Hello again!
It's been nearly a month since the Proof of Concept version was released, and notable changes were made throughout February!
Before we get to the actual game changes, I think it's best to start off by explaining this:
My University and How It Affects Development Speed
It is inevitable that my university lessons are making me struggle to spend time on this game's development, but that doesn't mean I will stop being active as always.
For a detailed explanation for my lack of free time, the days I'm usually free and energetic are from Fridays to Mondays.
From Tuesday to Thursday are when I go to my university at morning and stay there until the evening. When I come back home, I have no energy left to even turn on my computer, so the game is left like this.
As a result, my productivity is at its peak during the semester and the summer break. That's when I can spend my entire week working on my game, and that's where things go way faster.
As for the release date of the DEMO version, don't expect it to come out before this summer. In a worse case scenario, it might come next winter. I'll try to be as fast as possible meanwhile keeping the overall quality of the game as best as possible. With all that being said, thank you all for your understanding.
Now that this explanation is out of the way, here's the answer to the question you all might have been wondering regarding the game engine used for the game itself. And here's the answer:
GameMaker or Unity?
You might remember me stating that I was going to port the game into a different engine for it's ease in making cutscenes and other visual content. Right after the PoC release, I tried porting everything into Unity, but eventually I've decided that staying in GameMaker would be infinitely better because nearly all of the game framework was already done in that version.
To put it shortly, there won't be an engine change anymore; I'm sticking with GameMaker.
...
Wait, what do you mean I forgot one more thing?
... Ah, yes! Here it is!
Post-Polarization's First Official Social Media Account
I'm happy to announce that Post-Polarization now has its first social media account: YouTube! More are about to come later.
The YouTube channel will consist of special announcements and trailer videos... and possibly more! So be out there looking out for those!
Now that all important matters have been covered, let's look at the changes made into the game for real:
Revised Prologue Cutscene
A cutscene from the Prologue chapter was revised. Some NPCs will now move around on their own and this will make the game more lively. This revised cutscene demonstrates that.
Chapter 1 Development
I'm very happy to announce that I've already started working on Chapter 1, which comes right after Prologue. Currently, new rooms and songs are being made and enemies are being conceptualized. Below are some of the new rooms you can explore after Prologue.
Menu Screen Changes: "New Game" Animation
Some of the feedback about this game was about its similarity to Undertale in some parts, which is one of the major games Post-Polarization is inspired from. Not only was this true, but there was a reason behind this as well.
As crazy as it sounds, the framework of Post-Polarization is based off of my own Undertale engine, named "UnderStudio". If you're wondering what it looks like, you can check my GitHub page and find the repository there. There aren't any changes made to it anymore.
This is the same reason why Diannex is used as the cutscene system and GameMaker is used as the game engine. Eventually, the game's framework had been heavily modified to fit my game's standards and most of the code was changed/overridden alongside that.
I completely removed the naming system because I felt that this was unnecessary. This change alone breaks all the PoC version save files, but I never guaranteed for old save files to work in the DEMO version anyway. Now, you simply press "New Game" and a small animation plays before fading into the first cutscene.
UI Changes: Dialogue Choice Menu
Another change that was made in the game was the overhaul of the choice menu. While the old one was decent, it was more fitting for a visual novel game, which is not this game's genre. But with the new one, the overworld isn't blurred and is clear.
I was inspired by a certain anime game while designing this - you might have an idea or two on which game it's inspired from.
New Setting: Frame Rate
30 FPS isn't usually a problem for most cases. However, if you're a person who's used to playing games at 60 FPS, you might not really get used to it that easily. This is why I've decided to add this very important feature into the game!
You will be able to change the current FPS of the game. Available options include 30, 60 and 120.
Now, some of you might be wondering where "144" and "Unlimited" is, but trust me; I've tried adding those as well. GameMaker didn't have a delta time system, so everything was dependent on the game's frame rate. Adding such system would mean all timers would have to be increased by the delta time every frame, so on frame rates not in the multiple of 30, timers would be broken. To easily move over to this delta time system, I had to define a reference FPS (which is 30) and calculate my custom delta time depending on this reference, so that I wouldn't have to change any codes whatsoever.
This doesn't mean it's unfixable; I'd rather not change every single timer manually. It'll clutter up the code.
Well, this is everything for now! Hope you enjoyed this devlog!
-Animeliqite
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