A Pig's Game Alpha and Other Things

So yeah, if you hadn't noticed I put up an alpha version of the game to download and try out which I'm dubbing as A Pig's Game Alpha. I think I'm just now realizing that there isn't that much to do in the game to have warranted putting it up so soon. I think it may be because I've been working so much on it that the developer side of my brain thought there was more to do. I haven't even put in one actual puzzle yet. Oh well. I saw that some people liked it regardless and that actually makes me pretty happy. I hope you enjoyed the two minute experience I have crafted for you so far.

For those who haven't tried it out yet or for those who may have (somehow) not experienced everything in my micro not-demo, I'll tell you about some of the new things I've added since last time. And for the first time ever in these posts, there shall be gifs!

Back Tattoos

As I introduced in the last log, there is a fridge now with food in it. Of course, you can always tell what type of food is in the fridge by looking at it, but with stranger types of foods I wanted to incorporate a way for you to see the name of the food you are hovering over. I came up with a solution:

That's right, Ehh has back tattoos now. These tattoos display the name of the food you are currently hovering over. It has the same blue wavy line things no matter what item you are hovering over, as you may have noticed but the color of the text changes to reflect the actual food item.

You may be asking me, "Why back tattoos?" My answer to that is, "Do you see room anywhere else to put names for food?" And no, the second shelf does not count because I plan to put food there on different days. So yeah, it was a choice of convenience. But it was also a choice of style. I could have not gone with back tattoos and did a speech bubble or something. I deserve credit, people.

Selecting Items and Taking Food

You can now select items from the fridge. When you select an item that item will glow pinkish-purple and the text that usually says "Exit Fridge" will turn into "Take Food." Here is that in action:

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but there's also a little pig nose select icon down by the Exit / Take Food option now just to make it more clear that you are on that option.

Whenever you take a piece of food from the fridge, you will go back to the main area and a textbox will appear saying you took that food. Ehh will usually have something to say for every piece of food you take. If you'd like to see what he says for the three items above you can download the early alpha version of the game and see yourself.

When you have a food item in your inventory, you are always allowed to bring it back to the fridge and replace it with something else. I've included that functionality already.

Eventually, I will make it so you can combine food items. That probably won't be for a bit because I'm trying to get all the functionality for Day 1 complete first and there are no items to combine on the first day.

No Transition Cutscenes

Last log I showed you the option of turning off transition cutscenes. Back then, that option literally did nothing. Now, it actually does things:

Now if you're annoyed by any of the transition cutscenes that I made, you can set the option to off and the transition will just be a simple fade-in / fade-out from black.

In the gif above I demonstrate it with the fridge, but it also works with the drawing area at this point. I plan to make it work with anything that has elaborate transition cutscenes.

In Conclusion...

I got a bit done. I think I've got everything done that I want with the fridge for now, so I can start working on some other stuff in the room. I'm probably going to work on the drawing area next, because it's very simple at this point. It's going to be a lot more elaborate and I'm hoping it will be one of the focal points of the game. It shouldn't be too hard to do what I want to do, but then again every time I think that it turns out to take five times as long as I originally intended. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks for hanging out in the fridge,

Joshua