CHECKOUT - Devlog #5

POST PRODUCTION!

As we move into post-production, our group has been working towards our goal of polishing the current build of the game and its features. This means finalizing the core systems (Dialogue Handler, NPC Manager and Scanning/Bagging Items) and mechanics of our game with most of the finishing touches and last bit of content. Being the only other programmer, I hope to get on track with importing the new art, assets and narrative created by Rei and Charlotte.

Some of the new artwork done by the art team. Finalized sprites for bagging have been a top priority.

Our current build has almost all of the main functionality in place, but the fundamental mechanics/systems still need a bit of refactoring for scalability. As for the current state of the project, our main goal in the post-production stage is to finalize a shippable product so refactoring and reworking internal systems are put on the backburner as more pertinent quality of life / UX design implementations take precedent.

 I spent the last few weeks adjusting the project's system managers together and to organize the UI slightly in order to make it presentable to play testers. I've then added the core functionality for customer tipping and some cinematic transitions between days, rounding our the rough edges to reinforce the immersive aspect of the game. What's left to do is to the flush out the different customer's tipping amounts based on player dialogue options, and then to add some more visual effects to provide better interactive feedback.

Tip Jars!

As we look towards the end, a lot of our focus has shifted to adding more UX changes like a decent starting menu, a simple settings page, and perhaps even a simple saving system! Overall, looking forward to shipping our first finalized build of the project.