Weekly Report (May 5th)

Heya.

I released the previous build a day later last time, so it's only fair that I release this build a day earlier. I mean, I wasn't planning on anything ambitious this week anyway, so I could afford a schedule shift. This week, I was busy finishing up the inventory-related changes, such as introducing scrollbars, refactoring scripts, and making changes to the item slot logic.

Here's a brief overview of the changes: 

- Fully adapted the logic in the test levels to rely on the player collider detector script - after the previous week’s changes, it started bugging, again, because of the discrepancy in the collider logic approaches;

- Updated the internal structure of all game mode windows - now, internally, they resemble the toggleable windows, such as the character window, journal window, inventory window, etc;

- Added scrollbars - yeah, I couldn’t make them work; they look awful. They’ll appear when extra slots are added to accommodate the items in inventories - it’s also possible to toggle them on/off with the ‘X’ key (debug, will remove later, unless I forget). Maybe I’ll rework them sometime, but for now, we’re stuck with this iteration;

- Realised that in the character window (the one that opens on pressing the ‘C’ key) the active player party character didn’t change when using the buttons within said window, even though if the player changed the active character using the buttons in the player party panel (the one with health/stamina bars and perk slots), the character in the character window did change as well + noticed that those buttons had old audio clips - fixed those problems;

- Old clips were also found on the inspection doll’s character changing buttons;

- Debated with myself whether to add fading effects to the inspection doll and character window, to mirror the transition that happens on the player party panel, but decided against - the character changing will remain instant;

- Refactored the character window code;

- Made adjustments to the code of the inspection doll and character window, to visually ‘lock’ the consumable slots when a character doesn’t wear a belt (slots will still remain unlocked if there are items in the character’s consumables inventory - for example if placed into the consumables list directly through code);

- Prevented the player from equipping items in case the protagonist has reached the personal weight limit;

- Added UI elements to the inventory window that show the changes to the attack/defence rates upon changing equipment, as well as the personal weight indicator; 

- Made miscellaneous changes to various other scripts that are unrelated to the inventory handling.

It's time to move forward. I haven't advanced the story for about a month now, and even though I dread the next stage (it will involve another battle, and this time I'll have to implement the escape function; it will also be quite dialogue heavy, because I'd need to account for three scenarios: escape + talk with Gaspar; win + talk with Gaspar, and defeat + talk with Gaspar, where all the 'talks' are different), I need to push on. Well, first, I'll need to implement a small dialogue with Gaspar where the protagonist will need to drink water in order to replenish some artificially depleted stamina, plus I need to add combat actions to all the pieces of equipment that Zondok sells.

I will see how much of it I can handle starting Tuesday (I will rest tomorrow instead of Tuesday, as I did before changing the schedule to releasing builds on Monday evenings). For now, though, I bid you goodbye.