Hello! I thought I made the previous devlog in January but apparently it's from last year.. so this is the first one for 2020. Wow. This devlog's mostly about adding options to make the game a bit more accessible and going back into making the locations. 🙌

I changed fonts and font sizes to make the dialogues and UI more readable. Now you can read them a bit, even in small GIF form! Hurrah. I also remade the dialogue bubbles for the final game and added a few new shapes for variety and different dialogue types. For those that could read better on black backgrounds, I added an options for dialogue bubbles with inverted colors (White text, black background).

Speaking of inverting colors, I added options to invert and/or change the contrast of the game in the options as well. Not sure how well it works or if it has a big impact in a calm-paced game like this, but it's there now.

The game had mouse controls before, but mostly only for interacting with the dialogue system. Now you can play the game with only the mouse! I added movement controls plus a few controls that were keyboard/controller-only before, like temporarily hiding dialogue bubbles to view the scenery. There's also a bird button that appears at the bottom right now to access the menu with a click.

Also, it can't really be seen (or rather, heard) here, but I made the texts on the UI elements and dialogues be sent to the player's clipboard, so some screen readers can read them aloud if they're on and configured to read clipboard content.

The sky now changes depending on the in-game time, plus it now has moving clouds (and stars at night). There's also a toggle for a simple cloudy/rainy weather change for specific moments that need it.

I'm not really making sound effects and background music for the game yet, but I added an option for audio subtitles if they're wanted. They can appear on both dialogue and non-dialogue sounds, and stack if there's multiple ones playing at the same time.

A few days ago, I finished gathering references for the game's flora and designing the final layout of one of the major locations. Now I'm blocking it out and testing the scale of everything. Walking on it felt.. very real at the start, in the sense that it takes too long to get to the next scenery, like in the real location it's based of. I redesigned a bit and scaled it down until it's like a third of the original size and it feels better now.

It's my first time actually making 3D locations this big, so I'm still getting confused on where to start first, but it slowly coming along. After making the current location, hopefully I'll figure out a good work pace and continue to finish up most of the other locations.

I kind of procrastinated with the location-making by doing options first, but at least I won't have to worry about them much later on, haha. Now to go back, wear the 3D artist hat, and actually do the thing! Thank you for reading. You can support the game's development via Patreon, Ko-fi, or donating on one of my games here on Itch. Simply following the game's progress helps a lot as well. See you next time! 🎵