what do you know yet another update
recently Zortch got featured on Alpha Beta Gamer
and I received plenty of feedback to digest and address
- I changed the pain sounds because they reported to be annoying (they added early on and I got kinda used to them over the years)
- I added a ketchup violence mode (which turns all creatures blood to red)
the original idea for the colors is that you are fighting a diverse cast of aliens (many with their own agenda)
many of them don't have blood (the pink guards are just jelly blobs pretending to be humanoids - e.g. this is why they don't have eyes and have weird mouths)
but of course this is just my lore .. which is the official lore
- I separated the reload and use button (it felt awkward for many .. so much for my bright ideas)
- and there are still some issues that I'm not sure how to fix - saving seems to be slow on some systems
at first I thought it was because I use a big xml text file for a save (I should make a seperate post about how saving works)
but it seems to be fast on my system .. maybe capturing the screen for the preview image is slow on some GPU? I can only guess for now
the game is getting closer and closer to completion but I think people might potentially overhype themselves
as far as I'm concerned this is just a small fun hobby project 🤔 (that might make a few bucks 😅)
so there are some concerns that I just won't be able to address (e.g. repetitiveness, bad graphics etc.)
there are of course some semi important things - there is confusion about that you are playing as a girl or not
for now I'm not sure if I should stress about Zortch's personality or character ingame (she is a woman of few words)
the way I see it is that she is this tomboyish girl, kind of a country bumpkin who would need to walk miles
just to check the mailbox and sees guns as toys - so she and the Brainsuckers, the other stars of the show,
seemed to be logical foils to each other
the problem of course is that these ideas are mostly in my head and telling them in the game
in a non-obstructive but noticeable way is tricky
anyway I'm glad because I finally have all the scenes I wanted in the game:
in the end I even found space for the burger joint, it was included on e1m2 (aka. the second level)
you can even see that dude jumping in joy about it
of course not everything is rainbow and sunshine:
(let this be a lesson - adding crouching to a game brings nothing but problems)
until next time!