It's the "It's an another update" update

Hi hi :)

Firstly, can I thank you all for your kind words and feedback. It's brought me great joy to see how well received the last update was. What has surprised me a little has been how much playtime some of you have managed to get out of the Chapter, with over five hours being the norm and in some cases even into double figures. Again, for a game with no repeating grind that's really not bad.

But, enough about the past let's talk about Chapter Three.

First off I've completed Sarah's Caverns game but I'm hanging onto it for a few more days before passing it over to testing.  I'm not entirely happy with it tbh. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's good. The visual gags land well, the coding is tight, Sarah is at maximum Sarah and there is a lot to enjoy for sure but there's something missing, I feel.  I think it might be because it works really well first time around, but it feels like one of those scenes that would be a riot the first time you played it - but would be dull if you tried it again. I don't want to fall down a development hole on this one so I'm going to put it on the shelf and turn my attention to the VR section. Maybe leaving it alone for a few days might spark a thought or two. If not, the worse that happens is I have a really good scene.

I've also been working on updating the new GUI's for the MC's additional tools and equipment. As you would expect, I'm not going to send your character all the way down to another planet and then leave them stuck on Ophion station. So yes...you will be able to explore (if you choose to ofc...) and I've been refreshing the map interface for that.

(The blank corner on the lower right is for the on/off switch in case you were wondering.)

The map will be updated during the game as more locations are unlocked/discovered...

I also took the time to refresh the station's vehicle into something that is a little bit more render/posing friendly than the original I used (which I always felt was far too large but...it was on sale at the time so....y'know).

I've yet to refresh the engineering tool system however. This one will be trickier. Not in the terms of what I want it to be able to do and show, but more so on the visual design. I need to get the balance right in terms of maximum visual appeal and clarity of information. It's not that big of a technical problem, but more what would work best (and look best) for the player. I'll keep you updated on this one and, no doubt, throw various concepts out on my forum and use some crowd wisdom on this one.

 Oh. I also refreshed my deviantart page. (Good grief, my old stuff was awful!) 

What's next? Well, next week is mainly about completing the VR game. This won't be too hard a task as the combat mechanics are already establish and the script/code for the scene won't need a great deal of tweaking. It's really just a case with this one of  making it prettier and snazzier and time to start animating again.

And that's about it for now. Thanks for sticking with me and I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Laters!