THE STORY
The main story continues to be developed through the conversations the PCs can have with NPCs they can meet along the way. As I stated in previous posts, I am aiming to have these conversations give the player as much background as they are prepared to follow, but without overloading them. Using cutscenes whenever possible, certainly appears to make such learning curves easier to follow, especially as I am also ensuring journal entries also keep up with the information for the player. Compared to module one, in my design of module two, I am leaving five steps between each current journal entry to allow me to add any other steps that I think may help the player as I continue to build. I did not do this with module one, and found some difficulties complementing journal entries at later stages. This is definitely a lesson learned from hindsight.
SEQUENCER ITEMS
As part of my increase in items to be found, I am considering sequencer items. I won't go into detail about their usage. Although some readers may already know what they do, I prefer to leave their description to allow any potential "surprise" for when players find them in the game (for players who have not encountered them before). However, that said, in my preparation of them, I discovered that an Official Campaign (OC) "include" script has a minor "bug" that duplicates any message meant for the player when the sequencer item is used. It's not a game-breaking bug, just an annoyance.
At one point I managed to fix this problem, but had been left with concerns: after editing the official include script, it did NOT compile properly! I hastily add, it was NOT due to the alterations I had made, as that was simply changing a variable to prevent message duplication. However, I was not prepared to risk leaving the updated script as the default one to use, as it may have other dire consequences with other associated scripts throughout the game. So, in the end, I reinstated the original OC script from a prior build (with all associated scripts), and only altered the scripts related to the sequencer property that were not part of the OC include script.
OVERALL IMPROVEMENTS
When I work on module two, I often see things where the new code highlights a potential problem with the first module. That's why I still provide updated files and folders for Module one. As an example for the latest update to date, I noticed that some plot items were correctly being moved to my PC after I had left them in an area. (I was only testing and so had not bothered to search a body for all items.) However, I also noted that a journal update for acquiring said item had not updated with its "forced" acquisition. Therefore, I "fixed" this area of code in case a player ever accidentally or inadvertently left a plot item behind. For while this is unlikely to be the case with an active and attentive player, if it should be required, then associated journal updates upon such acquisitions are just as important as having the plot item itself!
LOADSCREENS
I also spent some time preparing some more load screens. Normally I leave these until last, but I grew tired of seeing the "missing file" image when testing and so updated the screens for the areas I was currently building. Below is the overland map load screen, which shows a much larger map that even the overland map covers, but its supposed to be an indicator that the player is about to enter the overland map. However, it does also help to show that the World of Althéa is actually even bigger than the parts that the player may currently know or is able to explore.
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| Loading Screen For Overland Map Travel |
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