Dev Log # 21

Happy New Year!

This week was mostly rushing to get the January build finished but once that was working I did (finally) add some new UI elements. Time of day should be much more obvious now and the health and stamina text readouts have been replaced with icons to make them easier to read and less ugly.

Thirst, hunger and filth are currently displayed constantly, which is also pretty ugly, but those will be a bit more hidden in the new UI. They'll be rolled into a new buffs/debuffs system where reaching certain thresholds means effects are applied. For example, if you are too hungry then you're more likely to fail at risky actions. That system is mostly in place already but I haven't decided how I want to alert the player to those status effects. Most likely they'll just be a set of icons in the upper right but since those won't explain the cause and effect of the status I'll need to create a screen the player can use to find more info. Something like the health tab in Fallout will probably work best but since there'll be a lot of empty space I'll be looking for other information I can display there to make the screen more useful.

Other than the visual work I've been fleshing out some of the events mentioned and making sure they are triggered correctly. I'm focusing on smaller events for now since I need a lot of them to flesh out the world but they will add a lot to the NPC characters (for example, Emily will explain how she happens to have a teensy, tiny plush to cuddle and give you the chance to name it). The next few weeks will be almost entirely adding new events so the February build should be a big leap forward!