dev blog #18 - the road ahead

techDemo 0.4 is released for early access patrons for some days now and I started to think about what's going to come in the next update.

while I have a list of things and ideas I want to put into the game it is nothing I would share online because it's unorganized and full of comments for myself.
that's why I decided to setup a public roadmap for the game so you guys can check anytime what's getting worked on and what's going to come later.

find the roadmap here on trello
there is also a link on the top right menu of my blog.

this roadmap is a general overview of things that I plan to put in the game and things that get worked on. you can filter the list for things like "game engine", "explicit content", etc or even the game version of the game, like "techDemo 0.4", "techDemo 0.5" and so on.
it is by far not a complete list so expect things to be added frequently.

other than that I already finished an advanced text display engine that will power the dialogs and scene texts and all major text blocks in the game from now on.
It allows for "formatted" text to be displayed as the GameMaker Studio text engine is not that versatile regarding multiple formats in one text.

here is a screenshot of what that means (oh and it's a preview for the new scene of 0.4):

until now there was only text with the same style for the dialogs and scenes but as you can see in the image: mikes "thoughts" are now displayed in italic font and the text can even have different colors in the same sentence.

so what else am I planning to add for 0.5?

well here is a quick summary of what you can expect for the next update that will be released near the end of December:

• Character selection - play as Mike or Lena
• more character background story/info
• +1 hardcore scene from Lena's POV
• "random conversation" upgrade to the dialog engine
• working skill system (level your skills by attending different school classes)
• +1 new map: school (in a very temporary layout for now)
   

this is going to be a bigger update to the game so I'll take more time for it than the last ones.

of course I already got some feedback from my early access Patrons regarding some bugs.
Bug hunting will be a big part of this update cycle again so expect things to get fixed too.