Mini Devlog - #1

Hey there folks!

I've decided to (try) and commit to a mini devlog habit, where I discuss some of the behind the scenes work to show some of our progress from time-to-time.

So for this week, we have around 5 major accomplishments:

Updated Dialogue system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujZ3WVDrbOE&feature=youtu.be

Fixed issues with branching conversations (it's a lot easier to create these now!).

• Made it easier to create conversation data i.e the actual text for text boxes for when the NPCs and such talk to you. (In Unity, we are currently handling this using “scriptable objects”)
• Added a little indicator in the corner of a textbox
• Updated message triggers to be able to start messages automatically or when entering a trigger
• You can speed up text by holding button down.

Added in UI to show the name of a room/scene when you enter it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTxKwiH-CGU&feature=youtu.be 

This is a relatively minor enhancement, but it sure looks cool! I ended up manually animating this in Unity's timeline to give it a nice easing effect!

Bug fix to allow test enemy’s hit boxes to actually work again

This issue was a pretty simple fix that I originally suspected was going to need a deep drive to fix. Glad I was wrong :D

Switched over to a tile based system for level greyboxing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVVAVVzp9rI&feature=youtu.be 

So in the past, I've played around with a lot of methods for building test levels, and couldn't quite find anything that was fairly quick and dependable. Surprisingly enough, I tested out Unity's tile editor and it's actually pretty good for solving this! I'm kinda embarrassed that I haven't used it until now ;)

Introduction of Behavior Tree System to replace most of old AI

We've actually begun trying out a Behavior Tree System that should make it much easier to build engaging AI without the burden of repeated code or writing a lot of boilerplate code for each enemy! We're still working on transitioning stuff over from what we had, but it's looking good so far!

That's it for now!