Hi! Been a while!

I'm pretty new to writing devlogs, but I want to give it a try as I find them very interesting and I love reading and watching them.

I plan to do this every month if possible, though I'll talk a little more about that later!

_______________________________________________

Now, one month out from Ayla's Repair Shop's (ARS) release, development resumes!

While I did mostly use the past month as a way to unwind after graduating and to apply for jobs, ARS was still pretty close to the front of my mind the whole time. Mostly observing reactions, responses, and critiques of ARS and being prepared to hotfix major issues if some were to arise. Though thankfully that didn't happen. >.>

I also spent some time messing around in Unreal, especially considering it's about as industry standard as you can get. Plus I wanted to work on improving my  C++ proficiency. I did some other minor things too, like messing around with a GBA library and fiddling with my website, but nothing really came of those. :( 

Thank you all so much for playing and enjoying my game! I even saw that there was a Japanese game website that wrote an article about it! Woah! It's a little closer to an overview than a review or anything, but I am still insanely flattered that my little project somehow crossed overseas!

_______________________________________________

Moving on, I want to talk a little bit about the future development of this game.

The past week or so is when I technically resumed development proper, mostly since I wanted to have something to show for this post! (And honestly I've been kind of antsy to get back to work!)

A lot of this time was spent fixing smaller and easy bugs, along with implementing a proper save file system!

I had a lot of this code already written out that I had to put aside for scoping reasons, though thankfully I was able to retrofit it into the current project without too much issue. While it's not finished and currently on displays stats added manually, most of the back end code to store the actual data was written months ago before I shelved it.

Currently saves money, total time played, and mission status w/ best time! Now the game will flip to this menu when you press start, how cool! Unfortunately this isn't really a thing a lot of games have anymore since most consoles or PC game distributors function on an account basis, but I find them really useful. And since I want to keep ARS DRM-Free, I decided to add them. Currently they will be stored in Appdata/LocalLow/carriganreilly_com/AylasRepairShop (apparently Unity company names don't like periods and replaced it with an underscore... oops...)

I made them cute little save.ayla files, though they are stored in plain JSON for users to edit at their own will. ARS won't have any online functionality as far as I'm concerned, so if players want to give themselves infinite money and ruin the economy then they can.

_______________________________________________

Speaking of money, whats up with that?

My original plan for this game was to mostly focus around the loop of repairing broken technology that you buy, then selling it for money or keeping it for display! An "economy" of sorts has always been a key point of my original goals and I really think it will work once I get a few more consoles into the game so players actually have something to buy. 

Currently there are two planned: A e-waste dump and a more normal store. At the store you can buy individual parts and guarantee that they are what you want and good quality. But at the scrap yard, you buy small lots of tech, getting multiple pieces that range from perfect condition to completely broken (though for slightly cheaper than buying a new individual part). That's the plan at least. I guess it depends on how the players feel about that though! I find the practice of buying huge lots of broken stuff on eBay to be really silly (and really tempting), so I wanted to incorporate that into this. I don't want it to feel lootbox-y though, so it is subject to change or adjustment.

Here's a screenshot of the normal store before it was shelved. It will very likely return, though in a better state and probably looking very different! I should clarify that these aren't my priority right now, but having money is an important stat in the long run, so I've gone and added it now.

Once you've fixed a console, you can sell it online or display it on a shelf if you'd like to start a collection! Various color shells and parts are planned, so hopefully players can get a little creative with the tech they repair.
_______________________________________________


So what IS the priority?

Currently, I want to fix the tutorial. I rushed it out for CHROMA, and while it does work it is incredibly boring and was one of the main points of critique I received. I want it to be interactive and borderline entirely scripted (if the player chooses to do the tutorial, at least). For me personally, I always learn better when I am walked through the steps and physically do it, and that's how most game tutorials are made. I did this before with my previous large-scale project Purrfect Employee so it's not something I am unfamiliar with. I mostly just need to focus and do it.

There's some bug fixes that I want to work on too, namely issues with slot clipping and UI clipping. Two pretty easy things I already know how to fix and didn't have the time to do.

After that? More consoles and tech, the ability to clean dirty parts, and then the store + inventory system.


Though I really should mention...

I don't plan to work on this game full time.


Finding a job is currently my IRL number one priority (bills or whatever), and while I'd love to just make games all day, unless they're paying my rent I can't really do that. I didn't (and don't) expect this game to be full time really ever. And while my prospects for an industry job has been waning, if I did happen to get one I would likely end up wrapping development on this game and focus mainly on that.

This doesn't really have any stakes, since this is mostly a passion project and doesn't have any kind of impact on anyone but me, but I like making games and talking about making games, so here I am!
_______________________________________________

As for these devlogs? As I said earlier, please expect them monthly! If I don't have any real progress, then I might write a short post about concepts or showing off old stuff. Oh! Also don't expect any kind of game update from these. These are to talk about development and to yap about progress. When an update is ready, I'll make an announcement separate from a devlog <3

Thanks for reading and enjoying Ayla's Repair Shop!

-Carri