Stats Screen Update
Hey ya'll, haven't posted in a while I know; we've all been in pretty heads-down style crunch for a while now in preparation for a public demo, but I was working on this particular feature this past week and thought it should be interesting enough to show off and talk about a little bit.
Rightio - so this week I've been working on our game's new stats screen. For comparison, when the crew would die in our game, our stats screen up until now looked like this:
This worked fine for early testing when all we needed was for players to understand that their stats were being tracked- but as our game evolved, this simplistic and rather boring stats screen never evolved with it. So this week we decided we needed a stats screen that was more fun, more useful, and would actually play a part in the context of our in-game universe. So now when you die in We Need to Go Deeper, you are first presented with a splash screen that looks like this:
Introducing the Voyager's Gazette! Everytime the players die, they are presented a peak at the in-world adventurer-based newspaper, informing them of not only their own demise in the game world, but of other events going on as well. Like everything else in our game, the stories in the paper are randomized, so only through several deaths and playthroughs will players be able to get a glimpse at all of the worldly adventuring news.
Some stories are more humorous fluff, but others will hint at some of the mysteries surrounding The Living Infinite, letting players piece together small bits of information as a sort of post-mortem reward. The phrase "Submarine" in the headline there will also be replaced in-game by whatever the crew decided to name their ship, and with every paper the date moves forward, showing players that the in-game world is always in a progressive state.
After getting a glimpse at the headlines, clicking once on this screen will bring up scraps from other parts of the newspaper, showcasing to the players relevant information regarding their travels as well as each player's personal obituary, which contains their individual accomplishments throughout the trip.
The colored names you see there are the titles players are awarded based on their performance in the game. So if you were say, the kind of player who hoards treasure, doesn't contribute much in combat, and are generally being a complete nuisance, you are awarded the title of "Biggest Scoundrel" post mortem. The stats and titles on this particular screenshot are all mock-up placeholder variables for now, as well as the character portraits themselves, but soon they will be individualized proper.
Clicking again will bring up this screen - notifications of any items that were unlocked during your playthrough, and letting you know that they are now available for purchase (via in-game gold that carries over between playthroughs) in the in-game catalog. (I should note that this screenshot is a mock-up since we don't yet have the in-game catalog set up proper yet and so there's no current need to display these types of messages to players just yet.)
And finally, once you've clicked through any/all item unlock messages, you will be taken to this final screen where you can choose to either dive again into The Living Infinite with the same connections (meaning you won't have to reconnect to your friends again when you want to go another round) or quit to the main menu. Putting together these menus has been surprisingly fun and we can't wait to see what ya'll think of the format!
Oh, and one more quick thing to note: Since people have been asking, we finally have a proper
DONATE button set up on our website now, so if you wanna help contribute to our development, feel free to stop by and lay down some hard cash!
It would be much appreciated and every little bit always helps!
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