Hey guys, last month I was quite busy implementing the dialogue system, player locomotion, and with the optimization. The dialogue system is divided into two parts: non-dialogue options and the interaction menu. In the first option, whenever you are near any NPC, the player can interact with them, greet them, or just annoy them. There's a bar above the dialogue options that shows the current relationship between the player and that character. Based on the relationship level, new options (like a hug, punch, etc.) will become available to the player.
In the interaction menu, you can ask for a favor or ask them to join a gang, or you can join theirs (I will explain more about this when I share more about the gang system).
For character creation, there will be a few pre-made characters with their backstories. They receive different buffs to their stats based on that. Or players can create their own character (I'm not sure, but maybe I will add this during Early Access).
I've already mentioned in the past that the yard scene is pretty heavy on VRAM due to its size. But I've managed to reduce the requirements for that; it is now down to 2GB from 4.5GB. I've also implemented a motion matching system for the player for smooth locomotion. One more interesting thing I ended up adding is to the fight system; rather than allowing the player only to punch or kick, there's
now an additional option to grab, tackle, etc.
I've remade all indoor and outdoor scenes, updated textures, and implemented an LOD system for NPCs. Overall, the game can support up to 240 prisoners, but at the start, you can reduce the prisoner count to achieve better performance. The bottleneck is on the GPU side, so if you have a good GPU, you can easily run the game on max settings with the maximum number of prisoners. I've also implemented a workshop system that allows players and NPCs to take on different jobs. This is an extremely interesting feature, especially the mail job where the player has to mail prisoners their letters in person. In my next blog, I will add GIFs or videos showing how the different jobs work.