Hello! This month has been going really well and I've been super jazzed up and inspired by people playing the demo and joining the discord. I've managed to get the demo in a more stable place, and my focus is now on 'Alpha 3' which is more content focused now.
The shop needed some love and attention, so I improved the build mode and added a bunch of new things to buy and use in the shop. I'm wrapping up shop content for now - It's not finished yet, but we need to move onto other areas that also need more content now (It also gives me time to add more ideas/plans for future shop content).
I'm now moving onto the town mechanic, which also really needs some love. It 'works' but it's very non-exciting at the moment. I'm already making progress on it, but I'll show you on the next update post. I want there to be a more neat looking town that builds around your shop and it feels more alive.
Demo Progress
I've been working on patching and stabilizing the demo as much as possible while still trying to focus on content as well! I try to focus on 'Game breaking issues'
New people have been joining the new discord after the demo launch and its been SUPER helpful getting some early feedback and bugs/issues!
It's also just very inspiring seeing people interested and playing my game, I can't emphasize this enough coming from larger companies where I just felt like part of a giant factory
Minor Bugs - I'm chipping away at them, but some I am putting off because I have plans to overhaul or improve certain mechanics (Like the fishing rod)
Now that the demo is more stable, I won't be pushing updates to it constantly. I have a beta-branch which I will be pushing experimental mechanics and features. Once we know those features are working as intended I can update demo
I'm going to treat the demo like we are in early access. I think it's important to build a community with it and get it into a really good solid place. Down the road I'll have to figure out how to put in a demo cutoff, but for now getting people to play the game I think is way more valuable as I develop it all
I still wouldn't recommend the demo for most gamers yet - I'd love to do my 2.0 pass on the fishing rod and get the town content improved first. I'm still a bit worried/hesitant to do the fishing rod improvements until I have a really good plan in place; Don't break what's working
Fish Tank Level 2
The second level of the fish tank is a double-stacker! More efficient for space
These fishtanks also display the name of your fish on the monitors, and their value
The green buttons you see will let you change their decoration options (I'll add more options later)
Fish Freezer
Lets you store up to 5 fish inside
You can choose to pull out specific fish (By hitting E on the icon) or just pulling them out rapidly
Fish Scale
The fish scale tells you the weight and price of your fish in case you forget
It also ADDS a 10% bonus value to the fish once
I'll make fancier scales for future upgrades that give a higher value bonus
Shop Lights Mechanic
Some of the players have mentioned how dark it gets at night time especially in your store, so I focused on adding in a light mechanic now
The lights will flicker when they turn on at first - Later on stores will have nicer quality lights!
You'll have lightswitches in the store to turn the lights on/off
I added a power generator beside the shop purely for atmosphere, it turns on/off when you have the lights on/off
New Fish
First GIGA catch added - Manatee
Halibut is in engine, but not in game yet - I am going to make a cove area in the ocean biome where you can find it
No matter what focus I'm doing on the game, on the side I'll continue to keep working on fish and adding them to build up our database
Foil/Rare Fish look improved
Much happier with the rare look now!
I now need to start adding in all the rare alts of all the other fish, right now the carp is the only fish with one. I did this for testing purposes first
Shop Decorations
Added in a rug! All the props are gonna be more 'worn' and 'apocalypse' looking at the start, later on as you build up a nicer store, they'll look less grungy
I want to add in way more decoration options for you to decorate the store with, but my focus mostly was on gameplay props for your shop. Decorative stuff is a bit lower priority until later on
Build Mode improvements
Build mode is in a better place now - I have arrows to tell you what is the 'front' way of the prop
Better at detecting 'not allowed' areas now, it's not perfect but much better! I'll keep doing passes on all mechanics over time to keep improving them