Hey all,
First off, it was a more productive week than the last one ; even though I still have a bunch of IRL stuff to attend to (the wedding approaches!) that will likely impact the release cycles this summer, I was able to kick off implementation & coding following the gameplay design phase I went through.
That's for the good news, though we're not completely out of the woods just yet : I might have been a tad ambitious regarding the new stuff I want to implement, and even if the current framework easily allows some of these new mechanics & models, implementing something robust, save-compatible and without major bug or regression will prove quite tricky.
To be specific, one of these new gameplay mechanics would involve remotely accessing a character's computer ; from your own device, you open app inside which you get a whole desktop UI, much similar to the one of your own in-game computer and from which you can explore the character's pictures, messages and more.
Technically, it's just a nested, simpler and dumbed down (data-wise) version of your own desktop data model populated with different stuff (the character's data, messages and pictures). It's very much possible within the existing framework and data model but it predictably spawns a bunch of ramifications that must be considered with no loose ends, especially to make it robust and bug free.
It might prove to be a challenge but I do think that it could be a core mechanic going forwards : it's a simple and elegant way to discover content (be it directly pictures or clues hidden within messages and stuff), and the path to access a character's device can be interesting gameplay-wise : they could give it directly for a specific reason or you would need to sneak, stalk, hack and social engineer you way through.
That was a lot of rambling, so there's an updated progress chart:
You may notice that it seems the coding workload advancement didn't progress, but that's because the initial estimation was way off and with what I'm working on currently, there's a lot more to be done. Baby steps!
Now regarding release calendar, I guess I'll be monitoring progress this week and for the next blogspot, I'll do a quick debrief on what I could implement, what remains to be done and I'll device then if things are ready to move towards an early access release (even with possibly placeholder assets). I'll let you guys know!
No new teasers this week unfortunately, but more sneak peeks are coming your way, rest assured.
It's kind of a rough end of cycle but we're going to power through, so bear with me and stay tuned for the next updates & teasers. Thank you so much for the support, and have a great one.