Weekly Update! 3-29-2020 (More Area 5 visuals, new enemy work, accessibility features)

Hey everyone, time for another CPE development update! This week I've got a few more visuals to show off from our work on Area 5, as well as some general information on accessibility features I want to add for v0.39.

First off, the gif you see at the top of the post. Puffernutter worked on a parallax background for us to put below the surface of the water, in area 5 so it's not quite as plain as a flat color. We plan to do a bit more with the background than just this, but this is what we have for it so far. She's also been working on some more bits and pieces I can put in the environment, one of which is the large swaying plant you see in the background there.

As you can see, I also spent some time this week giving our new enemy some animations, including a completed idle animation and a WIP projectile attack animation. He's been surprisingly fun to animate so far! Orexius has also started on his first H-scene, so hopefully that will be ready in time for v0.39 as well.

Next up is a last-minute thing I wanted to start working on. I looked through our Patreon exit surveys recently, and found a survey from someone who was unable to play the game because of a disability they suffer from. This was kind of a wake up call for me; I don't want this to happen to anybody who wants to paly the game, so in the hopes that I can improve somebody else's experience in the future, I'm going to officially start adding in some accessibility options. I've also wanted to add in a gameplay options menu for a while, to implement some options for people to turn on/off, and it's a great opportunity to add accessibility features as well.

None of the accessibility options listed there are functional yet, but here's what they are and how they will function:

- Toggle Blaster. As stated in the screenshot above, when enabled, pressing the Shoot button will toggle the blaster on, and it will continue to automatically fire until the button is pressed again to toggle it off.
- Blaster Auto-Aim. When enabled, the player will still have to turn left/right to face enemies, but Alicia will automatically target the nearest enemy in her field of vision, simplifying aiming controls.
- Always Full Jumps. When enabled, Alicia will always jump to her full height, even when the Jump button is released early, allowing you to simply press the button to jump instead of holding it.
- Auto-Dash. When enabled, if the Jump button is held down while jumping, Alicia will automatically dash in the direction the player is holding once she reaches the peak of her jump, allowing you to cross larger gaps without extra button inputs.
- Gameplay Speed. Reduces the speed the game runs at, reducing the demand for reaction times and precise inputs. Now, unfortunately this option is going to take a MASSIVE amount of work to implement properly; Crisis Point's game logic is currently frame-dependant, which means if the game runs below 60 fps, everything runs slower. Changing game logic to be independant of framerate is an absurdly huge amount of work, and while I do want to try to make it happen, I don't think it'll happen until closer to the game's completion. That being said, I WILL still be implementing this feature, just in a simpler way, by lowering the game's framerate; it will make the visuals choppier, but hopefully for anyone who struggles with the speed of the game, it will still be able to improve their experience until I can do it right.

I have plenty of other ideas for accessibility features too, including an easier difficulty level I plan on adding in v0.39, but I'm definitely looking for any and all feedback on this! If you have a disability yourself, or just have ideas on accessibility features to implement, please don't hesitate to comment here or DM me! To anyone who does have a disability who has struggled to play the game because of it, I'm so very sorry that I hadn't considered your needs up until this point. Getting that exit survey made me realize how very real and important this is, and I'm determined to improve our accessibility so that everyone can play and enjoy CPE.

Alright, that's it for this week! I did a bunch of other things this week, including finalizing about 8 cutscene/dialogue scripts (some of which will not be in this update) and sending them off to our actors, so it's been an extremely productive week for us. Thank you very much for reading, and we'll see you in the next update!