Devlog #7: The First Big Changes

So I took a look over the assets that I downloaded the other day. And there's no way. It was wishful thinking on my part to think I could get away with using a random assortment of free assets and not have an obscene amount of issues with artstyle and consistency. But as I hopped in the shower and thought about what I could do, I got an idea. A change to the core gameplay mechanic, but arguably one that will give me a bit more freedom.

Up until now, the basic premise I had in my head was that you would go through 4 different rooms, furnished with furniture and items, examining different items and slowly uncovering the overall story. But I didn't have a real answer on how I could clearly indicate progression through all of this, how I could set the player up to move to the next room. I'm honestly kind of amused with the solution I came up with: make it even more card-based. Instead of having to worry about gathering assets for 52 items+furniture, I can represent those items with cards. The way I envision it, upon entering the room the player is greeted by a flurry of double-backed cards moving all about the room, partially obscuring their vision (hoping that particle systems hold the answers I need to make that happen), while items appear as cards with proper faces around the room. Examining these cards will reveal the portions of the story that would have gone with the original item, with the card then being added to a "deck" of the players. By arranging the pieces of the story in each card in the proper order, the player can finally progress to the next room. The kicker being that to progress from the next room, they'll have to continue adding to the deck and sorting among pieces from previous rooms. This of course will culminate in the player having a fully completed deck at the end of the game, which I just really like as an idea, you know?

And that's the vision that I'm going to pursue now. My immediate goals for right now are:

• Getting some basic materials/textures set up in the rooms (carpet, drywall, ceilings, etc)
• Gather playing card textures
• Add the first person controller

Looking beyond that, once I have some empty rooms and can walk around in them, I'm going to start working on the item system. Just bringing up a basic test UI window on examination, and then eventualy figuring out how to display the relevant text portions before adding it to the player's inventory. Which of course is going to be a whole different issue that I'll have to tackle. But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Will check in tomorrow.