Hello dear players, I know, it's been a while. As many of you know, I am now in my final year of architecture studies, so the last semester was quite hectic. Now, the team is bigger, or rather, there is now a team! My great friend Walter/Wagner, who was already helping with the game, has now officially joined the team and will be helping me with programming, which has breathed new life into the project. I had a lot of difficulty continuing to evolve the game and Wagner will be helping with that, and now the game will continuously improve in terms of usability, bug fixes, and other aspects. During this time, I wasn't idle. In fact, I did a lot, but they were very small things and I ended up not sending the update, so I will be sending here the updates related to the game in this version.
Update List:
New map and new architect: Le Corbusier and the Villa Savoye. The map is fully available and playable in both game modes. (there are still some small issues, mainly with textures, but overall the experience should be good)
Controls menu: we now have a controls menu. Not all the controls listed there are working yet, such as in the case of photo mode (which I removed due to bugs, but it will return).
Now, when reading the notes, the player can scroll down with the mouse. This allowed me to increase the font size and now there are no more notes with text overflowing at the bottom in any language (I hope).
Update in the Barcelona Pavilion, addition of flags, with physics. The grass now no longer casts shadows, which has greatly improved the performance of the Barcelona Pavilion. It is now possible to enter the project's bathroom. Cones were added to mark the map boundaries. Trees were added to the vegetation layer, along with the grass, which increased performance. Also, the movement of the grass and tree leaves was removed to increase performance.
Update in the Azuma House, we added a logo decal at the entrance of the project. We improved the lighting in the project. We corrected the house's furniture based on real images of the project. We corrected the modeling of the Azuma House.
Now, when reading all the notes, there are small figures to illustrate them. This greatly improves the way of understanding what is being said and gives more context to the notes.
We added different footstep sounds for each surface the player walks on (it's even fun to walk on the different floors now).
We updated the social media links.
We added navigation sounds in the menus and also changed the background images to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
Now, both the start screen and the loading screen show different images of various projects each time they appear on the screen.
We now have a start screen and transition animations between the menus.
The mouse now stays inside the screen and it's no longer possible to accidentally click outside the game (previously it was possible to click on other applications while in the game). The mouse also remains centered while playing.
We added a line trace. Now you can only interact by looking directly at what you want to interact with (previously it was possible to open doors while having your back to them, for example). When you can interact with the object, a small circle will appear in the center of the screen and the text at the bottom of the screen, as usual.
We added the option to crouch.
We added an option to turn on and off a flashlight directly on the player.
We added a custom cursor.
We added specific ambient sounds for each map, to increase immersion in the game.
We added sounds when interacting with curtains.
General improvement in performance across all projects and improvement in graphical quality.
Now the updates about the project. We received an honorable mention at the first prize for innovations in teaching methods at the University of Brasília (my university). Also, as I mentioned earlier, we've added a programmer to the team. I want to deeply thank you for joining the game, even though it's still in a very early stage of development. Your support has greatly helped the development of the game and I promise to bring more updates this year. Thank you very much!
Now a small roadmap of the next updates:
We will be adding the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the Fallingwater house.
We will be adding the architect Oscar Niemeyer and the Casa das Canoas.
We will complete the story mode of the first architect, Tadao Ando (as a tribute to the great reception of the Japanese public to the game).
We will let you choose the next architect to complete their story mode.
Other small updates:
Update the surroundings of the Barcelona Pavilion, so that eternal void no longer appears.
Instead of a text to open and close doors, a small icon will appear with an animation illustrating what will be done, opening or closing doors.
We will re-enable photo mode (God willing).
We will add additional functionalities related to cars (most people really enjoyed using them), we hope to be able to add a speedometer and deformations on collision. Maybe also car-related sounds (it's more complicated than it seems).
We intend to add a function on the right mouse button to perform a panoramic zoom with autofocus (it's cooler than it sounds).