Build bugs and ship

I know I said the last devlog would be the last one, but as expected there were a few last bugs, especially with rendering. There were lots of sizing bugs and technical Unity bugs, and I also had to get the Unity web building package and configure it to how I wanted. BUT, the biggest change is that I got my game on Itch, and I finally shipped!

Main changes:

• Optimization and sizing bugs
• Added game to Itch.io
• SHIPPED

Tutorial and finishing touches

The tutorial was created, and you can go around each of the rooms where Dennis will explain each of the features. The tutorial dialogue will also only appear ONCE, which took me forever to figure out. I also added some actual words to the end of the timer/weeks, and its just a thank you message to all who played the beta/demo with some buttons to return to title or quit. Some other smaller changes is I added some text to the Slamazon website to be a placeholder logo, I also changed the chapter select background, which used to be the picture of that cat eating chips in the distance of the windows xp wallpaper. I’m so excited because I think I have an MVP to ship, and it has been a very long journey. One thing I had to accept before shipping was that I was never going to get the full chapter 1 shipped in time for Stardance like I wanted it to be, which is okay. I was hoping for all the assets to be done in time, but there was still so much to do and no time to do it, and unfortunately the submission part of my game relied on having all of the mannequin assets done. My solution to this was to just have the demo be about exploring the clothing system and exploring the costume shop, and like someone once told me, it doesn’t have to look good to be good. However, I will not stop working on Stitch-Craft after Stardance is over, and I fully intend to keep adding and improving the game as much as I can. Thank you to all who have liked my devlogs and shown your support for my game and its progress.

Main changes:

• Tutorial added that shows player around the shop
• Slight cosmetic changes to placeholders and other missing assets
• Completed MVP

Dialogue, cleaning, and more

The dialogue system is finally in place! The player can now go down different dialogue “paths”, allowing them to choose between 2 options. I was also going back and cleaning up some of my older codes a little bit when I realized that not a single one had been commented. It was at that moment that I hated my entire existence and this whole project because I made one of the biggest mistakes of this whole thing. I had also not learned about commenting at all until I took a computer programming class this year, and that my video game development teacher last year did not teach us about commenting, and now I can’t remember how half of the code works. If any of you have any suggestions on how to go about this, that would be very helpful! There have also been small updates to assets as I am getting ready to ship. There are just a few things left to do to get the MVP since most finalized assets will not be finished by the time I ship, so I think the demo will just be an exploration of the clothing system. I’m expecting one more devlog, and the stitchcraft demo will be shipped!

Main changes:

• Dialogue system with options and branching dialogue
• Code has been cleaned a little
• Final touches for shipping

Mannequin Assets!

New assets for the mannequin, money/time labels, info panel, and other buttons. There were bugs, bugs, and many more bugs, especially with getting the sprites to show up, which was somewhat caused by me trying to use SVGs, but ultimately falling back to PNGs for now. Special thanks to my amazing mother for helping me create the mannequin assets, and my amazing father for teaching me how to use Figma. The tops now have basic assets (to be updated and more added later) that snap onto the mannequin, and can be taken off in a similar fashion (hehe, fashion) to the storage room. Some other bug fixes were making sure the purchasing system works completely, and slamazon looks good.

Main changes:

• The clothing pieces have assets and are aligned with the mannequin
• New UI assets all around
• Slamazon delivery system bug fixes

Settings Overhaul

I changed the settings’ visual look. Before, there was mostly placeholder images, placeholder sliders, and placeholder fonts. So I did some work in Figma, and lots of troubleshooting with the code to create the spinning pattern. My biggest challenge was that I was originally going to have the pattern slowly moving off screen to look like an infinite stream of icons, but I decided not to and to just have them spin slowly in place. This is the finished product, and more visual updates to all other screens to come!

Main changes:

• Spinning icon pattern in the background of the settings
• New font chosen for most of the game
• UI style chosen and developed final settings UI

Submission system created

Now you can submit costumes to the required amount for a chapter. You can put costumes on, and take them off with very similar logic as the storage system. You can only submit when the minimum requirement of a top and bottom, or full piece, is met. The image below is the layout of the UI. Everything is currently placeholders, which the rest of the project will be mostly a lot of drawing assets, so the demo is close to being ready!

Main changes:

• Requirement costume amount added
• Clothing pieces can be placed as a child of the mannequin
• Clothing pieces can be sumitted towards the final costume count

Cosmetic minigame updates

I made some cosmetic minigame updates to really finalize it. The different phases now slide into each other making a really nice looking transition. I also did tons of bug fixes around the actual creation of the final clothing piece, especially with canvases and canvas types. My main bug I had to fix was the workspace canvas being visible, but setting it as inactive made the hanger object spawn on the wrong canvas die to incorrect references, however, the problem was solved by using alpha values instead of setting the worspace canvas as inactive. The minigames look plain right now, but I will put animated backgrounds to show the different settings (like cutting out fabric, sewing, and ironing).

Main changes:

• Sliding transitions between minigame phases
• Workspace canvas disappears during minigames
• Clothing piece confirmed to spawn after minigames with correct grade

Minigame updates!

I made some updates to the minigame system. I mostly added things to the version from the last devlog. The line renderer shows up now, but I had to make it disconnected from the accuracy, so it’s purely cosmetic. The second phase is a timing minigame where you have to click the slider at the right time, and I changed it from a horizontal orientation to vertical. The buttons in phase 3 got a slight timing update and little steam puffs, which the video below is of that working. The last thing I updated was make the flow of starting and ending the minigame nice with the start minigame button.

Main updates:

• Line renderer fixed
• Small cosmetic changes to phases 2 and 3
• Minigames can be started with the start minigame button

Remade the minigame system.

It comes in 3 phases still, and accuracy can be calculated. I had to take a pretty long break after the first attempt at the minigames because I got so burnt out from how badly the last one turned out, but I persist. My main struggle with this update was trying to get the line renderer to work, which I am still working on. The picture below is a look at what the first phase will look like, I’ll probably add more cosmetic changes later when I’m focusing on assets near the end of the game.

Main changes

• Remade base minigames system
• 3 phases can be played, and accuracy is deducted
• Added a few more placeholder assets

First minigame system

I created a sewing system with a series of 3 mini games to cut, sew, and press costumes. Unfortunately it doesn’t run very smoothly, and I am unable to get a screenshot of it working. I am going to overhaul it later, but it’s good for getting the idea of what I want the mini games to be. The image below is what the main pattern picking UI will look like.

Main changes:

• Made fabric a currency to use in sewing
• Made sewing draft games
• Made a few new assets

Currency system

I created a currency system for my game! It includes a storefront that refreshes every week to buy clothing pieces and fabric (which will come into play later) which get delivered to your storage after the amount of weeks it takes to deliver. The deliveries also show up in a calendar on the desk. Once again, it was a little bit of a struggle to get items to keep references across scenes and on start, but I figured it out. Everything is mostly placeholders right now, but that will change in the future.

Main changes:

• Currency system created using unity gaming services
• Storefront created to refresh with new clothes to buy every week
• Calendar shows pending deliveries
• Completed deliveries get sent to the storage as a draggable hanger object to use
• Budget for each chapter gets set at the beginning, which players use to spend

Storage system

I made a storage system for my hanger objects with a sorting system. The hardest part was making the hangers move from one canvas to another canvas on another scene. The hangers also kept spawning in all the wrong places, and there was a lot of scene management bugs. But, it works smoothly now as seen in the demo below.

Main changes :

• Created storage system that moves hangers from player’s canvas to storage canvas in separate scene
• Hangers keep their properties when stored, and stay in storage when player loads and unloads scene
• Sorting system sorts the clothes in storage by attributes

Timer system

I added a timer system in weeks for each chapter. I also updated my navigation system to support additive scenes rather than single scenes to preserve references. I also made sure that the timer worked for free play mode as well as the chapters. I ran into a lot of bugs with the scene logic, especially trying to get additive scenes to unload. However, I figured it out and it works nicely.

First official devlog! My progress before this includes a design document, I made most scenes that I anticipate will be used, made a navigation logic with a fader for smooth transitions, a few icons and visuals (I attached the title for now to this devlog), and a system to create hangers with data like clothing type, material, color, etc. There was a lot of unnecessary bugs that could’ve been avoided easily, but I learned a lot from them. All this to say that updates will be more recorded from now on.