Welcome
Hi, welcome to this month's dev blog! This was quite a busy month, with a lot of content added, as well as some under the hood stuff, so I'm going to give a quick overview on some of the changes.
Regular customers
One of the main features of Dreadwinter is its regular customers. These are special NPCs that will visit every week, and bonding with them can provide alternative methods to progress the game. Initially, I only had 2 added into the game, so I've been working on creating the rest of them.
For example, you have Peabody, a dwarf, builder and owner of a construction company. After you build up your relationship enough with her, she may offer to expand the café for free, rather than you having to pay someone to do it.
Regular customers have a different relationship system from the townspeople, as it's influenced by serving them drinks they like, which you'll have to experiment with and figure out. Every so often, they will make a special request, which can boost your relationship by a lot!
Cutscenes and tutorials
The vast majority of development has been spent on building the systems for the game, and designing the world, so there isn't much actually happening in the world yet. I've taken some time to add some more cutscenes into the game, which should make the world feel more alive, and help build up the world.
Hopefully, this helps establish a connection to the game, and gives you an idea of what's going on. I've also added little tutorials and help menus to the game, to make some of the mechanics and features clearer, since that was an issue before.
Journal system
I've added additional menus to the game, to account for some of the newer features, but there were too many to fit into the current pause menu, so I added a journal system, which is essentially another pause menu, but is composed of the more informative parts.
For example, the settings menu is probably worth keeping in the pause menu, but something like a calendar would fit better in the journal. The calendar should help you keep track of when events and birthdays happen, and there's also a reminder of what day and time your regular customers will visit.
I'm working on adding in a mail system, map, and a tracker for which drinks your customers like and dislike.
Controller Support
Controller support is coming along nicely, and most features have controller support. There's a few things that required more work than I would have liked, such as the on-screen keyboard on the Steam Deck, but most of the hurdles have been cleared. I'd say the main challenge is now to add controller support for the combat system, which I anticipate will be somewhat tricky.
Adventurer's Guild
I've finally added the adventurer's guild into the game. This is your hub to take on quests, and make your name known throughout the kingdom! In the earlier version, the dungeons were just there to explore, and it wasn't particularly clear what you were meant to be doing, or how to do it.
I'm working on getting the gameplay and tutorials set up so you can get a license, gear up, and start exploring the world, which is one of the things I want to get done before I release the demo.
Demo Progress
I believe the demo should be ready within the next month (fingers crossed), and there are 3 things I want to tick off before I can say it's ready
Remaining controller support
Adventuring gameplay streamlined and playable
Overworld music
I'd like to have a few tracks that play when you're out and about, since music adds a lot to a game. I'm currently trying to produce them myself, which is something I'm somewhat new to. I'm optimistic, though, and I'm enjoying the process.
That's it for this update, it turned out to be longer than I thought, but if you made it this far, thanks for reading!