Less than five weeks to go until the launch of Equilinox now! Over the course of the development process I've spent a lot of time testing Equilinox; every time that I add a feature or balance some variables, but I've not often taken the time to sit down and play the game through as a regular player would. So that's what I did last week for about two days straight, fixing bugs, making improvements, and balancing the game as I went.
Evolution Progress Overview
My biggest gripe when playing through Equilinox was that there was no way to see an overview of which species you're currently evolving and which species you would be able to evolve next. In order to do this you would have to click on each species in the world and go to their Evolution tab, to see which species you can unlock by evolving them.
To fix this I've added an "Evolving" tab to the progress panel, which shows you all the evolution processes that are currently in progress, along with a list of all the evolution processes you could carry out based on the species that you currently have in the world. It's a great way to get a quick overview of which species you could start working towards unlocking next.
Placement Particle Effect
I've also been making various little visual improvements to the game in an attempt to polish up Equilinox before the launch. One example of this is the new particle effect that happens when you place objects into the world. It's a very simple effect with a few stones and a bit of dust, but it definitely makes the placing of objects a little bit more satisfying.
Claiming Task Rewards
Speaking of satisfying, I've always felt that completing a task in Equilinox was a little bit underwhelming. The "Claim Reward" button would simply change from blue to green when you clicked on it and the text would change to saying "Complete", accompanied with a rather tame sound effect.
So this week I set about trying to make the completion process a tiny bit more satisfying and added a more interesting animation to the claim button when you click on it. Again, it's a very small change but I think it makes quite a difference. All I need now is a decent sound effect to go with it!
Other Bug fixes and Improvements
On top of these little additions to the game I continued working through the bug reports and fixed a few more small issues in the game. The most important of those fixes was probably the underwater icon issue that I talked about in last week's devlog video. That problem has now been fixed, allowing you to see the status icons of underwater species such as seaweed or fish.
The "Biome Picker" tool was also slightly improved, and you can now use the right mouse button to move around in the world as usual with the biome picker UI open. A single right mouse click will still close the UI but it now knows not to close when the button is held down and being used to drag the world around.
Balancing
Other than that I did a lot of balancing in the game - trying to sort out prices and traits of animals, as well as doing a bit more preparation for marketing the game. There will be a devlog video next week as usual on my Youtube channel and this week I'm going to be concentrating on making the trailer video and finishing the website.
Thanks a lot for reading!
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Looks so cool! Can't wait for the release :)
Will these move blog posts move from here to your website when you finish? Your website could become a cool means of communication.