Hello everyone!

Is Monday, which means it's time for another development log. It was officially May yesterday which means the deadline to finish this game is fast approaching. This week I will give you all an update on where I'm at with the Toxic Trails Chapter and what I plan on doing for this week.

New Player Companion Feature

I have implemented the Player Companion Feature, which allows NPCs to closely follow the player around the map. This feature will be useful when the player is grouped with other NPCs on a journey or task similar to games like Chrono Trigger or Pokemon. I couldn't find the code responsible for that feature when I looked online, so after days of struggling on my own, I implemented the feature by following the design idea of this person on unity answers.

Essentially, the way the Player Companion Feature (PCF) works is by having the NPC travel to one of 2 locations at a time: either the waypoint generated by the player, or the player's actual location minus an offset depending on which direction the NPC is going to get to that location. Waypoints are generated whenever the player changes direction in the game, that way it would appear that the NPC is following the same path that the player has made instead of tracking the player head on. This doesn't come without its own need for improvement, but for what I want right now for the Toxic Trails Chapter, it's almost perfect. I can't wait to see how this feature will mesh with the rest of the game.

Toxic Trails Storyline/Cut Scenes

Look, I still haven't worked on the cut scenes alright? (I'm really sorry lol). To make a long story short, I needed to ensure that the PCF was working enough before I added cut scenes to the Toxic Trails Chapter. Now that I have a working PCF, it shouldn't be too hard for me to complete the cut scenes now (well it will still be exhausting but it shouldn't be as difficult as before without the PCF). I have completed the draft for the Toxic Trails storyline, so all that is left is for me is to write and edit the game to include the story.

Weekly Goals

One of my goals will be to improve on my PCF feature to include animations for the NPC, because right now it follows the player but the NPC is just a static image. I also want to tweak the offset for the NPCs in the PCF and the code more dynamic for future use. After that I want to include at least 5 of the cut scenes for Toxic Trails in the game (there's actually a lot more cutscenes than I realized in this chapter, but I'm sure I can get through most of them if I hustle time time lol)

That's all I have for updates this week. Once again I want to thank all the people who've supported the journey up till this point, you have truly been helpful and have kept me the fire in me going. We just have a few more weeks left until the next chapter will be officially released, so please stick around for more.