that there's a new activity to complete in the store. This can range from cleaning things up, stocking shelves, picking out a movie, searching for an item, repairing items, etc. These are all basic now but I plan on expanding that once I've gotten a few developed. Regardless, you walk in, interact with whatever the activity requires, and you'll get a reward and a sticker mark on your completion status!
This is... very rudimentary right now and mostly serves as something to test the gameplay loop with. I really want to come back to this system later on and add so much more to it. Hopefully next time I'll be able to show it off.
Last, but definitely not least, I've been working a lot on the environment for the mall. As a refresher, here's what it looked like the last time I showed it:
Well, here's what it looks like today:
It's still very far off completion, and the lighting needs some work. Lighting and art has never been my strong suit and I'm going to spend a lot of time tweaking this, but I'm pretty pleased with how it looks right now.
That's it for now. A lot of progress in a week, and with all the visual enhancements it really feels like the project is starting to come together. I had basically finished about 80% of the gameplay last year before I stopped work, so the only thing stopping me has been this art segment. Now that some progress has been made it's motivated me a little bit more.
Thanks again for reading, hopefully I'll have some more later.
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