Saturday Update

Hey people, I'm starting to feel a little better, so lets get down to business.

First thing: This month the motel level of Orc Heist is gonna be finished, all that's left is the final puzzle and sex scene! 10 dollar people, your exclusive build is already up, with details on how to find some new sexy content. (demons and terrible acting are involved.)

Second thing: I wanna discuss an aspect of Zap and Andy's development, and how it's gonna be in the future.

When we really early on decided both Zap and Andy would be playable, we wanted to make both of the characters stand out from each other, and having unique powers was our way to do that. Initially, Zap was gonna have the ability to fly, but that created more issues than it solved, so we compromised by giving him the power to summon a cherub he could control remotely. This let the player interact with objects up high or fit into small spaces.

This little bastard right here.

The cherub at the time was one of the most, if not THE most complex thing I'd ever coded, and everything about it seemed to work perfectly, so I was very happy.

I didn't know it at the time, but this thing was about to double my workload.

When controlling the cherub, Zap can't move or speak, so code has to be in place for all those cutscenes that would require him, either to get him ready, or to have an alternate in place that didn't involve him. If the code wasn't there, best case scenario it would look bad, worst case scenario the game would crash.

Designing complex rooms became twice as complex. What was already a heavy amount of work because of two possible characters became even heavier because the cherub was functionally a third character with a completely different set of rules.

During my cleanup this month, it became abundantly clear to me, the cherub in its current state was just not worth it. Though it opened countless puzzle possibilities up, it was making the game take FAR longer to develop than any of us wanted, or anticipated.

Something had to change.

Discussing it with the others who work on this game, we came to an agreement. The cherub's functions had to be cut down significantly. Flying around and interacting with objects was enough for us.

So! In addition to the next couple of areas after the motel level having you control a single character for both plot reasons and to smooth development time, the cherub can no longer do things like switch control to Andy.

It might sound small, but it makes things a hell of a lot easier to do, in exchange for taking puzzles where you use both Andy and the Cherub at the same time off the table.

I think that's one hell of a fair trade.

So, development on this game is gonna go much faster in the future. I no longer have to code for three characters, or even for two for a while.

I've also started the process of creating and inserting the rest of the sounds! :)

That's it for today. I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend! Next Friday is gonna be the day the Orc Heist build is available to all patrons! 

See you all Tuesday! :D