Hi everybody! I want to first apologize for the delayed dev blog this month - I decided to hold off a bit because I was close to finishing Alpha 3 goals and wanted to finish first before posting!
I made a lot of progress this month! I'm very excited to show you all the progress down below. I'm hoping to do a new trailer for the game soon because we've improved almost every single element of the game since the original trailer launch!
With Alpha 3 wrapping up, I'll begin moving into Alpha 4 and its goals! I won't list everything here since I'm still organizing my A4 plans, but here's some of the big ticket items -
New Biome (I won't spoil till I have something to show you)
New Shop Expansion/Upgrade
Add a lot more fish for the new biome
The Government (No spoilers yet, but this is add a difficulty element)
Basic World Map to replace the fast travel menu
Town Level 3
Customer Level 3
If things feel too overwhelming or I feel like progress is going slow on some parts, I'll shift some of these goals for Alpha 5! A part of working on this is learning how to prioritize goals.
Something I can't show you but also got added - Footsteps sounds!
Fishing Rod 2.0
Overheat mechanic! If you reel for too long - The fishing line will snap! We need to now adjust the reel time on the fish and have certain fish have higher reel times.
The rod will now snap if you walk too far away from your lure after you've cast it
You get a little ːsteamthumbsupː animation when you get a new record!
The rod now moves/wiggles a bit when your walking! I hope to get this working for the rest of your inventory later.
Weather System
This is not just a visual thing - This is gameplay - On rainy days, certain fish are now catchable (The halibut and tuna that got added recently for example)
I hope to make rainy days look more foggy and dimmer soon!
Clear days! I replaced the old generic skybox with a nicer one now
Town Improvements
Level 1 Houses - The Vagabonds - Feels much better now and feels more like a community is growing around you
Level 2 Houses - The Shanty - These will start spawning level 2 customers, who have better buying power!
I want to do another pass on this in the future, I really want the town to have personality to it. I'd love for you to see other businesses starting up in the area.
Customer Lvl 2
You'll see these lads spawn from the Shanty parts of town! They have more buying power than the vagabonds.
New Fish - Tuna & Cod
New Building Crates
Home region 2.0
The starting player region finally got some love, it had a lot of proxy art before that I never had time to replace. I'm very happy with the direction this is going, this isn't finished by any means, I really look forward to adding more elements to 'The Old World' ruins and character.
Ocean Biome 2.0
The cove was added into the ocean biome! You can catch different saltwater fish in this spot
Finally got to finish other parts of the beach! I wanted to have landers and making it look more like a mid-battle landing was just occurring
Some fun little lore bits getting added into the world finally
Holographic Fishes added
Finally had time to add holographic rares for all our fish! There is a graphical issue with the wahoo and red snapper, so I've held off on adding those yet. I need to balance how much these will be worth in the end, and the rarity of some will be much harder to get than others.
UI improvements
Now I know this is ugly, but I focused on functionality at the moment - We now have better stats! You now see exactly what is giving your store more 'cozy score' and you also see the towns population as a breakdown with a pie chart (I love stat charts, I hope to have more in the game)
Replaced the old ! which was literally just text, with a actual nice animated particle now!
When you gain or spend money, it will visually show up above your money UI for a few seconds now! I'll tweak the length of time based on player feedback.
Dog finally got some heart particles as well - No more generic ♥ text