Devlog: 12 (see previous one)
Dev Hours Since Last Devlog: 31.86
Total Dev Hours: 227.16

Designs on the Future

Last week my day job took a lot of my time and I did not get much coding done, that's not to say I didn't make progress though. I spent a few hours working on designing the whole game, and while I still don't have it all fleshed out I now have a path to navigate.

I posted my release announcements in r/incremental_games and have gotten some great feedback so far. u/waffleyone asked if I had any plans to make Treasure Hunter less repetitive. I certainly want to, however, I don't have a good answer, yet.

I always envisioned Treasure Hunter having an ending, I mean at some point you gotta collect all the pieces of Quixxens Suit and the game ends. However, with 12 zones that's a lot of invested time, it takes over 362 million Plains quests (zone 1) to get 1 Dungeon quest (zone 12). From my Matter of Scale game, I just got to Archduchy (zone 8) and I've played for months. Hmm, not good.

Before I get to beta I plan to add another prestige system, something that speeds up the lower levels so the player can focus on the higher zones. Since this is still a design idea it won't make into the upcoming release. u/waffleyone also suggested varying how the tiers are played out in higher levels. Hmm, those two ideas go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Yum. Once I have a full design I'll share it to get feedback.

Coming Into Focus

I think the next release will come out around 2 July. I may chop my list in half and push a release next week if things go well, so we'll see. My major hurdle for this release is adding offline progression, as well as some other minor updates and code clean up.

For those that like to geek out here's my full work list.

Treasure Hunter: Quixxen’s Suit Work List

Next Release: v0.1.3 alpha 4
Target Release Date: 2 July 2020

Exploration Zone

• redesign prefab:Location so it supports a shader-based highlight option, and remove the extra image highlight
• it always says “maps” even if there is 1 - “1 maps”
• add topexx crystal reward
• bug: if I finish a river quest then a partial river gets the focus instead of it moving down to the first available Plains quest
• bug: a partial quest still builds up income and it shouldn’t

Quest & Quest Display

• bug: encounter button turns green before MAX says you can complete 1 encounter
• ✔️ create encounter names for RiversQuest
• ✔️ create encounter names for SwampsQuest
• PurchasableEncounter: refactor prefab so I can set an encounter number through a SerializeField member
• PurchasableEncounter: refactor Start() to use GameManager for getting DisplayQuest

Quest Goals

• DisplayGoal: remove LocationChanged use GameManager.Instance.Selected Location instead
• add RewardBonus effects to other goals as needed (only CompletedTiersGoal has it as of 11 Jun 2020)
• the times completed goal should scale because 50 of trap encounters (1,4,7,10) is not the same as 50 fight encounters (2,5,8,11) or 50 puzzle encounters (3,6,9,12)
• Goal: override ToString() instead of using Description field

Research

• look into IncreaseResearchPointsResearch to establish a good formula
• look into IncreaseResearchPointsResearch to make sure it applies the bonus correctly
• add in at least 5 more techs
  • Research: Autocomplete goal
  • Research: Reserves income to buy {encounter}
  • Research: Autobuy {encounter} surcharge reduced to {x}%
  • Research: Start a quest with {x} income
  • Research: Increase goal difficulty
• update research reward to a calculated value
• fix RP point display not highlighting correctly when Plains is selected, it works fine after Rivers is selected

General and UI

• review Jenn’s comp
• design offline play
• add in a confirmation routine to the reset button
• ✔️ design out new game flow
• art: wicker background
• art: 3 frames paired with 3 textboxs pairs
  • a hex textbox and an oval textbox
  • copper, brass, silver
• art: encounter icons
  • combat icon - crossed swords
  • evade a trap icon - TBD
  • solve a puzzle icon - TBD
  • explore an area icon - TBD
  • gather resource - TBD
  • deliver item - TBD

Technical Updates

• bug: WebGL version lists enc12 cost as 9,999,968 and not 10,000,000 (Editor)
• ✔️ update formula comments to use Level instead of Tier
• bug: if Research Panel is on when starting the game in Editor it gives NullRefEx

Life’s an adventure, what’s your quest?

– Blog originally written and posted at Working On More Features on 22 June 2020.