Jesse Lozano

How has the Month been for Stillness –

So, May actually turned out weaker than I had projected sadly. while a lot of work did get done, this is the first report I’ve made where my set goals from the last month did not get met. :c

Basically what happened was the summer break quickly became a complete break, for both me and my contributors. I ended up taking the middle two weeks off, not touching Stillness, partly as I needed a cool-down from a very stressful semester, and partly because I was waiting for the new tools I need. Play testing did not occur, mostly because I have not gotten a chance to fully iterate on the issues from the previous playtest. this is likely not the best behavior, but I did not want to send out a build with the continued issues I am aware of, and not fixed.

after my mini-break, of course, I returned and did get quite a few things done. However, because I was still being held up by other issues for the conversation system, so I instead ended up working on several other more miscellaneous things.

What I said I would do (and did it get done) –

• Further Playtesting (at least 5) (not started)
• Refactor Conversation System (not started)
• Refactor Progression System (Complete)

What got done-

I set out to refactor 2 systems of Stillness, the Progression system and Conversation system, but only got to the progression system this month. previously, the progression system was a dictionary of booleans pulled from a hard-coded list of strings in a specific game file. I had set it up over half a year ago to get the concept working. now, half a year later, I needed an easier method to add and edit those booleans. a pretty easy addition, now that I know how to make custom editors and json reading. however, on top of that, the progression system needed to allow for specifically designed and manage way to partially reset several flags

the reason for that, again, hits on one of Stillness‘s Central Conceits, needing to be able to allow for partially-permanent failure, and a resetting specific chunks of progress at designated points. for this, I made a custom class of beats (following my narrative structure), with relevant bools connected to them. These beats are chained together in relevant lines, designating the many plot-lines in the game. now, on a reset condition, the current ended beats, or beats designated a failed, are reset, resetting all the bools connected to those beats.

now that there is more structured emotional math (from last month), I went to actually structure the MoodRing App on the Phone/pause menu. what is MoodRing you ask? well, its this:

its a social media parody / the stats screen for the player. Currently, like all the UI, its a whitebox of the design.

I also finally fixed a bug that’s been in the game for like, a year. ever since I made the inventory system, (or really any UI related stuff) there was an issue with the things in the scene still picking up input when the player is clicking on the UI. it turned out to be a quick fix, but still, so nice! quickly following that, I refactored the Mouse cursor control, so its managing the changes in the cursor sprite, be it on UI, or specific intractable objects. the previous version had the framework in, but had hard-coded elements, so simply decoupling it, and allowing editor side to add those needed elements.

on this string of fixing UI issues, I also finally went around to adding the arrow buttons to the investigate screens. previously, I had the whitebox for those buttons there, but they did nothing. so, now I just added them. simple and effective, though I had to redo the whitebox, since the previous one did not really differentiate the buttons at all.

and finally on UI, I replaced all of the text in the ui with Text Mesh Pro, which makes things look nicer.

the last thing worth mentioning I worked on was some more artwork. More items to fill in the apartment, and another CG for the beginning of the game. specifically, a simple CG for the player to pickup the phone and ring items.

the reason for this getting a cg was multifaceted. A) giving it a special focus should highlight how important both items are. B) it lets me experiment with the appropriate size and level of detailing of future CG’s going forward (of which I am unsure of on that level of detail). C) its part of me tweaking the very opening of the game’s structure to maximize its effectiveness on teaching the many mechanics and whatnot.

Time Spent –

the “hard” work,  I clocked as follows:

• finishing the setup of the new beat-Progression system – 2 hours
• built out more of the MoodRing UI – 3 hours
• fixed up the mouse cursor/investigate screen so the ui properly blocks scene actions – 2 hours
• investigate arrow buttons actually work – 1 hour
• updating  the UI to use text mesh pro – 1 hour
• Art assets ~4 hours

the “softer” stuff, the pre-production stuff, I didn’t clock. so I will be spit-balling it:

What to do next-

since the conversation system and playtesting did not get done this month, those are obviously remaining on the todo list. however, they are being held on lighter leash, as both tasks are being blocked by other tasks. so, while those continue to be goals I want to get done, there are a handful of minor bugs and potential fixes I’ve been collecting that I might as well get done too.

as such, in the list of things I should (hopefully) be done by end of next month:

• finish updating the intro
• refactor the screen fading
• add feedback to the inventory combination
• in general, if possible, add sound feedback to stuff
• refactored conversation system
• playtests

Closing Notes-

(I think I need a better sign off)