Alpha 8 — NPC Behaviors
It's been nearly two years since the last
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and a lot has happened since! Coming back with a clear mind, my goal is now to finish what I started. I have been drafting a final product to build towards and creating milestones with concrete tasks to achieve it, and this releases marks the first step in the resumption of development!
The major focus on this release was improving NPC behaviors. Instead of patrolling between a fixed set of waypoints, NPCs will now spawn from the neighborhood exits to travel home or vice versa. With this comes a more crowded neighborhood:
up to 20 NPCs can be moving around the level. You'll need to be more careful not getting caught with the extra sets of eyes! Especially since
the shout of someone seeing you alerts nearby people. If one person catches you, you might suddenly have a crowd looking your way! You'll also want to be more strategic where you leave your clothes behind, as
other characters may now pick up your discarded clothes.
One mechanic I grew to dislike was confidence. I didn't like how arbitrary it was to suddenly be ejected from the game when your health meter was depleted. Consequence is a major theme I want to emphasize: even if you get caught or lose your clothes, your naked adventure only ends when you're safe. To this effect,
confidence has been removed; instead,
the game now tracks the number of times you've been seen and for how long. This mechanic will be expanded upon in later versions.
The most controversial change will be the removal of time of day. I admit I loved the effect of seeing daylight break after a frantic night of searching for your clothes, but this was the source of a lot of problems, primarily related to lighting. In the midst of all these breaking changes, I wanted to switch back to a fixed time of day.
A daytime mode will be revisited in a future update.
This version will contain more bugs than previous releases. I threw a wrecking ball at the code base and tore out a lot of deprecated assets. I'm in the process of re-familiarizing myself with the project as well as upgrading various components that were left to rot. This results in a very unstable development that opens the game to a lot of known issues. Once I've finished major code upgrades, I'll prioritize stabilizing the game.
It's nice to get another release for the first time in nearly two years. I will try my best to get back onto a monthly release schedule. Having concrete deadlines gives me more focus on creating actual deliverables. Our next release is scheduled for
December 25th. Until then, please enjoy this sneak peak of what we have in the works!
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Rika's new face (right) in comparison with the current Rika face (left). Coming December 25th.
Changelog
- The neighborhood is now fixed to nighttime. A daytime mode will be re-added in a future update.
- Removed confidence health bar.
- Track the number of times you've been caught and for how long.
- Discarded clothing may now be picked up by other characters.
- Increased the number of NPCs from 6 to up to 20 at a time.
- NPCs who spot you will alert nearby other NPCs, potentially drawing more attention to yourself.
- Game version now only displays on the title screen.
- Migrated the renderer from built-in render pipeline to universal render pipeline.
- Accessories are now instantly equipped or unequipped.
- NPCs can now become alerted. When alerted, they will detect you much faster. They can become alerted after seeing you or being alerted by another NPC who just saw you.
- Decrease detection time so that NPCs detect you quicker.
- Remove developer console and Lua scripting
- Remove Story Mode and Rika's apartment. These will return in a future update.
Known Issues
- NPCs can get stuck in-place on level geometry.
- Footsteps may not play the right sound.
- Blindfold does not black out the nearby area.
