Dev Diary #5: Clearing trash

Hello everyone!

Even though I made TH2 posts recently I had to check back the previous posts I made about the brothel to remember what I had mentionned or not ^^' (after all, the last Dev Diary I posted was in September x))

The brothel is a bit like a Frankenstein monster. We keep adding/removing stuff based on how we see things to be fit. The good side is that it means the global experience will be better (as we're aiming at something that SHOULD (hopefully) feels like a good experience for the player), but the bad side is that in the end, things are taking longer. There are elements we've been thinking adding in the game no later than last week. And I'll talk about those when the time comes. But today's post is about something that has always been planned: clearing trash.

I'm aware it doesn't sound appealing at all :p

And yet, to be honest, now that this feature is finished (at least in terms of "it works", you'll see in the video under that there are still some elements to add for polish), it feels satisfying, even for me.

You all know by now that in The Hunter 2, the building meant to end up as Kaya's brothel is a ruin. You'll have to go through a couple of steps before being able to open it or unlock new rooms: clearing trash, scavenging materials, building fourniture and placing it properly.

What I'll be showing today is that very first step: clearing trash. And as confucius said: an image is worth a thousand words (You can debate, for some reason the French Wikipedia says Confusius is the origin of the sentence while English Wikipedia says it's from Henrik Ibsen. Considering Napoleon used a very close idiom (a good sketch is better than a long speech), I have a bit of trouble believing the idiom was created in the XXth century ^^'). And anyway it's not an image, it's a video :p

I've spent 30 minutes trying to convert the video to webm only to realize that Fanbox couldn't allow webm. But I did that because I thought it was impossible to have an embedded version of an MP4 video. Looks like I was wrong :x (Don't mind the restart at the beginning.)

As you can see, clearing trash is pretty straight forward. You have a counter telling you how many elements remains to be cleared/cleaned. When this value reaches 0, you're finished! Once again there are missing elements, Kaya should be shoveling the big trash pile on the right, she should be brooming when in the middle of the corridor (but I don't have the animation yet so I used the sponge one) etc... but you get the overall idea.

One of the interest of doing that is double. First of all, I don't know about you but having a global devastated and dirty corridor turning into a clean one feels satisfying (at least it works for me ^^') and secondly you also saw that some elements can give materials. Whenever Kaya hit some wood elements with her axe, you get some wood out of it. Technically, you should also get materials from the vending machine or the ripped curtain, but you need the specific tools for that and you don't have them at that moment of the game. So they're lost (of course, it's meant to be that way x))

Those clearing parts will be needed for ALL rooms and corridors of the building. But at the same time, they will be needed only once for each. So here, you'll have to clear the corridor and the three 3 rooms on the left and on the right. Later, as you'll be able to unlock new floors, you'll have to do it again. Once a room is cleared, you can put the necessary furniture in it. Furniture you'll have to build thanks to the material you'll gain. Cause, yes, we've been working with Hime towards the possibility to give the player the choice of the items to put in each room (the basics are needed: you can't use a room without at least a bed or a sink, for example. But the rest is up to the player.) You'll be able to unlock blueprints through the games to build more items or better looking ones. The better the bedroom, the better the bonus $$ you'll gain from your customers. But that's another story :p

I'm also dropping here that we've also managed to come up with a plan to allow the player to change the floor and the walls look! But that's more complicated to implement so it'll have to wait another update.

Anyway, things are progressing the right way. I hope I'll be able to show you more asap.

See ya o/