Mermay Patch

Hello, everyone!

During May, I will be implementing small changes to To the Deep for a better gameplay experience! Please do leave a comment in the comment box if there are any bugs or small features you would like to see in the game. 

The new patch (webGL build ver.1.5.2) today implements these following changes to the game:

• -Added visual indicator for catching fish
• -Sped up the character
• -Hid text box at finale
• -Added button for dialogue box (spacebar)
• -Other misc key bindings
• -Edited turn sprites to remove hat details
• -Timer will no longer start if the player do not have the required fish
• -Timer now has a denial animation when the player do not have the fish
• -Fixed Depth indicator decimals
• -If you pick up many fishes quickly, the sound effect gets cut out. The sound now plays fully.
• -Made sure fishes do not swim into the geysers in the Coral scene.
• -Disabled character movement in the start menu
• -Added a new title image 
• -Animated more sea grass
• -Added a new scene transition with a fadein/fade out
• -A little gift for players who complete the game (go back to the menu screen credits)

What's Next?

While I have finished the most essential changes I wanted to make to the game post-submission, I may continue to make changes to the game based on the following list of other improvements I can make to the game. Besides, there are a couple of important fixes I haven't got to yet-- the sound system in the second stage uses 3D sound, but the effects do not seem to work well at all.

Quite essential:

• -Speed up geysers to match the faster speed of the player
• -Geyser sounds are making the sound go all strange in coral scene after a while.
• -Same goes for the confirmation sound used for the timers.
• -Shift deep parallax to the right by a little bit.
• -Smoothen hard-edge in the newly added section of deep
• -First line of credits are too wide to fit within the camera (ending)
• -Pressing back using E in gift scene starts the game instead of going to the menu

Less essential:

• -Change confirm noise specifically for event fish ( or add a note to the sound?)
• -Move the fish spawn points into the walls, or somewhere else that the player cannot see the fish appearing
• -Revamp ending area art
• -Get lighting to work in eel cutscene so angler fish brighten the area
• -fish flocking behaviour/ fish follow player ((this is vey hard))
• -Score board at the end for how many types of fish the player has collected.
• -Interactable grass that move when being collided
• -Smoothen player movement
• -Make original art for inventory and buttons
• -Pretty up credits page
• -Give some sort of tune for the girl when she tumble in coral scene

Least essential:

• -extra content: shop
• -Add cooler end credits sequence
• -Add a final end screen proper
• -blur for background
• -add [REDACTED]
• -Mobile/ touchscreen binding

Thanks for reading! 

                                -Mingyue