GitHub: https://github.com/nebulousmango/All-Filler-No-Killer

Document references:

• Spec: link
• Game design doc: link
• Production timeline: link

Dialogue sequencing

I've been testing out a bool system for a dialogue sequence to play each time the player presses the space key. I think it'll probably turn out to be a terrible way to do this because it'll take a separate script for each level to set the total number of items in the dialogue sequence.

Later:

I've made it work in some way! And have also simplified the code by having it check for whether it's an odd or even dialogue number. The points at which Gab's multiple dialogue options play have to be manually number as one of the IF(i=) conditions though.

June 30, dialogue implementation:

I used a dialogue implementation from a tutorial to set up a branching node system, but it threw up a "Serialization depth limit 10 exceeded" error And the branching thing was becoming complicated, so I've set up a really hacky array system. Like really hacky, but it's got some semblance of working. There are three arrays in the Level1Prog script:

And in the FOR loop where the speech bubbles are switched on and off, I've added code to change the text of the dialogue text objects. The problem with this was that the array elements would have to be written to match the dialogue sequence.

Later:
I fixed the problem from before, and it works! Still a messy way to do it, and I have to set it up to work with the pong mechanic being enabled and disabled. This section will need good documentation so it can be replicated in other levels.

Also the Level Select scene had a UI problem which turned out to be something that's good to remember for later. The TMPro objects were Raycast Targets too: that checkbox needs to be switched off if they overlap with buttons.

Even later:
Finished implementing dialogue for the first level! Now all that's left is to make a selection system to pick one of three of Gab's dialogues. This part will need some extra work:

• Control system to select one of three dialogues
• Sprite to show selected dialogue
• A new animation for selected dialogue option turning into Gab's paddle
• Animations for spark and Opp's paddle spawning into scene
• Scoring: what does choosing different dialogue options affect? Explore these settings based on which dialogue option the player picks:
  • Different physics settings (easier to implement, possibly)
  • Different Opp character responses (will need modifications to dialogue code)
  • Different scores (will need to set up an additional scoring system based on dialogue)

This'll take another week to finish, and then we can work on implementing the second level's dialogues too. And after that we'll have to write dialogue for levels three through five and implement those, and we'll have something of a project to build.