Since we spoke last quite a lot has happened. TME has now been updated to Unity 5.4, which is quite a step up from the 4.6 version that's currently deployed. The update will roll out with Act 3. For you this will likely mean some perfomance improvements, especially for Linux users. I've also (down?)graded from Unity Pro to Unity Personal Edition. This decision was a cost-cutting one, more below.
I have now also dropped my day job. TME is not paying the bills, so money still has to come from other sources, but I do have a lot more time now to wrap up Act 3. Now, on to that...
(ACT 2 SPOILER?) Act 2 left off with us preparing to ascend the tower. The main thing that sets this one apart from acts 1 and 2 is that you will be able to go almost every place inside the tower. This equals over 900 locations.
When I say "location" I mean basically mean "node" - like every point where you can stand. To put this into perspective, acts 1 and 2 each had between 15 and 20 locations (apartment 1, balcony 1, balcony 2, balcony 3, apartment 2, rooftop, alley 1 etc)
900 sounds scary, and I have to keep reminding myself that it's not. It's all quite samey, with some basic procedural generation handling the variety and look of the floors, walls, offices and various gubbins around the place. The base workload for us on the tower is one floor's locations plus all its variables and the aforementioned gubbins (plants, fire extinguishers, signs, colours, etc). The generator then creates the variety using a fixed seed, and I add the hand-crafted content to that.
900 locations won't stretch out the length of the game a lot either. There will always be enough clues about where to go look for more clues as you work your way up floor by floor, like Bruce Lee in Game of Death. :) When all the required content is in, I will definitely add some extras for explorers to find though.
Anyhoo, have a good rest of August. We shall chat again!
