Hey there folks!

Every once in a while we like to focus on telling you all about the smaller details of the game. It’s been a while since the last time we did that, so let’s stop for a minute and take a look at some of the tiny features that shape the game.

On Update #23 we explained how the whole city gets chopped into several smaller areas before being implemented in the engine. This allows us to optimize the game while also saving up some production resources, though there was a smaller issue we didn’t foresee. If something isn’t on your current map then it isn’t being loaded by the engine, which is perfectly fine, we use the fog to cover what’s out of the map, but we forgot about audio. If there’s a fountain in the next map you can’t see it because of the fog, but you should be able to hear it. Audio is based on proximity, so it broke with every map transition, ruining the mood.

After talking it over and discussing possible solutions we decided to have the closer maps always loaded. So the visual assets and logic are being divided just like before, but the engine is always considering your distance to audio objects; sounds pretty simple but it wasn’t that easy to implement. Good news is that it’s already working, so one thing less on our task-list!

Lately we’ve been spending a lot of time working on the interfaces. We even remade the dialogue screen, since the old one was a draft, and that gave us the chance to come up with something that fits the theme better. Content created early in development tends to evolve as, at that point, the team doesn’t have a clear view of the whole project. This new version feels like a notepad and every character in the game will have a personal “writing” sound that reflects their personality. So even when there’s no voice-acting you’ll be able to recognize a person just by listening to how they talk/write, isn’t that cool?

We also added some tiny effects to text (which will be hard to appreciate on such a small resolution) and tweaked the way text appears on screen; making pauses after every sentence and trying to make conversations more organic. You’ll be spending most of your time talking to people, so we need to make sure everything is right on the spot.

And new interfaces deserve new effects, we’re still experimenting with all this but we plan to replace those fade-out effects you’ve seen a thousand times. Here’s another sneak peak of the tests we’re running (we’re still trying out many things, nothing close to a finished version yet).

And that’s all for today. We’ll be back with a new update in two weeks, but we’re always around, so leave a comment, hit us on twitter or just write an email. We’ll be in Gijón (Spain) until Saturday (participating in two talks) so if, by any chance, you are around come and find us! :-)