Weekly report 2023-Oct-4

Hello everyone!
Let's take a look at the progress from this week and last week!

Demo Update:

Download here. New password is "6VuMgujh8sMYnSe".

• Implementation of round start and end animations
• Allow transitions from the battle and result menus to other scenes
• Make some animations skippable

Victory Animations Completed

Usually, when creating animations, I tend to be conservative due to concerns about increasing file sizes and the workload. However, I discovered that creating victory animations is surprisingly easy and doesn't significantly impact file size. I really enjoyed making them!

I decided to postpone the implementation of stat collection on the results screen. The setup for data acquisition was overly complex, and it didn't have a high priority, so I will stick to displaying the number of wins and the used character only.

Narrator Auditions Commenced

As planned, I began the narrator auditions this week. Unfortunately, the impressions on the recruitment tweet are quite low, which might be due to Twitter's algorithm making posts with external links less visible on the timeline. However, I've already received 20 applications! I set a three-week deadline to give applicants ample time for preparation, but perhaps one week would suffice.

Bug Fixes

Changing something often leads to new bugs. This week, like every other, I was busy fixing various bugs.

• Crash in stage select. The cause was a null reference error due to an array index out of bounds.
• Character sprites disappearing in stage select. The cause was object activation settings on the timeline.
• Skipping the battle intro resulted in the attack button being pressed at the start of the round. The issue was caused by interference between the skip process and the battle process.
• The result screen didn't display on a specific stage. The cause was the drawing priority of the stage's material.

These bug-related challenges are part and parcel of game development and are, to some extent, due to my code's immaturity. I purchased the book "Rules of Programming" written by the developers of Ghost of Tsushima, and I plan to thoroughly read it over the weekend.

Next Week's Plans

• Establish the Comic Tier (as funds have been running a bit low)
• Implement credits for participating staff
• Add Modeus' actions

That's it for this week.
Have a great weekend!