Before the poll results, a quick update
Everyone is back to work as of this week. I’m still recovering from my back injury so I’m working at about half speed, everyone else is working as normal.
I’m about 80% done my trello list for Prototype 5-2c and v105c, which will contain bug fixes and a bunch of small feature upgrades. Let’s take a look at those shall we?
Combat Icons
As part of a quality-of-life improvement, the hard-to-read text indicators have been replaced with these handy icons. The icons remain in fixed positions on the UI and are nice and clean to navigate. Urimas is currently finishing up the last of the icons for 55, and these will be in next week’s release.
Combat Inspector
The Combat Inspector has been brought in line with the new UI and is more functional and easier to read. The layout is not finalized but it will do its job for now.
Ability Inspector
You’ll now be able to check your abilities on the status screen, getting a better idea of their properties with long-form descriptions. Very handy if you want to check what something does outside of combat to formulate a strategy.
Many, Many Bug Fixes and QoL Improvements
The full changelog will be posted next week along with the next version. For now, let me say that I took your reports to heart and did as much as I could within the scope of 5-2’s release. Some changes got pushed to 5-3 since they’ll take a little longer or require more scripting.
Poll Results
Let’s get to the good stuff. This week we had 23 respondents on the steering poll.
So Steam Droid’s transformation won with Latex Drone coming in second. I’m going to ask the public what they think we could do to improve Eldritch Dreamer and Golem on the forums, but I’m happy with this. Editor MarioneTTe is the one who wrote the Steam Droid transformation, so I’ll try to coerce him into writing more in the future.
Character development takes priority? How did this happen? But in all seriousness, 55’s dialogue topics will be my first priority, followed by the Text Adventure side content (I’ll explain myself at the end of the poll) and then the main story content. Sophie’s extra events will not make it into Prototype 5-2 (most likely) and nobody wants me to improve the minigames. So those are right out.
This is about what I had expected, considering the state of the minigames. I’m going to be cutting all three and worrying about proper game content now.
The original purpose of the minigames was to provide a way to generate as many work credits as the player could stomach. However, that’s obviously no longer necessary with the addition of the Tellurium Mines. As such they’re redundant right now and polishing them would take time away from Chapter 5’s scenario work.
If it does become a thing in the future, Space Invaders will be the one rescued from the trash heap. But don’t count on that.
So this presents a dilemma, because you want more stuff to do with Sophie but want me to prioritize fireside chats with 55 and story content. Well, the next section of the story content is going to feature Sophie, and I’m thinking of adding another area to Regulus City that you’ll be able to visit with her. It’s a tricky spot to be in but I think I can manage it.
The extra content is definitely a go. That’s a pretty solid majority that wants to see the characters from the original Chambers of Pandemonium go up against doll girls. And by that I mean become doll girls.
Exactly how much this will add to 5-3’s development schedule I cannot say. The fact that it’s an independent game mode does mean it doesn’t need to 1:1 match the art style of Adventure Mode, but it probably will since that’s just simpler to do. More on this mode as I develop it.
Wrap Up
I expect Prototype 5-2c will be released next week with all the bug fixes, and after that I will begin a promotional tour of the internet to tout this game everywhere I can. I would really love it if we got enough contributions to hire a musician and to let me work on the game full time.
If you’re not a supporter, you really should be. 1$ really does go a long way.
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