[Episode Canopus] Progress Update X

Greetings,

other than rendering more images and scripting I did some feature enhancements to the engine and included another environment.

Location 'Observation'

I could already start working on the scenes in the "new" location. I had this environment for quite a while and did some minor adjustments to make it fit the game. Working on this scene will keep me fairly busy over the next time as it will feature quite a few shots.

Mini-game

I added the hacking mini-game game from the demo build in the upcoming update and it will be necessary to pass it in order to be able to advance the story. Some may don't like it but I think it's a neat addition.

I still have to decide weather I will use "real" code-snippets or stylized code-snippets for the game. The main point of the game is pattern recognition. Therefor the content of the snippets doesn't matter at all. The player should recognize them by the structure and colors of the code. Each snippet es designed to be distinguishable from each other fairly easy. However, from demo build I learned that some people will compare the text's as well which is quite a small font and therefor coasts much time and leads to not be able to finish the game in time. I could solve this problem in stylizing the code snippets to not have any words. This would make the game easier and it should be more obvious to focus on pattern recognition.

However, I like the idea of having "real" code snippet's because this way I could have some Easter-eggs and jokes in those snippets and to be honest they are way more easy to do than those stylized.

I will add the option to skip mini-games in the cheat menu. However, the cheat-menu will only be available in builds for higher tiers.

For the next update I'll probably keep the "real" code-snippets and depending on the critics for the update I will consider changes.

HUD Elements

I added icons for auto-play, save, load and rollback to the UI. However, I also added the options to hide each secondary HUD-Element (highlighting, auto-play, save, load, rollback and hide) individual in the settings. So, for people who like I a cleaner UI the could switch the icons off which they don't want to have.

Current Status

~ 65% scripting done

~ 500 rendered and edited images