Hello everyone! This is the final development update post! I have tons of exciting news today! Chapter 5 is very close and I'm super excited to tell you about everything that has been happening as of late!
Overall development progress:
In short! Chapter 5 is almost done! I can count all the things left on fingers of my one hand! That's amazing feeling for me!
Second good information about the development is that the endings are almost done and they'll most likely be finished next week!
I can safely say that Chapter 5 is in almost playable state! Gameplay is done and the last things are mentioned before endings! Besides that Chapter 5 is fully playable! This doesn't mean that everything is finished however the hardest parts to make are finished!
The things left to do are:
-Finish endings (both endings are like 80% done)
-1 music track
-New credits
-Voice acting
And that's it! These are the only things left to! :)
I'm very happy with how the progress has been going lately!
Of course after all things for Chapter 5 are done I will have to test the game to see if there are any bugs left and optimize it before the release so it doesn't burn your PCs.
Overall Chapter 5 is the biggest Chapter of all with most new mechanics, locations and characters! It's the most ambitious Chapter of all of them and at the same time it's the most ambitious project I have ever worked on! :)
(From more technical side of things, Chapter 5 is as big as Chapters 1-4 combined. I'm talking about the number of levels! Of course this doesn't mean that Chapter 5 will be as big as these 4 Chapters combined! That's more of a fun fact!)
While working on Chapter 5 I've also touched older Chapters to improve few things! Let's talk about this in the next segment!
2. Changes to the older Chapters (1-4)
I'm aware of the state of the game as of now. I know that there are many bugs!
Great news is that I've fixed a lot of them while working on Chapter 5!
I fixed around 30 bugs in the game!
Not only that, I've also worked on the greater optimization in these Chapters. Game should run even better after the release of Chapter 5! The difference won't be huge at least something! :)
Chapter which has received the most changes is Chapter 2!
I know that people had problems with finding these power cells to end the Chapter!
Now they have been moved to 1 location! (Not 1 room! Few room which aren't so far away from each other)
I've tried to fix the problem with backtracking in this Chapter and I hope it's better now!
Other Chapters had smaller changes, these are:
-Improvements to the character's Ai
-Few changes to the environments (new textures, etc.)
-Balance changes
-Bugfixes
My goal is to deliver the best game for you as possible! :)
I want to fix as many bugs as possible and improve the weaker parts of the game!
Henry's Son is my first project and I really want to remember it as a game I would be proud of even if it's not the best game with many flaws! I just want to be sure to that I did everything I could!
My experience with game development is much bigger now and my future projects will definitely be better than Henry's Son!
Back to the topic! Let me tell you about changes to the whole game in general!
3. Changes to the whole game / game structure
The biggest and the best change of all is implementation of save system!
That's right!
After many failed attempts, Henry's Son will now have a save system! It's very basic and works best in the longer Chapters (3-5) however I think you will like it! :)
When you press "PLAY" button you will be able to choose the chapters. This will not change!
The only difference is addition of "CONTINUE" button which will load your last save!
If you hover the "CONTINUE" button you will see a message at the top of the screen with information about where is the last safe. (In which Chapter). If you don't have a save file you will see this message on the screenshot above!
If you hold "DEL" on your keyboard you will delete the save file.
This save system saves your game automatically in certain places. Due to the structure of Chapters 1 and 2, these Chapters will have only 1 save at the start of each Chapter.
Chapters 3-5 have different structure and it allows the game to do few saves for each Chapter.
Another huge addition to the game is ability to skip cutscenes!
You will be able to skip almost all cutscenes in every Chapter!
Game will show a small sign at the bottom right corner of the screen telling you to hold "ENTER" to skip the cutscene!
I hope this addition will make the game more enjoyable to replay :)
Now let's go to the last topic I want to talk about and that is...
4. Release date trailer for Chapter 5
So in the near future you can expect a release date trailer for Chapter 5! :)
If there won't be any complication, this trailer will drop at the end of next week! (possibly 27th), however I don't want to promise that this trailer will drop on this day! It depends on how much time I will have to work on the game! Life is unpredictable so yeah... Wish me luck ;)
However I can for 100% say that Chapter 5 will drop this month!!!
I want to leave you with this positive news here! :)
After 1.5 years Chapter 5 will finally be finished!
That's all for today! See you soon! :)
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