Progress on the development of Malevolent Planet - 28th May 2020

With the occasion of ending the last linear chapter of the game, I have also made a new banner and updated the protagonist's profile picture. (Couldn't draw all possible variants of the player character, so she will have to be our main PR avatar.)

• Updated Ted's portrait.
• Made the background fit the entirety of the passage screen as you can see in the screenshot with the background filling in the screen up until the sidebar starts.
• I would say the story is 95% done.
• Added all the new portraits to the game.
• Cannot post them right now as they're not ready, but new player outfits are being developed with the intention of using them in the chapter that's to come.
• Developed code that would display the currently held item under the character's screen, but this will be added from the chapter onwards as they will contain the Life Simulator type-of-gameplay and even though I would like to add it to the linear-content that's been made so far, it will flood the available development time and its only purpose would be for immersion. However, since the next chapter allows for more freedom of movement, events, quests and others the currently held item would also bring some mechanics of its own, in a combat of some sorts for example.

So, right now I am putting an end to this version's storyline and at the same I am ironing out bugs as I see them. 

After the finale is written, I will play through the last plotline a few times and calibrate the empty spaces between paragraphs so that there won't be evident wasteful whitespace, this of course after the bugs for this plotline are eliminated.

After that, I will do a few more playthroughs of the entire game with the purpose of eliminating any bugs I may have missed over my many tests and maybe some whitespace adjustments like above.

I have dedicated my entire day today to writing this chapter, so if all goes well the version will be rolled out even sooner. Assuming everything goes well with what I've planned, the work on the next chapter will begin and I will make a few polls to see what people would like to see more in the first life-simulator chapter.

For starters, I know that a quest system, a visible inventory system, a more detailed character screen, navigation options between locations, events and interactions with characters you met are desired features. For these to work, a fight system is currently in the works and I will need your input on that if possible, like how would you like to see a fight system play out.

Let me clarify something as well. Even though the Life Simulator system will introduce freedom of choice for the player, it does not mean that the game will become a sandbox. I thought that a main story would also be nice, for example rebuilding your spaceship for travel to other planets or to communicate with humans from earth would be a main mission and you can have a lot of side quests that will help you achieve your main missions on the way.