Hello everyone!

This week has been particularly busy and stressful for me, not due to anything game wise, but as a result of other responsibilities that seem to take up more and more of my time and energy in a way that makes me question if feelings of laggard progression is a result of me meandering through life, or the result of a demanding world that doesn't have time to stop for anybody. Long story short, I went a couple days without any real work on the game. Therefore, instead of discussing just the things I have done this week, I wanted to give a progress report of everything that I have done this month as the end of January approaches, not only to keep you informed on the game's progress, but to also convince myself that  no matter how slow I may be going, that I'm still going.

Save Feature

I have started creating the foundation for a save game feature. In an RPG where it could take hours/days  to complete, having this was crucial if I wanted to create a game that would have an overarching story-line that expanded beyond Tiro Town. (This save game feature will also be helpful in the event that the game crashes due to bugs in the current and future versions of the game ) So far the save feature has the ability to save and load the player's general information, moves the player has learned, and location the player was last in.

Map Designs

In terms of map designs, I have successfully designed all the maps needed in the game, which includes the redesign of current maps you see in v1.01. There was around 27 scenes in total excluding fight scenes, introduction scenes, and chapter title scenes. Needless to say, I'm hoping I won't need to update any of these maps anytime soon.

UI and UX Designs

I have updated the UI for the game,  having sprites and assets used to create the GUI instead of the built in UI features from Unity. I also have the settings button appear in the first screen of the game. So far, the current settings include character controls, music/sfx, text speed, and quitting the game.

Bugs

I haven't gotten to a point where I could fix ALL of the current bugs in v1.01, but I have remedied some of the  bugs in that version, including:

• Signs and other NPCs  crash when you wish to interact with them
• Sprites are cleaned up so there are no overlapping

Misc

There have been other quality of life changes that I made to the game that I think will also improve the enjoy-ability of the game, including:

• Implementation of lights
• Implementation of cooler and slick scene transitions
• Sprites and other graphics no longer appear blurry
• Camera snaps to player when entering a new scene instead of lerping to it.

Summary

There are still a lot of things that need to be changed/updated, or implemented

• Finish Save Game feature
  • include saving flag information (for story)
  • including saving bag information
• Map Creation
  • Add all signs for each map
    
  • add all npcs for each map
  • Add box colliders for all map scenes
• Scene transitions for all scenes
  
• implementation of cut scenes for story
• Creation of items
• Creation of moves
• Inclusion of music/sfx
• Animations
  • Characters/NPCs
  • Move Effects
• Additional UX features
  • Stores (Tiro Tavern and Chop Shop)
  • Player Settings
    • General information
    • Bag
    • Moves
    • Quests
    • Options (Include saving game
• Bug fixes
  • Music looping issues
    
  • Battle simulator issues
  • Store issues
  • Stairs and portal clipping issues

And while all of this looks and appears very daunting already, I'm reminded by how far I've come in just this month, and how much of an improvement it already is since v1.01, and that encourages me to keep moving forward