Jesse Lozano

How has the Month been for Stillness –

Stillness has been all but shelved as the moth went on. the beginning got some work in, hit most of what I set for myself, but ax my classes (and job) started winding up, my weekend free time for Stillness near vanished, and work crawled to a stop.

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

• at least 1 puzzle from level 2 in completely (given what I was defining as puzzle, yes)
• filling in flavor text for the area (a little, sorta)
• Playtest (haha, no)

What got done-

so, the first puzzle, of the 3 “puzzles” I defined for myself got in. I’m using quotation, because my thoughts on how the puzzles work in Stillness kind of changed, creating a mental division. basically, I thought forward, about the possibility of adding puzzle difficulty, and if I did, how I would go about it. basically, there’d be some puzzles that would not (or could not) change, while there are ones that could be harder. Now, still not sure if I’d implement such a system, but it was good food for thought.

next, I listed my task as Filling in Flavor text, when I had written down, just level testing, and adding general details, which I definitely did.the Mandala feel’s very solid, and formed, from an art standpoint. and Mechanically, You can solidly run thru it with no issues (up to where the non-existent puzzles are), so that’s good. of course, you can always add more.

I did not playtest Stillness at all. bad me.  😦

of course, Of the time I did have, I was able to sneak in some technical improvements. I refactored the Thoughts so I can add and edit them in the property window, instead of just their own window. I found a speaker bug in the dialog UI, where if there wasn’t a speaker in the first line, no lines would show. basically, it turned out the box wasn’t getting moved by the animation if it wasn’t on at start. this was despite the fact the transform was correct. so to fix that, I had to slightly alter, then fix the transform, for Unity to properly recognize its position. (felt kinda hacky, but whatev).

Did some Node functionality refactoring. Always needing to tweak it slightly. help is the fact that I’m also using its basic logic in another project, with other people in it, so I can improve it in ways I might not have caught

Lastly, since I had some free time, and was in a systems mood, I actually built the underlying logic for the call system. Previously, I had laid out the UI for the phone to be able to make calls, but there was no underlying logic for it. nothing reading the numbers’ the player entered. Now, there is. if the player types in any numbers, they’ll get either a random response (if its a random number) or a deliberate response, if its a specific number its reading for.  Now, only 1 and 1/2 Apps on the phone are not in mechanically (texting, and the Social media part of the Mood Ring App).

Time Spent –

the work I did, and what I clocked it as follows:

• Art work ~ 8 hours
• level testing ~ 2 hours
• thought editing refactor ~2 hours
• Speaker box Bug – 1 hour
• Node Editors Refactoring – 2.5 hours
• Set up the Call functionality to actually do something – 5 hours

   

What to do next-

so, for October, what do I want to do?

there’s always more work in the Mandala. needs those last 2 puzzles. always more flavor, more art, to add. maybe get to its end if I’m lucky (probably not)

there’s always retouching up the player’s apartment. giving it more life. the wire puzzle definitely needs improvements to it visually, and maybe mechanically.

there’s always more mechanics to touch on. building out the last l.5 mechanics of the phone.

I’m probably going to lean on the mandala, get it as wrapped as possible, before going back thru it and re-touching up both it and the apartment. as such, I’m going to leave it mostly untouched.

 

so, in list form:

• get 1 more puzzle from level 2 in completely
• filling in more flavor for the area
• Playtest?

Closing Notes-

still got nothin’

:3