Reworking & De-scoping
Following the playtest, one of my main pieces of feedback from testers was that it was frustrating not to be able to move through cutscenes at their own pace (i.e. pressing a button to move to the next image), rather than wait for a video to end. As such, the video format I had been working on for the cutscenes had to be entirely reworked. With some help, cutscenes now use an array
system controlled by the Cutscene Manager. Each cutscene trigger has a record of which slides are the first and last and, when triggered, will enable the first slide (UI Image). While the cutscene is active, each slide is passed into a separate game object called “Cutscene Canvas”. The player can use the space bar to move to the
next slide in the list until they reach the last one, in which case the cutscene manager will disable the cutscene canvas as well as the trigger’s collider to ensure the cutscene can’t be repeated. I’ve found this system to be much more efficient and less tedious to work on than
Unity’s built-in video system as I have much more control, it is more scaleable, and it will be significantly easier to implement dialogue later on which, in hindsight, would have been virtually impossible using videos.
Given the time remaining in the project, it is no longer feasible to complete every feature I set out to implement at the beginning: i.e. Ida’s flute mechanic and switching between characters. As a result, I’ve moved on to work on the dialogue system as well as the artwork, which was originally only going to begin after all features had been implemented.
Currently, all NPCs have dialogue interactions, complete with a typing effect on the text. The next step will be to implement this system into the cutscenes.
All background art has also been completed and will be implemented once the dialogue system is complete.
Outdoors
Downstairs day + night
Upstairs day + night
(the player will never see this corner)