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[jarnik]

For a past week, I've been working on a new quest system.

The original solution for writing quests and interactions consisted of 3 parts:
1) LUA scripts attached to GameObjects
2) custom YAML-based dialogue tool, that looks like this:

3) dialogues written in Verbal, my custom dialogue editor:

It was all plain text without any syntax checks, easy to make typos.
The whole system was pretty unwieldy, incomprehensible and pain to work with.

After discovering Ink and successfully using it in [urlhttps://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=61150.0]Cynical 7[/url] demo that I'm now working on, I've decided to switch SPACR to Ink, as well.
Quests, dialogues and scripting is now done purely through Ink, script looks like this:

Pros:
- Inky editor manages some basic syntax checks
- Ink scripts are quite readable and can handle nice things like visit counts, redirects and conditions
- most of the logic can be done and stored in Ink, Unity scenes only contains static objects and triggers

So if you're searching for quest or dialogue solution, definitely check out Ink!

[jarnik]

Made a nice new planet map!
No more "skipping the travel thanks to pre-alpha magic" in the demo! 
Yes, the huge blocky thing is a planet, because everything is blocky in the world of SPACR
 

[jarnik]

New food-mode intro screen to present a delicious food you're about to dig in 
 

[jarnik]

New top-down bot visual with some hand animations, because it was hard to tell those moving bags were supposed to be robots :D

Also a popup showing their face, so that you don't need to switch to chat mode.

[Pixel Noise]

The chat pop-ups are a nice addition! Also that Pumpkin Soup splash screen REALLY makes me want some pumpkin soup.

[jarnik]

Inventory and chat controls were a tough design decision for me. In SPACR, the player can trigger a lot of different actions at any moment, sometimes up to 5. I've always struggled between either having a button for every specific action, or limiting possible actions contextually. In the end, the combination of both approaches seemed to be the best solution.

Learn from the masters, they often say! I studied a number of games with great user interfaces - MGS V, Watch Dogs 2, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and more! Most of them differentiate between object-related actions (pushing or opening a box) and general actions (opening an inventory, switching a weapon).

After many iterations, I decided to use a similar scheme and put the object-related actions on the 4 main gamepad buttons and the general actions on the D-Pad.
Looking back, such a solution might seem obvious now, but crawling through a maze of various possibilities and design decisions was tough. All in all, I couldn't be happier that I'm through it!

[jarnik]

New shadow casting gives a nice feeling of depth to all the objects. Hey, sunflowers!

[jarnik]

When it gets dark, grab your bedroll, set up a camp and sleep under the stars.  ✨

[jarnik]

Sketching the intro sequence - humans before and after splicing.

[jarnik]

Working hard on the new intro. There's gonna be pudding!

[jarnik]

Eating pudding, when suddenly... feels?

[nathy after dark]

I love the first person emotional eating. Those tears.

[jarnik]

first person emotional eating

Great tagline. Seriously, thank you! 

[jarnik]

Tugbots pulling my ship towards the boost gates. Fasten your seatbelts, put down your drink, you're about to get kicked across the galaxy 

This is going to be a part of the intro.

[jarnik]

Created a new set of facial expressions for Tin, the talking backpack.

[Pixel Noise]

Haha! I really like the last two on the top row, and the middle two on the bottom row. I'd like to see a shifty eye face >.> for when Tin is either being evasive, or subtly insulting, etc

[jarnik]

Awesome, thanks for the tip! 

Also I realized he's missing a sad/cry face 

[jarnik]

Mid-intro establishing shot - switching a perspective from top-down to side view.

[jarnik]

Made a more bulky, squarish, technical SPACR logo.

Top or bottom? Help me, lovely peeps.

[jarnik]

Trying out a new title screen that merges different concepts of the game:
- starfield background for the space setting
- a table setting with utensils, because there is eating
- top-down view is used in most of the game (first-person and bird's-eye view)
- a wrench and a screwdriver used in the device fixing puzzles