ChangeLog Part 1
Shortly after the April 18th news post we went a bit dark on the updates for the public, but still things were changing in the game, and added almost daily, today I will give you all a first snippet of the changelogs that were made after that news post.
Changelog:
- Customers unhappy with the price, will knock the item out of it's place requiring the player or a bot to pick it back up.
- Test bot's can be bought like any other item for 0 gold at the bottom of the order list
- Test bot's dock can be placed by pressing V to enter object placement in free mode, it is the last "Pole" type object
- Q is an all to go shop control button, it will bring up the usual order scroll and 3 new buttons in the left side (Placeholder)
- Skills button opens and closes the skill window
- Bot's button will be grayed out if no bots are found on docks in the scene, when at least 1 bot exists you will be presented with a scrollable window showing a panel for each bot and 3 buttons to change its state (Currently only gathering works), on the right side when hovering over a bot's panel you will be shown what that specific bot's dock lock box contains so you can go and pick them back up
- Stats button currently inactive
- Progress bar replaced with a 360 degree filling image in the center of the screen
Aaaaand from the top - Customers knock out items!
When customers are interested in an item, they will do a few checks before spending their hard earned gold, but one of the main checks happens when the customer sees the price tag, does the price fit into what a unique customer thinks is a fair one? Numerous things might happen if an item fails any of the checks a customer makes on it, and one of the results for being too pricey is a few bad remarks towards you as the shopkeeper and getting the item being flung out of it's display position making it worthless up until picked up and placed back once again. So plan ahead if you will have time to pickup items and place them back on display while waiting for a customer who is ready to dish out the gold you want for it, or maybe try lowering the price.
Test bot's with their pillars of "help"
We have talked about the bots a few times before, it can be seen in action in a few screenshots, videos. but this is one of the very first screenshots for him - The bot serves as a helper, something that will help you not feel overwhelmed by hordes of customers, picking up items, zapping thieves, and in the future hopefully - cleaning up. We had fun developing them, and the main idea was that you will have to place a dock for a single bot, and then control it via central UI, give it tasks, see what it has brought back to it's lock box for you to pickup and sell. If placed correctly, they could potentially make your shop a place where not a single thief get's away, pair them with the barrier skill - never again will you loose an item to a thief.
Central UI - useful, easy
First thing you should notice is that this Gif seems to have some older assets, this is because it was taken from our Trello project page where we upload up to date progress updates for our team, and this was the gif I made to make a fast showcase of the central UI and it's basic functions, lot's have changed to it, but for now, we are following the road which was traveled.We will talk about how we have 5 separate states that you as the player can be in and you choose which one to be for the given situation, and each state mostly handles with two buttons - Q and E. For this state we call it Shopkeeper state, pressing Q brings out the central UI and the order scroll, from this UI you can pay your taxes, control bots, see shop statistics and upgrade yourself with skills, and mainly - order new items for the shop.
There is not much to write about the progress bar, mainly instead of a long bar which fills up when you are let's say opening a brand new chest full of new items, you get a green circle that fills up radially to show the progress of you opening up a chest/picking up an item, I do believe it has been noticed in screenshots before this post.We do hope you enjoy this format of News for now, as there are Lot's of changelogs to cover up until Release! As always, thank you for supporting the project and - Stay tuned!
Helper Bots so far are my favorite mechanic, they'll just be insanely useful and they're adorable. =)
They should have been in the spotlight for a few months, but we kinda finished them off fast, and made way for other features, but this is the general gist of how they began, there are lines in the changelogs that concern the bots, one of my favorites is instead of having the bot start its engine and go catch a thief before he runs away, you can set him to become a personalized Tesla coil for a limited range, but more on that in the future news updates!